by Mj Fields
Table of Contents
Dedication
Note To Reader
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
Acknowledgements
Other Book by MJ Fields
About The Author
Copyright © 2016 by M.J. Fields
First published in 2016.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual, locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior express, written consent of the author.
This book is intended for mature adults only. It is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18.
Cover Design, Interior Design and Formatting by Juliana Cabrera of Jersey Girl & Co. Designs
Editing by C&D Editing
Cover Model: Quinn Biddle
Photographer: Michael Downs
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my favorite band
My very first book, Blue Love, was inspired by the song Hate Me, by Blue October.
Their music is so inspiring and is always playing when I write novels that are raw and full of the feelings that dig so deep you feel it in your soul. That's what their music does to me.
27 Truths and 27 Lies was written while listening to many of their songs on the album Sway. Worry List, and Not Broken where the top two.
The song Bleed Out is my go to when I need 'someone' to cry with.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your music. It inspired, heals, and let's me feel.
NOTE TO READER
In the name of love, we often do things we would normally question ourselves for doing. One of those things is lie. Often times, they are trivial, meaningless lies.
Yes, I’d love to watch that movie with you. In reality, we just want to spend time with that person, and we’ve seen the movie and disliked it.
I love the way that looks on you. Even though it isn’t flattering.
I don’t mind. Really I don’t. And in reality, you mind.
Then there are lies we tell ourselves.
It won’t happen again. When, in fact, it’s already happened before.
It doesn’t matter; it’s just words. When someone says something unkind and we swallow it back, yet it chips away a tiny piece of our heart.
It’s okay. I love him, and he will change. He doesn’t change. It just keeps getting worse.
He loves me.
Love is so very complicated. In order to make love last, both parties must love themselves and be on the same “page” as to where their futures are heading: together...or in separate directions.
Like love, Luke’s book is not easy.
The hero is flawed and has done things that may be unforgivable. The heroine is, too, as well as broken, shattered, and growing into a role that was meant to be shared by two people.
At it’s very core, though, there is growth, realization, acceptance, a mutual path to be traveled, and love in its truest form, one that is shared.
In each chapter heading is a lie told in the name of love, as told by one of my amazing readers. It does not necessarily introduce the chapter.
This book does end in a HEA, but like all journeys worth traveling, it is not easy. It is about the beautiful and the broken.
XOXO
MJ
PROLOGUE
My childhood was picture-perfect as far as childhoods go. I have a loving mother, a great stepfather who raised me as his own, a brother, and two sisters, who are funny and kind. They have never made me feel like I’m not one of them.
Outside of that circle is an extended family who love me, who I love, and who loved a man I was never able to meet. Through them, I learned of their memories. Through me, they get to keep a piece of Tommy Lane.
In high school, I was a star basketball player, like my father. I excelled at football, like my father. I was tall and built, like my father. In essence, I used to be a constant reminder of the young man who was some kind of wonderful. In reality, I was, and still am, no such man.
The months preceding graduation, I felt lost. I felt like a child who had held the hand of a man who was always there, but I knew he hadn’t been. I also knew I outgrew him, my father. One simple statement meant to provoke thought and encouragement, instead incited anger.
I was angry at myself for never stepping out from the shadow of a ghost. Angry at all the people who never gave me the opportunity to grow outside of who he was and into my own person. Therefore, I joined the military, something I heard my father had planned to do but was never given the opportunity. He, too, lived in a shadow of sorts. He also died in that shadow.
I was going to honor my father in my own way and grow beyond his shadow, leaving behind those who held the both of us back. It was a wonderful plan and, when executed, I became a man. I found myself, and in finding myself, I got to serve my country, and she served me.
Home was a great place to visit, but not a place I ever wanted to plant roots, until a little girl I could never say no to grew into a woman.
Ava Links, the daughter of my father’s best friend, the man whose shadow my father lived in until his dying breath. One night inside of her, hovering over her, her calling out to God, to me, she was in my shadow. At least, that was what I always told myself the morning after.
Seven years later, she was still at my mercy.
My. Mercy.
Then she told me she loved me, and my fucking world imploded.
CHAPTER ONE
I don’t love you. - J. Dietrich
LUKE
Sleep isn’t always necessary. Hell, I have gone without it for days when out in the field. When I am home, though, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, it’s welcome.
Why can’t I sleep? Because five-foot-nothing; one hundred and ten pounds of curves and ass; long, thick raven hair; and blue eyes pop into my head when I close my eyes. I am a full foot taller and outweigh her by a hundred pounds and yet the sight of her is enough to weaken me and cause blood to pump into my dick, something I have kept in check for years.
Fucking is fucking, and yes, I like that I am fucking something I shouldn’t be. I like that I am breaking unspoken rules. I like that, in fucking her, there is an invisible yet ever present wall separating me and the people back home.
Guilt kicks in when I allow
it, so I stop allowing it. She sure as fuck doesn’t want anything more than I do. We are both adults. Well, she can be a little fucking brat at times, but for the most part, she is just as self-serving as I am. And I know damn well she gets off as hard as I do on the fact that we are a taboo...a secret. And that’s all there is.
There is no path to opening up that spicy, little bit of information so that shit’s sealed as tight as her perfectly waxed, tight little twat that strangles my cock every fucking time we are both home.
When I allow myself the time to think about it, which is usually on a plane heading back to Ithaca, NY, or in the hot as hell monthly letters I get from Miss A, I do feel a little guilt. And yes, I intend on ending this fucked up game I am playing in my head, the one where I am in control...until I see her and the desire she has to get fucked wipes my mind of any thought of ending this.
Yeah, we are not in a relationship, but I know that, when I’m around, I’m the one sticking it in her hot box. I’m the one who she cries out to, the one fucking that perfect little pussy, and I don’t have to worry that she’s thinking about anyone else. I know damn well she wants my cock, and my cock fucking loves her pussy.
Five-foot-nothing; one hundred and ten pounds of curves and ass; long, thick raven hair; blue eyes; and a pussy that has become my kryptonite. That is Ava Links, the girl I can’t seem to say no to and never have been able to.
We fuck. We fuck hard, and I have had her at my mercy for over seven fucking years...until now when she told me she loves me, and I told her she didn’t. She told me she knew I loved her, and I told her it wasn’t true. Then, true to Ava’s nature, she pushed. True to mine, I wrecked her.
Do I love her? I love my country.
Do I love to fuck her? Yes. Best piece of ass I ever had.
Did it feel good to hurt her? No, not at all.
Is it cool that some fucking drummer, who clearly needs his ass kicked, is going to be fucking her? No.
Do I hope it fails? Yes. She can do better.
I roll over onto my front and bury my head in the sheets. I think about shit nobody should ever think about because, right now, all the shit I have seen in seven years is more welcomed than the image of her when I left this morning: angry, hurt, and completely confused, all caused by me telling her exactly how it needs to be.
***
When I wake up in the morning, and seconds after my feet hit the floor of my civilian apartment, I do one hundred crunches. Then, on the bar hanging in my doorway, I do one hundred pull-ups. It gets my blood pumping, and my body awake and alert.
I eat half a dozen eggs, a few slices of bacon, and a bagel. I drink milk, the real shit, and then orange juice. Am I that hungry? Hell no. In order to remain in my top physical shape, though, that amount of food is necessary to fuel the man I have to be, need to be. The man I want to be.
I throw on jeans and a tee-shirt; no government-issued fatigues for me. Then I brush my teeth and consider trimming my six-day growth, but I decide against it. It’s no longer required because I have freedoms in what I wear and how I groom. Obviously it’s so we can decompress and learn to blend, which is important for missions.
When I do wear a uniform, no one is able to classify me. The only people who can are those within the unit. It doesn’t bother me. I sure as hell don’t look like a soldier, and that’s because I’m not.
I grab my gym bag, one of two bags sitting next to my door. The other is for the middle of the night phone call, packed and ready for the next mission.
When I pull up to the gate at Ft. Bragg, I see a new MP. I hand him my ID, and he looks at me skeptically.
“I need to call this in,” he tells me.
Some of us take offense to this, not me. I’m like Batman. Soon, the new MP will have the pleasure of not only knowing I exist, but that he has seen the real fucking deal.
I don’t play by the rules of a soldier anymore. I don’t wear the uniform or worry about rank. As a matter a fact, over the years, I have come to dislike the Army. I have even been reprimanded for questioning authority, though I was right—when you deploy a Ranger battalion who have no fucking clue what they are walking into, lives are lost.
“Sorry, sir,” the MP says as he hands me back my ID.
I give him a nod. “Don’t be sorry. Have a good one.”
Driving through post to my office, I see them all, the men and women who signed up to give their lives to this country and her people. I wonder how many walked in here also seeking to find their true selves.
A day doesn’t go by that I am not thankful for my father’s parents’ support in making this choice. I finally know who I, Luke Lane, am. When I am here, I am focused and self-assured. The only time I doubt myself is when I am home.
Four years ago, I was picked from the 75th Ranger Battalion to became part of the most elite fighting force in the U.S. military: A.C.E., or Army Special Operations Command. I can speak Arabic, Portuguese, and Spanish fluently. I can hit a moving target from a thousand feet away with one hundred percent accuracy. With the technology I have access to through the compliments of the US government, I can find out just about anything in order to complete a mission that saves the lives of soldiers, Americans, and non-Americans, and help protect the freedoms of all the men and women who live in my country and around the world.
Americans go to sleep at night worried about monsters under their beds. Monsters aren’t shit. Machines aren’t shit. Weapons aren’t shit. What people should fear is the man in the closet with night vision goggles, waiting for the moment they can take out a potential problem.
Though the name changes whenever the bureaucrats get a hair up their asses, A.C.E. is, and always will be, Delta Force, the primary anti-terrorism unit for the United States military. The unit’s operative is to capture or kill HVU—high-value units—dismantle terrorist cells, or serve quick and lethal justice to those who threaten the freedoms and liberties of the United States.
We are not soldiers. We are operatives. We work as a well-oiled, close-knit unit to complete an operation. We answer to the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, supported by the Army Special Operations Command.
Operatives are not only selected because of physical ability, but also mental stability after an intensive background investigation. They know everything about me. They know everything about my family, friends, and even the women I spend more than a couple of nights with.
My family doesn’t know about the unit. They never will. In fact, I still get my mail delivered to the barracks even though I live off post. They have never seen me in my unit uniform, and they have never visited, because I make damn sure to go home and visit them to keep them away.
Ava Links was discovered because Ava Links has been sending letters to me for seven years. On more than one occasion, I have had to explain that we have a physical relationship only.
The unit hounds me hard about being single. D men, for the most part, are married. It keeps them focused on what is at home, not what is readily available all over the world. I am the only single man in my unit.
I walk into our unit’s office and throw my bag in my locker.
“How was your holiday?” Kurt asks, linking his hands behind his neck and putting his boots on his desk.
Kurt, or Killshot as we call him, is the typical D man. He’s tall, over thirty, has blond hair that he shaves off to make him stand out less when we are on a mission, and is married to his high school sweetheart, who has no clue what he actually does. Like me, he is a non-commissioned officer who was recruited through the 75th.
“Good. Yours?” I ask, sitting down at my own desk and turning on my computer.
“Great. Woke up to a blow job that didn’t fucking end with the obligatory holiday finish since the boys fucked that up by barging in. Buck got a bow and arrow set, which I was a little more than excited to teach him how to use. Then Sling got all bent because his wasn’t the same. All out fucking war.” He chuckles. “You think it’s bad in the field? Have a
no finish blow job, two kids fighting, and your wife in tears because of ‘the amount of time she spent making the day perfect and it is now ruined.’ All I wanted to do was get off then shoot with the little shits.”
I smirk. “Sounds rough.”
His kids, who he affectionately calls Buck for buckshot and Sling for slingshot, look just like him: towheads and tall. They are lanky as hell, and have no filter, saying whatever the hell is on their minds. I suppose that will change as they grow up.
“How was Miss A?” he asks with a smirk. When I give him a warning glare, he laughs. “Nothing is off limits in this unit.”
Trigger walks in, laughing as he says, “That’s right. Not a damn thing.”
“How was your Christmas?” I ask, trying to turn the spotlight on him.
“Good to be back. Fucking in-laws drive me insane.” He looks at Killshot. “I did get a happy ending, though.”
“We all know that’s bullshit. Your wife doesn’t swallow, which is why you have five kids, all a year apart,” Tank chimes in as he enters.
“No, but your wife did,” Trigger ribs.
I sit and listen to them go back and forth as I check my e-mail. When I’m done, I sign out, push my chair back, and stand. “Ready?”
The day is like any other spent Stateside. We train for the next call, the call that will send us into the next unknown war zone without warning, without planning. We are Delta Force; we are always prepared.
Today’s PT starts with a two-mile run. After that, we hit the weight room. Then we head straight to the training pool for laps and underwater survival training. After the pool, we hit the mats for a little hand-to-hand combat. Today, I want Killshot.
He smirks as we circle the mat, waiting to see who strikes first.
“Didn’t get laid back home?”
“Fuck you,” I retort. He knows damn well I don’t fuck and tell, not like the rest of them do.
“Miss A finally tell your ass she was sick of fucking you?” he taunts.
Before he sees it coming, I roundhouse on him, knocking him to the ground.
