Yet with one soft touch, McKenna had tapped into that mountain of rage, and he wasn’t so, so angry anymore. Not calm yet. But manageable.
Lifting that slender hand to his mouth, he kissed her knuckles. No words. Just a kiss. If he lived to be a tired old man, which wasn’t likely in his chosen profession, he’d never stop needing the taste of her on his lips and the gentle touch of her fingers.
Before long, they were inside his apartment. Not in bed. Not naked. Instead, she’d slid out of her shoes and sat in the center of his couch, her knees curled up and waiting for him to join her.
Beau left his shoes at the front door alongside hers and nestled in behind her. He needed McKenna inside his arms for this next revelation. Yeah. He was a sucker for the downtrodden, the innocent and the helpless. Always had been. Always would be. It was time she knew why.
“I hope you know how much I love you,” she murmured as she ducked her head and kissed his hand.
“I don’t understand why. I’m not a good guy,” he began softly.
“Yes, you—”
“Shush. Hear me out.” Beau held on tight with his nose in the back of her neck, breathing in the feminine scent of her skin as he began at the beginning. He’d never told anyone. He’d nearly told Maverick. He needed to tell McKenna. “I’m sorry if it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s true. I’m not who you think I am. I’ve done things to survive that I’m not proud of.”
She nestled her back to his front. “I know better but go on. Tell me your worst.”
Jesus, he loved this feisty woman. “I hit the streets when I was just a kid, but there’s more.” The day it all began rolled over him like a fiery sandstorm in Iraq. “I had a sister. AJ, short for Almond Joy.”
“Your parents named her after a candy bar?”
He nodded. “Druggies’ brains don’t work like yours and mine. Don’t even know if Fidget was my mom’s real name, but it fit her. Especially when she needed to score. Of course, now I know she wasn’t my real mom. Not that it matters anymore, but, yeah. Almond Joy. I didn’t know then, but Bass and Fidget Jennings stole me. Guess Fidget wanted a baby, so Bass probably grabbed the first one he came across. Lucky me.”
McKenna’s fingers curled around his wrists, careful of his bandaged left hand as she crossed them over her chest.
Beau blew out a belly full of air. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure he hated me on sight. Never went a day without getting slapped or the shit kicked out of me, spat on, or yelled at by that asshole. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
McKenna growled. “Stop apologizing. He was an asshole. Was Fidget as cruel?”
“Fidget? Nah. She was the most passive person in the world. Just took whatever Bass doled out.”
“She never protected you?”
“She never stood a chance,” Beau murmured. “Fidget was as powerless as me and AJ. Drugs. That’s all she cared about. She let him do whatever he wanted as long as he hooked her up.”
McKenna shook her head, her body tense against his, and Beau couldn’t help himself. He kissed her neck and held her, so damned thankful for her anger at his lying parents. Yeah, they failed miserably in the child-rearing department, but he’d never hated Fidget the way he did Bass. Fidget didn’t have a mean bone in her body. But Bass was a stone-cold killer.
“Everything changed when Fidget came home with AJ.” That was the day Beau stopped caring about the abuse or the name-calling. AJ was the one and only oasis in the shit storm called his life. Tiny and perfect, she’d needed him then as much as he’d needed her. “I used to stand guard over her cardboard box baby bed—”
McKenna twisted to glare at him, her eyes wide and her dander up. “A cardboard box! Really?”
“Shhhhh. My story. Just listen. Then you can decide if you want to stay. But yeah, I slept under the kitchen table. When she was tiny, she slept in her box on the table.” Absentmindedly, he scratched his fingers through his hair, remembering the itch of lice and ringworm. “They didn’t want her to get bit, so they kept her off the floor. There’s fleas and bugs and rats in Vegas. But me—” I was fair game.
“Jesus,” McKenna hissed, her rage an exquisite thing of beauty to watch unfold. The green in her eyes flashed with an internal fire, and her lips pinched. Even her grip on his arms clenched tighter. It brought tears to his eyes. McKenna would’ve been such a good mom for AJ.
“Anyway, I used to stand guard over her box, you know, not because they’d ever hurt her, but because I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I think I fell in love with AJ at first sight. Everything about her was tiny and perfect. Her little fingernails. Her lips. Her eyebrows. You could barely see her lashes because her hair was light gold, but even they were perfect. Curled like tiny butterfly wings. She was like a miracle, you know, sent from heaven to me.” So clean. So pink. So pretty. So mine.
“Jesus knows I loved her,” he told McKenna, his nose still in her hair. “She was skinny and blonde, no more than a puff of air in one of those receiving blankets she came home in. She wrinkled her nose when she slept. She fussed. The way she passed gas with an adorable grunt always made me smile. I was proud of her, you know? She was my own Christmas angel. The one who genuinely smiled at me just because I was there.”
McKenna had gone still in his arms, holding her breath.
“Anyway…” He closed his eyes, struggling to swallow. “She was already sick when they brought her home. I didn’t know it then, but she’d been born addicted to the crap Fidget used. AJ screamed and cried for months. That made Bass mad enough to stay away, not like we missed him. But he started drinking more. Always had a bottle of some rotgut within reach. He got meaner. Accused me of pinching his little girl to make her cry. Told me to stay clear of her.”
His little girl. But never my little boy. Why that still hurt, Beau would never understand, but it did. Then and now.
“Did you?” McKenna asked. “Stay away from AJ?”
“No, but I got sneakier. Used to hide in the alley and wait until he left. Then I’d circle the house to make sure he was really gone before I went back inside.” Beau ran his good hand over his head. “Used to rock that stupid cardboard box for hours until she wore herself out crying.”
“Where was Fidget during all this? Didn’t she care for her?”
“Not sure she could by then.”
“So who changed AJ’s diapers and fed her and—? You did that, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. It was no big deal. “Someone had to.”
“Oh, Beau,” McKenna breathed.
Yes, most days he was the one to change AJ’s diaper and keep her clean. So what? He did her laundry too, because he loved AJ more than he loved himself. That was what big brothers did. He’d fixed plenty of baby bottles over her short two years of life, too. The little thing had to eat, and Fidget was usually oblivious.
“Then one day she opened her pretty blue eyes and stopped crying. Just like that, the sun came out.” Beau could still feel that tiny little angel’s head under his chin when her wretched sobs had turned into soft murmurs, like she knew she was safe with her big brother. In that instant, she’d made all the misery and every last beating bearable. Hell, he’d endure them and more for just one more day with her.
“Anyway…” He cleared his throat. “Bass sent me for more candles. Told me to bring back a propane tank if I could steal one. I wasn’t there when it happened. Only know they were screaming at each other when I got home. Thought Bass was mad because I didn’t get a tank like he told me to, but then...” Once again bile filled his gut, and Beau didn’t want to go on.
‘Do you know what you did?’
‘This is your fault, you bitch! Not mine! You gave it to her!’
‘I didn’t mean to. I hate you!’
‘Never should’ve believed a word outta your lying mouth! You’re no mother! You’re nothing but a sack-of-shit whore!’
Jesus, they hadn’t even picked AJ up to comfort her. They d
idn’t even try to keep her breathing. Just hurled ugly accusations and promised to kill each other.
And so on...
And so on…
Until it was too late.
“I think Fidget put the wrong powder in AJ’s baby bottle,” Beau finally whispered. “That’s all that made sense. She didn’t mean it, just finally decided to get out of bed and take care of her daughter, and… Yeah. She gave my little sister heroin. Once I cleared the front door, I dropped the bag and ran to AJ, but by then she was barely breathing. Jerking, you know. Drooling.” He stretched his fingers and splayed them, remembering how AJ had wrapped her entire, sweaty little hand around his index finger, her blue eyes begging him to save her. Whimpering. Her tiny chest caving in more and more with every seizure until…
Beau shook his head, not sure why he’d started this horrendous trip down memory lane. McKenna didn’t need to hear this godawful story, and he didn’t need to relive it. He knew damned well how it ended.
Yet McKenna nestled in closer, pressed her back flat against him while she curled his hands once more around her. Tighter. Not pushing away. Just absorbing his information overload. “Don’t stop now,” she whispered.
Beau nodded, the hell kicked out of him all over again. “So yeah.” He swallowed hard, wishing he could get his heart to climb back down his throat where it belonged. “Bass grabs me up and slams me up against the doorjamb in the kitchen. Starts screaming it was my fault. That I did it. That he never should’ve let me in. That I wasn’t his kid. Like I didn’t already know.”
No fuckin’ shit. By then, Beau had figured that truth out all by himself. Else why was his skin so much darker than AJ’s? Than Bass’s and Fidget’s? Why was his hair black, while theirs was blond? Why’d his old man slap him around and call him so many mean names Beau couldn’t bear to remember even today? Yeah. A kid in that house grew up with more questions than answers. And a helluva lot more scars.
Beau always knew he didn’t belong in that house. Never had. He hadn’t even belonged in his mostly Hispanic neighborhood, which hadn’t seemed right or fair. Everyone there was poor, yet even the kids he looked like had no use for the shithead son of Bass Jennings. It didn’t help that more than a few of their mothers worked for his old man. That he slapped them around as regularly as he did Beau. But never AJ. That was the one and only thing Bass Jennings ever did right. Like Fidget and Beau, he’d loved sweet little Almond Joy. An angel named after a candy bar.
“Then what happened?” McKenna asked as she turned sideways on his lap.
“Then he dragged off his belt and cursed the day I was born. After he whipped me, he dragged me over to the kitchen table. He lit the candles I brought home. Four of them.” Beau tried to joke it off. “Glad I didn’t steal more.”
McKenna gasped, her shoulders lifted, cringing. “He tortured you?” Her green eyes begged Beau not to confirm that awful truth.
Beau didn’t want her pity, but McKenna needed to stay with him because she knew and wanted him, not because she pitied him.
Her palms cupped his chin, her fingers holding his head, forcing him to look at her. “Deep breaths,” she told him in her doctor-voice. “Focus on me, Beau. Breathe, baby, just breathe.” Smart woman. She’d used his words. “We’re here in your immaculate apartment, which I have to tell you, is quite an amazing accomplishment considering your gender, your job, and your childhood.”
“I like white,” he said simply, fighting the urge to break down like a sissy jarhead. But looking into her clear, green eyes, it was hard to remember the reject he was. There was no doubt glimmering there, not an iota of disbelief. Only trust. Only love.
His diaphragm relaxed enough to finally draw in a complete breath. “Someone must’ve called 9-1-1 because all at once, the police showed up. The paramedics, too. All the neighbors were standing on the street. He threw me out the back door and into the alley behind the house before he let anyone come in, though. Told me to start running, that he’d make sure everyone knew I killed AJ. Said it wouldn’t matter what I said. Once he talked to the cops, he’d make sure they hunted me down. That if they didn’t find me, he’d kill me if he ever saw me again.”
“So you ran?”
“I had to. Didn’t stop until I joined the Army. Not sure I’ve stopped yet.” Not sure I can.
“Where is this asshole?” McKenna demanded sharply. “Didn’t Alex say Bass Jennings is in prison? We need to pay that son-of-a-bitch a visit!”
Jesus, just when Beau thought he couldn’t love this woman more, he realized that he could. “Doesn’t matter. I know the truth now. Alex gave me a copy of his findings. Can you believe he had me investigated?” The man thoroughly amazed Beau. Such an ass. Such a jarhead. Such a damned good—friend.
“According to the Vegas ME, Fidget died the same night AJ did, both from heroin overdoses. Either Bass made her shoot up or she did it to kill herself. No one will ever know for sure, but that’s how I think it went down. Fidget was tired of living anyway. I know I was.”
“No,” McKenna cried, her eyes swimming. “Don’t ever say that. Ever! My mother killed herself and—”
He bumped his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant. But life was so damned hard. You just don’t know.”
“I wish I’d known you then,” she said, her hand gently cupping his cheek. “Me and Dad would’ve taken you in and fed you and loved you and—”
He closed his eyes at the thought of having had another little blonde girl in his life during those dark days. Maybe he’d be someone else now if he’d been so fortunate.
McKenna inclined her head to his. “I’m never leaving you, Beau Villanueva,” she said, using her very stern doctor voice this time. “News flash. As your doctor, I prescribe one McKenna Fitzgerald to be taken at bedtime for the next ten days. Another one every morning.”
“Just ten?” The next question tumbled off his treacherous lips. “How about the rest of your life?” He could almost hear Maverick’s voice in the back of his head saying, ‘Way to go, dumbass.’
McKenna’s head canted, and all that lush, gold hair tumbled over Beau’s arm like his own private waterfall. “Are you asking me what I think you are?”
He nodded. “I can’t breathe without you, McKenna, and I don’t want to. I know this isn’t Belize, but I’ll take you there, and I’ll dance under the stars with you, and I’ll do anything to make you happy. Only… Take a chance on me? Marry me?”
She answered the same way sweet little AJ did. With one arm hooked over his neck and her ear pressed against his heart, she simply sighed and replied, “Yes.”
Beau tipped her chin up and covered her mouth with his as he swallowed her kindness to hide his tears. There was still more to tell, but it could wait. He had a woman to love, and he needed her more than anything. Even more than his ghosts.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Alex drove to Massachusetts alone, not wanting to burden Kelsey with yet another drama for which there was no sure conclusion. He’d asked another agent to join him, but Seth McCray hadn’t gotten in from Cuba yet. He’d promised to hook up with Alex if his connections fell as scheduled. But he’d run into weather delays at his layover in Florida, and Alex wasn’t sure he’d make it. That was life for you. Shit happened.
With the remaining Lynch sisters in jail and Catalina—for now—out of the country, things had calmed down in Virginia. The TEAM was back to business as usual, and most agents were once again on covert ops. Maverick and Beau were still on extended leave. Mother too. She and Justice were somewhere in the Pacific. The TEAM wives were back to their regularly scheduled programs, which as far as Kelsey was concerned revolved around Lexie.
At the moment, Alex sat across from a man he barely recognized: Aaron Pope. Gone was the good-looking former NBA star with the cocky buzzcut, lightning reflexes, and quick smile. In his stead, a broken, twitchy man sat at the kitchen table between them, thumping his thigh with what remaine
d of his left hand, though he probably didn’t realize what he was doing.
Gaunt and too thin for his tall, lanky frame, Aaron was under house arrest at his parents’ home in Boston. He stood to go to prison for his crimes, and he knew it. He’d been formally charged and was complicit in more than a few of Catalina Montego’s vicious assaults on young military men along the East Coast. Dressed in a simple white t-shirt that accentuated his skeletal frame, Aaron had yet to make eye contact that lasted more than a fleeting tenth of a second. Had yet to acknowledge Alex. But this meeting had to happen. For both their sakes.
Instead of his normal business suit, Alex came to this meeting in the accepted casual wear of his crew, jeans and The TEAM’s black polo. But after all the years he’d spent searching for Aaron, Alex had no idea what to say. The man across from him was a complete stranger.
So he began at the beginning. “Do you remember me?”
Aaron’s head bobbed, but as he had all along, he avoided eye contact. The coward. “Yeah. You’re Alex. Thought you were my buddy? My friend?”
“I was. I am.” Look at me, damn you.
Aaron sneered, his gaze still flitting everywhere but to Alex. “Then where you been all this time, huh?”
“Looking for you,” Alex answered evenly as he reached into the briefcase at his feet and tugged out the stack of file folders. Each thicker than the last, he’d stuffed these files with one investigative research after another and dozens of dead-end leads. Sliding them across the table, he said, “Been looking for years.”
Aaron’s Adam’s apple bobbed, a sharp blade in his too thin neck as he fingered the papers that spilled out of the folders. The man resembled Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Except Aaron was much thinner than Irving’s gangly hero, and all four fingers on his left hand had been reduced to one-knuckle stumps.
Beau (In the Company of Snipers Book 18) Page 40
