Whatever else, however much had changed between us, this hadn’t.
Matt leaned forward, his hips arching toward me, his head bowing down to the curve of my neck. I felt his breath against my skin and then the scrape of his teeth. A shiver slid down my spine, my breasts aching for his touch, my body coming alive as I grew wetter.
Just pretend. Just for a moment. Pretend nothing changed. Pretend he never left. Pretend you can go backwards.
His palm cupped my breast, his thumb rubbing over my nipple through my thin tank top, back and forth, the motion evoking a sigh from my lips.
“Tell me to stop touching you,” he whispered against my skin.
I slipped a hand inside his boxers, his erection brushing against my palm, a hiss escaping his mouth as his fingers dipped under the fabric of my shirt. I arched into his touch like a cat, fisting his cock as his hand teased my breast, tormenting my nipple.
His head moved up, his lips inches from mine.
What would it feel like to kiss him again? Would it be the same as it was between us or had that changed, too?
“Come to bed with me,” I whispered.
I didn’t care if this was a mistake, didn’t care if I’d regret it in the morning. I wanted him now. Needed him now. The rest didn’t matter. I’d loved him my entire life, had thought I’d lost him, and now he was here. What else was there?
His hand froze.
No.
Matt released me, slipping out of my grasp, the distance between us as jarring as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me.
His mouth tightened, pain etched on his face. His chest heaved as though he were having trouble catching his breath. “I can’t do this.”
“Why?” I ground out, my body protesting the loss of his touch, my heart hating the distance between us.
He ran a hand through his hair, his gaze hooded. “I’m not back. Tonight—me being here—was an accident. Nothing has changed. It’s not safe for me to be back in D.C. with you.”
“Is there someone else in your life?” I asked, the possibility of it skewering me.
“What? No.”
Relief flooded me.
“Then why?”
“I’ll stay until we can’t get you out of this. Stay until I know you’re safe. But I can’t stay past that. I’m not going to be responsible for something happening to you. I have a target on my back, and I don’t want it on yours, too.”
“I love you.”
As soon as I said it, I regretted it. The words just escaped, as natural as breathing, but complicating everything.
I saw the flash of pain in his eyes before he masked it behind the wall he’d built between us.
“No, you don’t. You love the boy who died in Afghanistan. You don’t know me. Don’t know the things I’ve done. I’m not the boy you knew and I’ll never be him again. I’m a killer and I’m caught up in something that will get you killed.
“There’s no love inside me. No softness. I destroyed it so that I could do what I had to in order to stay alive. I watched my friends die around me. I laid in a pile of their dead bodies for hours, not sure if I would live or die, and the only thing that kept me going, the only thing that kept me sane, was imagining you safe. I’m not going to risk your life. I can’t. I shouldn’t have touched you tonight. I’m sorry for that. I fucked up, but it won’t happen again.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. “Why did you come back tonight? Why were you watching me? Tell me you don’t still love me. Tell me that there isn’t still something between us.”
His tone gentled, the softness in his eyes made worse by the fact that for the first time all night, he gave me back a piece of the boy I’d loved. And then his words tore that piece away.
“I don’t have anything left to give. We have a history and I’ll always want to know that you’re safe. I’ll watch your back, but there’s nothing else inside of me. You need to let me go.”
My heart cracked open and spilled out into the living room until it lay at his feet. Without a word, I turned and went into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.
I cried myself to sleep.
Chapter Four
Kate Reynolds is in the news again …
—Capital Confessions blog
Matt
It started the same way it always did. I was awake, lying in a grave of sand. I struggled to move, my body sluggish, my limbs weak. A burning pain filled my stomach, my chest. I tried to breathe, but my lungs were full of sludge—some kind of sticky liquid and the sand that shrouded me now. I needed to move. Needed to get up. I needed to move or else I’d die here.
The pain in my stomach grew worse. Jesus, it fucking hurt. I reached down, grasping my side, trying to figure out where the pain came from. When I looked down, blood engulfed me.
Something landed next to me with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust and dirt. The urge to cough was undeniable, but some instinct inside me resisted.
They can’t know I’m alive.
Another thud, this time something landing on my lower body. Then another one, closer to my face. I turned my neck an inch, the eyes of my buddy Jason staring back at me, his face covered in blood and dirt.
Dead.
Then another body. And another. A scream built inside me, desperate to escape. I wanted to move, to claw my way out of the grave filled with my friends’ bodies, but they kept falling, until all I could see and smell was death.
And then the blackness took over.
I bolted upright, my chest heaving, a thin layer of sweat covering my body. My hand gripped my gun, my knuckles white. My gaze darted around the room, taking in my surroundings, ready for whatever horror awaited me. Slowly, reality sunk in.
I was on the couch in Kate’s living room. I wasn’t in Afghanistan. I’d lived.
I repeated the words over and over again, my elbows propped on my knees while I dragged in air, the fucking burn in my chest nearly unbearable.
I’d had the dreams ever since the attack—not regularly, but often enough that I should have been used to them. Still, it didn’t make them any easier to deal with; I’d never forget the horror of being buried alive in a grave filled with my friends’ bodies, surrounded by guys whose kids and wives I’d seen pictures of, who I’d shared a beer with.
It fucked with your head to go from the memory of talking about going home and what you’d do when you finally got out of the desert to knowing they’d never get the chance to throw a football with their kids, never throw back a beer and watch a game on TV.
“Are you okay?”
I whirled around at the sound of the voice that had haunted my dreams nearly as much as that horrible day in Afghanistan.
Kate stood over the threshold of her bedroom, wearing the cotton shorts and thin tank top from last night. She looked like she’d just woken up, her eyes sleepy, her shoulder-length blonde hair messy in a way that tugged at my heart. I’d seen her like this so many times that the urge to take her into my arms and press my mouth to hers was as familiar as breathing. I dug deep and pushed it back.
“Did I wake you up?”
Sometimes the dreams came with screams. The few times I’d spent the night with a woman in the years after I’d left Afghanistan, I’d freaked them out with the thrashing and the noises I made. The souvenirs from my trip to hell were determined to stick whether I wanted them or not.
“No. I couldn’t sleep.”
I nodded, not sure what to say next, at a loss as to how to be casual with someone who still held my heart. I could see the struggle in her, too. After everything she’d been through, I was surprised she hadn’t totally lost it.
Balls of steel.
I grabbed my shirt from the floor, pulling it over my head. My pants came next. I waited to see if she’d walk away, but she didn’t. The unguarded pieces of her that I’d seen last night were gone; today she was a closed book, covering how she really felt with a hint of bravado. She looked at me with a nonplussed expression, as tho
ugh daring me to try to make her uncomfortable. The Kate I’d grown up with had always been fearless—the first one to climb the tree, the last one to give up when everyone else was ready to throw in the towel. She’d been tough as shit; given the way she’d defended herself last night, some things hadn’t changed.
“Do you want coffee?” she asked.
“Please.”
She wasn’t the only one who’d struggled to sleep. I’d tossed and turned all night, fighting the urge to climb into bed with her and pick up where we’d left off. I’d meant what I said earlier, though. I didn’t want to drag her into my shit, didn’t want to risk the danger that had me constantly looking over my shoulder affecting her, too.I followed Kate into the kitchen, the view in front of me a punch to the gut. She’d always been tiny and curvy, hit every single check mark for me. Her ass swayed in her hot little shorts and it took all of my willpower to keep from pulling her hair to the side and pressing my mouth to her nape, kissing the spot that had always been a turn-on for her—and me.
Just the memory of having Kate in my arms again was enough to get my cock hard.
Do not make this more complicated than it already is. Don’t fuck this up more than you already have.
I’d told myself that it didn’t hurt to keep an eye on her throughout the years, had been unable to resist checking to make sure she was safe. I still kept tabs on the D.C. news, had seen the mentions in Capital Confessions, but I’d never imagined she was tied up in the blog or in the mess of what had happened to me. Never imagined she’d end up in the situation she’d found herself in last night.
I hated the thought of her in danger, hated that I’d put her there. Last night I’d seen the guy go into her building, and something about it, some instinct long since forged to keep me alive when people wanted me dead, had made me follow. When I’d seen him break into her apartment, I hadn’t thought about what would happen if I crashed back into her life; all I’d cared about was keeping her safe.
But now my plans were shot to hell.
“We need to talk about last night.”
Kate’s gaze met mine over the coffeepot, her chin jerking, eyes flashing. Challenging me.
“Which part?”
“The part where someone broke into your apartment.”
“You don’t want to talk about the other part?”
There it was.
I struggled to keep my voice even, to pretend like the time apart hadn’t made me crave her even more, as though I hadn’t been wandering the desert for forty days and had just stumbled upon an oasis.
“I told you last night, I’m not back for good. I want to see you through whatever this is and keep you safe, and then I’m gone.”
“Why?”
“I died in Afghanistan. I need to stay that way.”
“You’re hiding.”
“I’m staying alive,” I countered, not sure which was the truth anymore. Did it count as living if you still breathed, but felt dead inside?
“Then why do you have to play dead to do it?”
Because I worried that the target on my back would spread to the people I loved, would hurt her. I’d watched as my entire unit was slaughtered; staying alive felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford and playing dead was all I had. And in a way, I had died. Matt Ryan didn’t exist anymore. I didn’t want her to see who taken his place.
“What do you want from me?” I asked, suddenly feeling so fucking tired.
“I don’t know.” She played with the coffeepot for a moment, her eyes hidden. When she spoke again, her voice shook. “You were dead, and now you’re not. I don’t know where that leaves us. It’s been over three years. In some ways, it feels like yesterday. In other ways, it feels like a lifetime has passed. I know it sounds weird because you didn’t really die, but your death—thinking you’d died—changed something in me. I’m not the girl you knew and loved. And I don’t think you’re the boy I loved.”
She was right. I wasn’t. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be him. My life was no longer polo matches and playing soccer, my biggest worry where I’d take Kate on our dates. That life had begun slipping away as soon as I’d enlisted in the military, but now it felt like someone else’s life. I’d lived in places and done things Kate couldn’t even imagine. I’d killed, and there was no question that I’d kill again to protect the people I cared about. To protect her.
But whatever version of me existed now still felt the same pull toward her that I’d always felt. She was the one constant in this never-ending purgatory where I was stuck somewhere between life and death, a walking ghost.
I gave her the truth as though she were a seasoned interrogator who’d broken me down.
“I just want to keep you safe. I don’t know what I have besides that. I don’t want to hurt you; I don’t want to make you promises I can’t keep. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Afghanistan fucked me up. A lot. In ways you’ll probably never understand. I have dreams. Nightmares, really. All the fucking time.”
I didn’t add the rest—that sometimes crowds freaked me out—didn’t talk about the panic attacks I’d fought off for the past few years, or the constant need to look over my shoulder, the feeling that someone was out to get me, inescapable.
Kate reached out, grabbing my hand—her palm so tiny inside of mine—linking our fingers before I even had a chance to speak. She squeezed, her fingers tightening the noose around my heart that bound me to her.
“We’ve been friends our entire lives. Best friends. I’ll always love you, even if we’re not together like that, even if you need time to figure things out. No matter what, you’ve always been my family, and nothing can change that or take it away.”
Just as she’d been mine. Neither one of us had grown up particularly close to our families. She’d had Blair, but their personalities were different enough that even though they loved each other, they hadn’t spent a lot of time together. We’d been inseparable. And she was right—I didn’t know where we stood as a couple—it felt like we were so far apart after everything that had happened, but I would always love her. I’d die for her.
“Let’s just try being friends together first, okay?” Kate continued, her brown eyes cast down so I couldn’t read the emotions lingering there. “We don’t have to have all the answers now. You’re right; we just need to get through this.”
I hadn’t had friends in nearly four years. Hadn’t had anyone who cared about me. And Kate was so far from just anyone. She had always been the best part of my life, and I’d lived in the dark for so long that it was impossible to deny how badly I just wanted a piece of normal.
“Okay, deal.”
Kate
In the cold light of day, all of the changes in Matt became more evident. He looked both larger and smaller than I remembered, as though the weight of all he’d survived had shrunk him and stolen the parts of him that had always seemed larger-than-life, even as his physical appearance had grown.
There were glimmers of Matt, moments that felt so familiar I ached inside, but in a lot of ways he still felt like a stranger. We’d been engaged until I’d found out that he died, and then I’d been in this weird limbo of feeling like a widow at eighteen without the official title. And now I was just strangely single again, even though my “fiancé” stood in front of me.
Friends seemed like a safe place to start.
I released his hand, the feel of his palm against mine tugging at my heart, and went back to making coffee, needing something to distract me.
“Are you going to go check the safe-deposit box?” he asked, switching from heartbreak to business with an ease I envied.
“Yeah, I’ll grab the papers and bring them back here. I should probably get a safe or something. Or a better hiding place, at least.” I hesitated. “I thought about it last night, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get the police involved.”
I wasn’t eager to advertise the fact that I’d had classified documents in my possession, which I s
hould never have had in the first place—that would likely get me in some deep shit at work. Not to mention, protecting Matt’s privacy and safety seemed paramount right now. Besides, a police report would only get my name in the press and the fewer people who knew I was tied to this investigation, the better.
And still—someone had sent this guy after me. Someone knew I had the documents. Until now, I’d thought that the only person who knew about them was whoever sent them to me. But it didn’t make sense that they would give them to me and then hire someone to steal them back.
Matt nodded. “I agree. Considering the information in those papers—and the amount of influence our fathers wield in this town—I’m not sure involving the police would really be in our best interest.”
“So what’s next?”
He ran his hand through his hair again and something fluttered in my chest. “I don’t know. I want to see what’s in those files. I’ll make a few calls to some contacts in Afghanistan, guys who knew me after I ‘died’, guys who are tapped into the tribal networks. Then we figure out what play we need to make to keep you safe.”
“And you?” I poured coffee in a mug for him and set it on the countertop.
“I can take care of myself.”
Maybe he could; he’d been keeping himself physically alive all of these years. But the rest of it? He looked dead on his feet, and I remembered his mention of the nightmares that had plagued him. When was the last time he’d gotten a decent night of sleep?
I didn’t know a lot about the military, but I lived in D.C., and military issues were frequently at the forefront here. It was pretty clear that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which wasn’t surprising given all he’d been through. He hadn’t woken me up, but I had woken up before him, and I’d stood in the doorway and seen his body jerk and twist, had been one step away from waking him when he’d jolted awake.
I set my mug down, walking toward him, figuring this was the first step to becoming friends. I couldn’t chase away his demons or slay the dragon, but I could give him this.
Falling For Danger Page 5
