Lie Close to Me

by Cynthia Eden

  “Holy hell.” Jett rocked back on his heels. “What if she can give it all back to us? Every single thing that we’ve lost?” His head turned as he glanced toward the stairs. “She’s been with us for months, and we didn’t know what she could do. We could have gotten it all back!” What could have been anger sharpened his voice. His gaze flew back to Maddox. “You think the doctors knew?”

  Maddox swiped his hand over his jaw, feeling the rasp of the stubble there. “I’m not sure. At this point, I can’t even be certain she is restoring my memories. Maybe it was a fluke or something.”

  “One way to find out.” Jett squared his shoulders. “Let’s see what happens when she touches me.” He bounded for the stairs.

  But Maddox beat him. Maddox had always been a little faster. He put his body right in front of the staircase. “She’s unconscious.”

  Jett lifted his brows. “Bullshit. We both hear her stirring right now.”

  Maddox did hear the soft rustle of covers.

  “She’s gonna be exhausted.” Maddox didn’t move. “You know what it’s like for her when she first comes off a healing. She needs time to get her strength back.”

  Jett stepped forward, moving toe-to-toe with Maddox. “I have nothing,” Jett gritted out. “No whisper of a memory. No dreams that come to me. My life before Lazarus is nothing but darkness. And now you’re telling me…you’re telling me that woman upstairs might be able to give me my life back?”

  “I don’t know what she can do.”

  Jett shook his head. “You told me all this because you want to know. You want to test her. You want to see if I have the same reaction.”

  Yes, he did. “It could be why Lazarus wants her dead.”

  Jett’s brow furrowed.

  “We’re the government’s perfect weapons because we have no ties to our past. No families that can look for us.” He paused. “That we can look for. If our memories come back, all of that changes.”

  “Termination,” Jett whispered.

  They both heard the creak of wood from upstairs. The soft pad of footsteps.

  Jett’s gaze rose. “She’s coming to us.” His hands flexed at his sides.

  “I’m talking to her first.” Maddox locked his muscles. “Alone.”

  Tension rolled from Jett. “Fine, man, fine.” His breath was ragged. “But, shit, don’t leave me hanging too long, okay?”

  He wouldn’t. Maddox gave a jerky nod and turned to climb the stairs.

  Chapter Eight

  Luna opened the door, and she found Maddox standing right in front of her. Big, strong, angry-looking Maddox.

  Her hands went to her hips as a sigh escaped her. “Okay. What’s got you pissed now?”

  He stepped toward her. She didn’t back up. She’d woken in the bed, her body heavy with lethargy, and she’d glanced around, wondering where in the hell she was.

  Then she’d remembered the car accident. The kid…

  “You used too much energy.” His words definitely held an angry edge. “You could have died.”

  Now she shrugged. “I just would have come back.” Flippant words that she didn’t really mean.

  His gaze hardened even more. “Then you would have lost it all again. You would have lost me. You wouldn’t know that we’d been lovers. You would stare at me like I was a stranger.”

  Her heartbeat kicked up. “I didn’t die.”

  His hands closed around her shoulders.

  “And you didn’t tell me the truth.” Her own anger was there, pulsing just beneath her skin. “I thought you were being straight with me. I mean, I’m giving you everything that I have, and you’re holding back on me. That crap doesn’t seem fair.”

  A muscle jerked in his clenched jaw.

  “I healed that kid.” She’d felt him mending beneath her touch. “Is that my psychic power? I heal people? Because don’t you think that would have been something important to tell me?”

  His hold tightened. “When you heal, you take the pain. You pull it into yourself. And you take too much. You won’t stop, not if you think you can help someone. I’ve watched you kill yourself trying to save people who were too far gone. An IED took out a woman in Kuwait, and you…shit, you died in my arms because you wouldn’t give up on her. You won’t stop,” he said again, biting off the words. “I’ve had to pull you away from scenes—fighting and screaming—because you were going too far. You don’t know your limits. And I just thought, if you didn’t know, then you wouldn’t die on me again.”

  Her breath eased out. The raw emotion coming from him battered her. She’d never seen him like this.

  Or, hell, maybe she had, and Luna just didn’t remember it.

  “I’m the commander of this team. I protect the team members.” He let her go. “I was protecting you, and hell, yes, if it meant keeping you safe, I’d do it all over again.”

  A fine tension swept through her. “You’d lie to me?”

  He met her gaze without hesitation. “In an instant.”

  Her lips parted. Fine. She’d definitely put that tidbit in the must-know file.

  “Keeping you safe is my main priority. No matter what.”

  “Are you…are you lying to me now?”

  His gaze swept over her. She was still wearing the green sweater. The jeans. But someone had taken off her shoes and socks when she’d been put in the bed. Luna was willing to bet that someone had been him.

  “Maddox.” She said his name deliberately. “Are you lying to me now?”

  His stare slowly rose to her face. His eyes seemed to singe her. Such a gorgeous emerald fire. “Let’s find out.” He reached for her hand, pulling her through the doorway.

  But she jerked against his hold. “The kid—” Luna cleared her throat. “Tell me about the kid. He’s okay, right? I helped him?” Before anything else happened, she needed to know this.

  “You almost killed yourself.”

  “The boy,” she pressed, her voice thick.

  “He’s okay.”

  She could finally draw in a deep breath. Luna felt a smile curl her lips.

  “That’s why,” he rasped.

  She didn’t know what he meant.

  “That’s why I lied. Because if you could, you’d save every person you saw. You’d save them until nothing was left of yourself. I can’t let you do that. Someone has to keep you safe.”

  “And you’re that someone?” Since when was Maddox her keeper?

  “I’m in charge of—”

  “Is that all I am? One of your team members?” Now she was the one to lean closer to him. To let her body press to his. “Because when you were inside of me, I thought we were lovers.”

  His pupils expanded. His gaze was so wild and dangerous.

  She pulled from him and headed down the stairs. Her breath was coming a little fast and hard when she reached the first floor. Jett was standing near the fire, his broad back to her. “Guess the team’s back together,” she murmured.

  He turned toward her. A careful mask covered his expression.

  Luna instantly went on high alert.

  The stairs groaned behind her as Maddox slowly descended.

  “Any food around here?” Luna asked, turning her head to sweep her gaze over the place. “I’m starving.” She realized that she had no idea when she’d last eaten. Absolutely none.

  Things had been moving at super speed for her. She’d been rescued from that freaky hospital, she’d gone with Maddox, she’d fucked Maddox, she’d escaped a fire and—

  “Got food waiting in the kitchen for you,” Maddox told her. “Pineapple pizza.”

  She glanced toward him, her nose scrunching up.

  His face softened, for just a moment. “It’s your favorite, I promise.”

  Because he knew her better than she knew herself. That was…disconcerting. Without another word, she went into the kitchen. She found the box in the fridge, found some wine, too. Luna helped herself because, dammit, she figured she more than deserved some wine.
>
  She hesitated with the pizza, but then she took a bite. The flavor was so good that she almost moaned. Her eyes closed and she just—

  “Told you,” Maddox drawled. “Your favorite.”

  Her eyes opened. She swallowed. Took another bite. He’d grabbed a plate for her and put it near the counter. She hopped up on the barstool and ate in silence for a few moments. Jett grabbed a beer from the fridge and downed it. Then he crossed his arms over his chest, and his dark gaze slid from her to Maddox.

  She ate four pieces of pizza before her gnawing hunger finally eased.

  “Always like that for you,” Maddox said with an incline of his head, “after you heal someone. You burn so much energy, you have to sleep and eat to get back up to your usual speed.”

  Her fingers curled around the wine glass. He’d poured more for her, but she hadn’t seen him drink any. “It’s…it makes me feel weird, that you know more about me than I know about myself.”

  Jett gave a low laugh. “Maddox is an expert on all things Luna.”

  Maddox cut him a hard glare. “Jett.” A definite warning edge.

  Jett lifted up his hands. “Sorry. I just meant, he learns everything he can about his team members. Part of the job when you’re the leader.”

  And there they were…back to her being part of the team. She didn’t think Maddox had the same relationship with the rest of the team members that he had with her. “Who else is on the team?”

  “We’re core,” Jett said, answering before Maddox could. “Then there’s Andreas. The Greek is damn good at surveillance and infiltration. Josie’s on the team sometimes, former sharpshooter, and—hell, the names don’t mean a damn thing, do they? Our team is fluid. Can be just the three of us, can be as many as seven. Depends on the job we do.”

  “What sort of jobs do we, uh, take?”

  “The kind that no one else can handle.” Maddox’s gaze was unwavering.

  “The kind that normal folks don’t expect to come back from,” Jett added grimly. “And that’s why they send in a team who can rise from the dead.”

  A shiver slid over her. “Don’t think I’ll ever get used to that part.” She took a long sip of wine. Put the glass down. Flattened her hands on the bar top. “And I volunteered for this? To give up everything I’d had before? To take this new life?”

  “That’s what the lab coats say.” Jett lifted one shoulder. “Course, not like we remember volunteering.” He stalked closer to her. “Not like any of us can remember anything before we were given the Lazarus serum.”

  The tension in the kitchen had shot up. She glanced from Jett to Maddox, wondering about what was happening. She felt rather like prey that had just been caught between two dangerous hunters. She pushed away her plate. “What’s happening?”

  “We need to do a little…experiment,” Jett explained, pausing only a bit.

  She jumped to her feet. “I’m not really in the mood to be someone’s experiment.”

  Maddox caught her hand. His fingers slid along her inner wrist, right over her racing pulse. “No one is going to hurt you, Luna. I promise.” He rose, his body brushing against her. His warmth seemed to slide over her. “Something has happened to me—twice—when we touch.” Once more, his fingers trailed up near her pulse. “I’ve had flashes. Memories.”

  She backed up a step. “What?”

  “Never happened before,” he murmured. “But then, I don’t think you were trying to heal me before.”

  “I haven’t tried to heal you at all!”

  He raised her hand to his chest. “I don’t think you realized what you were doing. Your hands heat up when you heal, and I could feel the heat against me.”

  “They…they heated when I was touching the little boy.” Her hands had actually felt as if they were on fire.

  Maddox nodded. “Right. You focus your energy, and you work your magic, baby.”

  Baby.

  Jett cleared his throat. “We want to see if you can do that on me.”

  Her head whipped toward him.

  “We want to see if I have a flash of my past, too. Maddox there, he thinks you might be healing our brains, restoring the memories. If you are…” A small shrug. “That fucking changes the game.”

  She didn’t think she was playing a game.

  “Rest more first,” Maddox said, his words definitely an order. “You always need more recovery time after a healing. And with what you did for that boy—”

  “I feel fine.” She did. She’d eaten. She’d slept—Luna had no idea how long she’d slept. But she wasn’t tired, and her mind was spinning. “If I’ve worked with you both before, wouldn’t you have known I could do this? I mean—” Hell, she wasn’t even sure what she meant.

  “You healed me when I took two bullets to the chest once,” Maddox told her quietly. “If I’d died on that field, the civilians we were there to rescue wouldn’t have gotten free. You saved me, you healed my body, but I didn’t have any memories come back to me.” He seemed to consider the matter. “Maybe you were just working on the physical wounds you saw. Or maybe your power has gotten stronger. I know that I can focus my energy more, that I can take down more targets than I used to be able to handle in the early days.”

  “Or maybe I can’t restore memories.” A laugh escaped her. One that felt a little wild. “I mean, wouldn’t I heal myself if I could? I’m the one who loses her memory with every rising!”

  Maddox and Jett shared a long, silent look.

  “Screw it,” Luna muttered. There was one way to settle this. She surged toward Jett. Put her hands on either side of his head. Focused with all of her energy. If it was really that easy, if she just had to call up that heat that she’d used before on the boy…

  I can do this.

  She felt her hands begin to tingle. The heat spread slowly from her wrist down to her fingertips. Her head tipped back as she peered up at Jett’s eyes. She didn’t see any change of expression on his face, and she could feel Maddox easing closer behind her.

  The moments ticked by. “Anything?” Luna whispered. This wasn’t going to work. Maddox was wrong.

  But then something happened. Jett stiffened beneath her hands, and his gaze seemed to go blank. The same exact way that Maddox’s had changed when she’d touched him in the motel room. Jett’s lips parted and a hard groan escaped him.

  “Jett?” Luna didn’t move her hands away from him. She could feel her touch heating more, and a shudder slid over her body. She trembled.

  “Enough.” Maddox yanked her back.

  Jett closed his eyes. His head sagged forward.

  “Did I hurt you?” Luna cried, worried. He’d paled, and a light film of sweat covered his body.

  As she watched, Jett’s hand flew out and grabbed hold of the nearby counter. “I saw…my mother.”

  Luna’s heart pounded hard in her chest.

  “She was in a hospital bed, dying. Tubes were connected to her, and she was holding my hand.” His head whipped back. He stared at her with a gaze full of grief. “She said she was proud of me.”

  Her own chest ached because there was so much pain in his voice.

  “Then the machines stopped beeping. She died, and I was holding her hand.” He gave a hard shake of his head. “What in the fuck? Why did you show me something so painful?”

  Maddox pushed Luna behind his body. “You saw the memory.”

  “I fucking felt it.” Jett’s words were guttural. “I felt my mother dying again. Shit, shit. You don’t know what loss is. Don’t know…then it comes at you. It rips you open.” His breath heaved in and out. “I need to leave. Got to get some freaking air.” He shouldered past Maddox. Made a beeline for the door. He didn’t look at Luna, and she just stood there, with her hands wrapped around her stomach.

  “I’m sorry.” The low words broke from her.

  Jett’s shoulders stiffened, and he finally glanced her way. “She was proud of me,” he mumbled. “Proud.” Then he was gone. Jett rushed out of the cabin
and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Luna didn’t move. “I hurt him.” Her stare was on the floor.

  “No, baby, you just gave him a damn amazing gift.” He moved toward her with his slow, gliding stride. His hand slid under her chin, tipping back her head so that she had to meet his gaze. “When he calms down, Jett will realize that.”

  Luna wasn’t so sure. She’d just forced him to see one of the worst moments of his life. His mother…

  “We lost ourselves when we joined Lazarus. You can give us our past back. Luna, that is huge. A game-changer.” His touch was so gentle.

  Another shiver slid over her. “I didn’t shake like this when I touched you in the motel.”

  He scooped her into his arms. Held her against his chest. “That’s because you hadn’t just healed a kid who’d been at death’s door. I knew you needed more time before you went at Jett.” He was carrying her back through the cabin. Holding her while he climbed up the stairs. She put her head against his chest because she did feel weary. Bone deep. Soul deep.

  Soon they were back in the bedroom. He put her on the mattress, eased her down like she was breakable.

  But she wasn’t, right? Wasn’t that the point of Lazarus? He started to rise, but her hand flew out, and she grabbed his wrist. “The memories I made you see…” Luna cleared her throat. “Were they bad, like Jett’s?”

  He stared back at her. “I saw my death.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’m so sorry!”

  He looked away. “You don’t ever have any flashes of your life?”

  “I don’t even have flashes of last week.”

  His gaze shot back to her. Luna tried to smile at him. “I was…attempting to lighten the mood.”

  “You don’t remember last week.”

  No. Her smile vanished as she felt very foolish. “You do, though.” They were sitting on the bed together. His warmth was reaching out to her. “Tell me what happened last week.”

  Maddox swallowed. “We were training at the Lazarus facility. Doing our normal exercises. Pushing our limits.”

  “What does the facility look like?”

  “It’s a huge place. State of the art. Only the best for Uncle Sam.”