Unbreakable s8-2

by Stephanie Tyler

  Gunner. Fuck. He’d managed to keep that name out of his mind for months, didn’t slip when asked his name any longer. And in one breath, Jem brought Gunner back to life.

  He choked out, “It’s James. You’re a failed agent, Jeremiah. Are you trying to get reinstated?”

  “Fuck. You.” More water. Never-ending fucking water as his chair was tipped back and the spikes bit into him and he welcomed the pain and the light-headedness.

  As if Jem knew that, he stopped, dead. Demanded, “Answer me one question—did you set her up?”

  “No clue what you’re talking about.”

  “The flowers with the bomb—you sent them?”

  There were two ways to answer that. Gunner chose the one that would make Jem hate him. “I did. Did it work?”

  The backhand Jem cracked across his cheek didn’t hurt as much as the pain involved in not knowing if Avery was hurt. And Gunner deserved it. He spat blood and smiled. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  A glint in Jem’s eye told him the test he was about to endure.

  But that’s what Gunner goddamn did. He endured.

  He endured for hours. Days. However long Jem kept at him. The man didn’t give Gunner any real way out—there were no right answers he could give. It was only torture. Meant to break him. Bring him back.

  He refused to let it. Refused to ask about Avery, even though with every fucking beat of his heart he wondered if she’d been killed.

  That didn’t stop until Avery walked in, unharmed. Angry. Beautiful.

  His chest tightened. He couldn’t keep this up, not if she was here. But for her sake, he had to.

  “You seem surprised to see me,” she said, and fuck, he needed to learn to school his expectations around her. To date, she seemed to be the only woman he hadn’t been able to lie to.

  Scratch that—he had lied to her and somehow she called him on his bullshit every single time. He thought about the orchids he’d sent in a moment of weakness, hoping they’d gotten to her before S8 moved out. He’d called from the truck as it barreled out of the city. And two hours later, he’d called to cancel the order, spoken to the wife of the owner who’d promised not to deliver them.

  “You’re working for Drew Landon. Again,” Jem said.

  Gunner shrugged. “He keeps me busy. Pays me well. What more do I need?’

  Jem stared at him, the crazy man completely lucid, leaving Gunner to feel like he was the one who needed the mental institution. The higher the walls, the better.

  “It’s a job, Jeremiah. I’m good at it. What do you give a fuck what I do for the rest of my life?”

  “Because you’re not the same guy I knew.”

  “That guy never existed.”

  “Bull. Shit. And your running didn’t help us. Landon’s trying to kill us anyway,” Jem spat. “Or maybe you knew that. Maybe you want us out of the way, since we know your secrets.”

  Gunner smirked again and Jem smacked him hard across his face, splitting his lip.

  “Jem, I need to talk to him alone,” Avery said.

  Jem gave the chair one final kick for good measure and Gunner cursed a blue streak at him. His lip was split again, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. His body ached and he wanted to kill the crazy asshole who’d been torturing him for the past forty-eight-plus hours.

  What was the fucking point? He was done with S8. Jem was telling him that Landon had tried to kill Avery and Billie Jean as a trick. Gunner knew tricks when he saw them, because he’d used them before.

  But Jem was leaving and Avery was staying. He steeled himself against her, because nothing could’ve prepared him for the jolt he’d felt.

  You thought you were dead inside. And just like that, Avery’s presence gave him the jump start to his heart.

  He hated her for that, and that hate was what he focused on. “Why don’t you follow your friend and get the fuck out of here?”

  Her mouth fell open, but only for a second. It was like steel grew in place of her spine, and when she straightened, her eyes snapped angry fire. “What have they done to you?”

  He stared at her as obscenely as possible, refusing to break the gaze first as he spat blood in a straight line through his teeth. “They didn’t do anything. This is me, Avery. I told you—go to Key and stay the hell away.”

  “I’m not with Key.”

  “You’re fucking someone else, then? Good for you. I told you to leave me alone. What don’t you get about that?”

  Avery’s chin raised defiantly. Instead of making her angry enough to walk out, he seemed to be succeeding only in making her will stronger. “There’s a lot I’m not getting about you. Where’ve you been?”

  “Around.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Stuff. Christ, who the fuck are you, my mother?”

  She ignored that, countered with a stack of files she held so he could see them marked “I know exactly what kind of stuff you’ve been doing.”

  “So why ask?”

  “Because I want to see if you have the balls to admit it.”

  He gave a short, dirty laugh, rocked his pelvis into the air. “You want to see those balls, go right ahead. Doesn’t mean I have to make you wife number—”

  “Five?” she finished, moved close enough to touch him and leaned in. “Wouldn’t I be wife number five, Gunner?”

  “James,” he bit out. “And fuck you.”

  She reached out then. He thought she would slap him, but what she did was worse. She ran her hand through his hair, a gentle touch that honest to God nearly broke him.

  He wanted to lean into her hand, rest his head on her, let her take care of him. Confess things she already knew and some she didn’t.

  “Talk to me, Gunner. Come back to me.”

  He closed his eyes, took a breath. He opened them, the fantasy ruthlessly pushed aside. “I was never yours to begin with.”

  “I’m not letting you go,” she said, but she had to know that some part of him was already long gone. She held up the sale papers he’d left for her months earlier. “We bought it all back—the tattoo shop, the garage, the bar. All of it. And we’re fixing it back up.”

  “Then you’re stupider than I thought.”

  She picked up the files then and flipped through them. “The El Coyote was the first job you did after you left me,” she said. It seemed like years ago that he’d done that. “And then we traced a line of crimes along the Ivory Coast and through the Sudan.”

  Brutal jobs. His bank account was fat with blood money. But Avery and Jem had been standing here safe in front of him, and he had to assume the same of Key, Dare and Grace. It was all he’d asked, and in turn he’d separated himself from them.

  Fuck, being back here in Avery’s presence was wiping away his carefully built resolve. He didn’t want her to know all this shit. Didn’t want her seeing into his past, his present, especially when she couldn’t be a part of his future.

  She tipped his chin up so he was forced to meet her eyes. His chin brushed the file she still held, until she climbed into his lap, holding the file behind the back of his chair. His dick was hard and she ground against it while he ground out, “Simple biology, baby. You want to fuck me, go for it. Don’t expect it to change anything.”

  “It already has, Gunner.” She leaned in, licked his earlobe. He fought a shiver, tried to stay cold as fuck, but she was so goddamned warm. He wanted to thrust against her, let her come against him, calling his name. “I’m going to fight dirty. And I’m not stopping until you give in.”

  “Why?” He heard a trace of despair in his own voice.

  “Because you wouldn’t stop for me. Because I don’t think you want me to stop.”

  He looked up at the ceiling. She took the opportunity to kiss his neck. Run her hands over his chest. “Come back to me, Gunner. Please, come home.”

  “I don’t have a home, Avery. Especially not one with you.”

  She blinked at him.

  “You told
us we have to make our own decisions. I’ve made mine. You need to accept it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Infuriatingly stubborn. He stared into her beautiful eyes—she had an old soul and he’d noticed that from the moment he’d met her. She could always see right through him. “Let me go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have no idea the kind of wrath you’re going to bring down on your newly formed family.”

  “You’re part of the family, Gunner.”

  “James. My name is James.”

  “Never to me. I don’t know him.”

  “You’re meeting him. This is me, Avery. Gunner was a facade.”

  Avery blanched and he knew he needed to hurt her, needed to twist the knife, sink it so deep she’d ache if she even started to think about him.

  Gunner cocked his head, smirked when he told her, “Your family couldn’t beat mine—in the end, it wasn’t you or Dare who took out Powell. You needed me. Your own father couldn’t do it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Avery blinked at him in disbelief for only a second at his callousness at Darius’s death. Before she could think, she’d slapped him, twice, hard across his cheek. It didn’t wipe the smug, satisfied look off his face, the one that said he knew he’d driven the knife deep.

  The one that said he didn’t care. But if he had to try this hard, he must care. Must be feeling threatened.

  God, she hoped she wasn’t wrong, but exhaustion and fear overwhelmed her.

  Kidnapping him had been a mistake. She saw that now. Never before had the saying if you love someone, set them free seemed more clear. She grabbed the files, turned away from him and walked out, but not before hearing his soft chuckle behind her.

  He thinks he’s won. And he’s right.

  “Told you it wouldn’t be easy, sweetheart,” Jem said as he ate his lo mein with chopsticks. “You didn’t cry in front of him, did you?”

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingertips angrily and shook her head.

  He tipped the carton toward her. “Want some?”

  “Jesus, Jem, how can you eat now, after what he said?”

  “Have to keep up my strength to beat some sense into him,” he told her. “He didn’t mean that.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because I’m not Darius’s kid. He’s playing dirty. Mike told you this would happen.”

  She turned to stare through the two-way glass, the way she’d been for the past couple of days, refusing to cover her eyes or shut the sound off when things got bad. But everything Jem did to him seemed to make Gunner’s resolve not to come back to their side strengthen.

  “Let him go,” she told Jem, her voice hoarse.

  In turn, Jem dropped the container and his legs from the table and stood. “Are you kidding me? First of all, that’s like signing our death warrants.”

  “Won’t be the last time, I’m sure. If we’re moving ahead with S8, we’ll have to expect this. Although not from someone we thought was one of us.”

  Jem shoved a hand through his hair. “Sweetheart, love’s made you blind and stupid. The goddamned way he looked at you when you walked into the room—how could you have missed that?”

  He turned and rewound the tape, showed her the moment she hadn’t seen, because she’d been too busy worrying about Gunner and how badly he was being hurt.

  “He’s in love with me,” she whispered.

  “Right. Now get back out there and make him fucking admit it. Because I can’t do that lovey-dovey shit with him. Well, I could, but it might make you jealous.”

  She sputtered a laugh and it felt good. Maybe she did have Gunner where she needed him to be, in pain and lashing out because he was losing resolve. If he didn’t care, he’d be sitting there, stoic, not allowing his emotions to poke through.

  Jem caught her by the shoulders then, continuing the pep talk. “You’ve come this far. Don’t back down now. We can’t lose him to that man. You wouldn’t have let Grace go back to Rip.”

  “Dare would never have let that happen.”

  Jem nodded. “I’ll do the hard part.”

  “No. I’ll have to do the hard part. He can handle the kind of pain you’ll give him.”

  “But no man can deal with the kind of pain a woman can inflict,” Jem finished.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “An asshole who’s right.” He stared at Gunner through the two-way glass. “He’s not going to know what hit him.”

  She waited another hour, turned the heat up in the room and watched him fall asleep. Then she turned the temperature back down, walked in quietly and poured freezing-cold water over his head to rouse him.

  He woke immediately, blinking away the water, baring his teeth. Growling. He looked beautiful. Dangerously so.

  “You are really pushing your luck.”

  “What are you going to do about it, Gunner?”

  “I told you, my name is James.”

  “I’ll never call you that.”

  “You will. And you’d better pray I’m not in front of you, making you say it, Avery.”

  “It was okay when I yelled your name in my bed, right?” she challenged.

  “I don’t remember. Guess it didn’t mean that much to me.”

  “Oh bullshit, Gunner.” She straddled his lap, pressing herself to his wet, bare chest. He might’ve been able to control a lot of his behavior, but he couldn’t stop biology. His arousal pressed between her legs almost immediately. It was heady to know she still had that effect on him, despite his protests otherwise.

  “What don’t you get, chère? I was born to do this. Literally, born into this world. It’s in my genes. I didn’t need much training. Took to it like a duck to water, and I loved it.”

  “Really? Then why’d you stop?” she challenged.

  “Extenuating circumstances.”

  “Like what? Falling in love?”

  He scowled. “Who the hell told you that? I don’t fall in love, sweetheart. I like pretty women and lots of sex. If they want to marry me, why the hell not?”

  “Then why have three of them left you?”

  “Because I can’t help it if they think they can change me. What you see is what you get. I thought you realized that, honey, when you let me leave you in the hotel. You let me go,” he said hoarsely, and her heart ached.

  She’d been right—letting him leave that night had been something she should never have done. The fact that he’d actually admit it gave her more hope than anything, but she didn’t show it, simply asked, “What did you expect me to do? Chain you to the bed?”

  His gaze told her that he’d hoped she would’ve tried, but he refused to say anything.

  “Forcing you to stay wasn’t the answer.”

  He cocked his head. “What makes this the answer now?”

  “Because you keep trying to kill us. Or else you’re letting us think you are to try to make me hate you especially.”

  He started to say something but shut his mouth. She waited for him to deny it. Own it. Something.

  Instead, he stared past her shoulder, straight ahead at the wall. She thought about how narrow her escape from the bomb had been. That if the flowers had hit the floor or the ceiling before she’d gotten herself into the steel panic room, she wouldn’t be here.

  She’d barely gotten the door shut behind her. She hadn’t heard as much as she’d felt the vibrations of the bomb. And after finding Billie Jean, she’d been in shock, shivered for hours, unable to come down from the high that kept her alive.

  “You want to think you know me. You all do. But that’s not who I’m meant to be.”

  “What are you?”

  He brought his gaze back to hers. “I’m a man who kills for a living. I take out bad men for another bad man. It’s a dirty business, but it pays well. And I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not.”

  “We’re so alike. You have to know that. We both ran from everything we knew and started
over,” she told him. “You started again with me. You still can.”

  “It’s too hard,” he ground out. “Don’t you get it? I’ve done this before—started over.”

  “And you got a lot of good things from it.”

  “That’s the problem. It was good. And every time I have to give it up, it’s like ripping my goddamned heart out. I won’t do it again.”

  “So you’ll just rip mine out instead,” she said softly.

  “Avery, come on. Just fucking let me go.” He jangled the chains.

  “And you’ll disappear.”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  She played with the key she wore around her neck. Gunner watched it and she wondered if he’d try to overpower her. If he’d hurt her.

  Hasn’t he already? “I don’t want to let you go. I won’t let you go again. Letting you leave my hotel room was a mistake, one I won’t make again.”

  Gunner’s eyes flashed. There was anger there, but maybe, just maybe, she spotted a slight bit of relief before he turned away. “You going to keep me tied up forever?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

  “Then tell me,” she implored. “You know, S8 can help.”

  “Is that what this is about—S8?” His tone was angry. “S8 nearly got me killed. You and your team fucked me over good. I was in it before I knew what happened. So don’t talk to me about taking one for the team.”

  “We’re more than that and you know it.”

  “I know that I like to work alone. I’m built that way.”

  She grabbed the folder. “All these jobs you’ve done are just for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Drew Landon?” she asked. “He had nothing to do with this?”

  He grimaced.

  “He’s pulling your strings and you’re letting him. And I don’t know why.” She would push him now, because she did know. “You’re not man enough to stand up to him, to tell him no. Does he scare you that much, Gunner? Are you that weak?”

  After those words, everything became one big blur.

  * * *

  Gunner wasn’t sure what made him angrier—the fact that he was scared of Landon hurting her, or the fact that he’d taken the least weak way out he knew. Avery’s face blanched when she realized what was happening, as if she knew she’d gone too far, miscalculated.