by Aubrey Irons
“STOP!” The room goes silent at my scream. The two goons whirl on me with guns drawn, and Logan strains at his ropes. But for some reason, I’ve never been more focused in my life.
“I’m a doctor,” I say evenly, leveling my gaze at the two men with guns. “And I’ve just cut his artery.” I glance down to Javier, choking and sputtering and holding his neck on the floor. “He has one minute until he goes under. Two before he bleeds out entirely.”
One of the two guards cocks his pistol and my eyes dart to his. “And I’m pretty fucking sure I’m the only one here who knows how to fix that!”
The room goes still like a frozen scene from a movie.
“Untie him, now.” I say, my eyes blazing fire at the two goons. They quickly turn to each other and shrug and I feel my fists clench tight. “Now, motherfuckers!”
One turns and gives me a quick nod before he goes over and and starts to cut away the ropes holding Logan, who looks up at me with this wild grin on his face.
“I like this side of you, Doc.” He mumbles out, grimacing as he tries to grin.
“I’m working on it.” I toss him the cell-phone from my bag. “Now figure out how to call the cops while I save this piece of shit’s life.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I don’t remember making the phone call at all, but I’m on the floor and barely conscious when they come for us. I’m aware of the flashing lights, the cops with guns drawn, and Javier’s two guys being shoved against a wall and cuffed. Medical personal swarm over Javier, who looks pale lying in a puddle of blood on the floor. But then they’re hooking him up to a respirator and loading him up onto a stretcher, and they’re not covering him with a sheet, so it looks like Quinn actually managed to stop the piece of shit from bleeding out.
I can’t pretend I’d have done the same in her shoes.
I peer up as another group of EMTs start to load me up onto a stretcher of my own. ‘Tallahassee Emergency Medical Response’ is says on the their jackets. I realize I’ve never been to Florida before, and the thought that this is my first trip here has me almost laughing and mumbling something about “beating the lines at Disneyworld” before I realize I might be in way worse shape than I even think I am. The world starts to fade a little at the corners as I trying to cling to consciousness, and suddenly I’m glancing wildly around, trying to look for her.
Quinn.
“Hey, hey. Keep still, pal, don’t move aroun-”
“Quinn!” I’m pushing their hands away from me and struggling to sit up before my head swims and I drop back down to the stretcher with a grimace. Quinn.
But then she’s just there, leaning over me as as they wheel me out of the concrete room and into the steaming heat of the night as we wheel towards an ambulance. Her face is tight and there are tears in her eyes as she clutches at my hands.
“I thought we said no hospitals?” I mumble out, trying to grin and hoping it doesn’t look too horrible with the state I’m sure my face is in right then.
But she’s choking out a laugh. “You used up all my band-aids, dummy.” She says, the tears starting to run down her cheeks.
“Hey, hey, I’m gonna be fine you know.” I wince as the stretcher hits the side of the ambulance and the EMT guys lift me up and into the back.
Quinn starts to jump up after me, but one of them stops her. “Ma’am, I’m sorry bu-”
“I’m his Doctor, and I’m coming with him.” Her voice is bold, firm, and demonstrably confident in a way I realize I’ve never actually heard from her before, and the thought makes me smile.
The EMT nods curtly. “Of course, Doctor,” he says, stepping aside and letting her into the ambulance.
“You’re completely nuts, you know that, right Doc?” I mumble out, grimacing as I try to smile at her through my bruised up face as she slides next to me and takes my hand.
“I love you. You know know that, right Marine?”
The words hit me harder than any punch ever has, and the lasting glow exploding through my body better than any win, better than any adrenaline high I’ve ever had. Her hand squeezes mine and it feels like the whole world is just dropping away into the background, leaving just me and her, and nothing else matters.
“I love you too, darlin.”
She sniffs back a tear, and then she’s cupping my face gently in her hand as she kisses me. And I know it should hurt, and I know I should be in pain right now.
But then again, it seems I’m not very good at doing what I should when it comes to her.
Chapter Thirty
Quinn
The aftermath of Florida was actually less messy than you would’ve thought. Especially so when you considering the implications of a plane from Cuba landing without authorization outside Tallahassee, of Logan refusing to tell anyone in the hospital his name, and with me almost killing someone. And the cleanup from all of that was thanks to someone I’d have thought as possibly the most unlikely candidate in the world.
If anyone could’ve taken a picture of my face when Peyton walked into that E.R. room in Florida, it probably would’ve broken the camera. I remember glaring at her, my jealousy bubbling to the surface even with everything that’d just happened, including the “I love you” part.
But she didn’t seem to bat an eye, and suddenly cold-shoulder, schedule-stickler, frosty Peyton was marching right up to me in the waiting room and throwing her arms around me in a big hug.
Uh, what?
“He hasn’t told you about us, has he.”
It’s a statement more than a question, and part of me wants to smack that little smile she’s only half holding back off of her smug little twenty-year old mouth. I purse my lips, my jaw tensing and my eyes narrowing at her. “No, he hasn’t.” I say evenly, arching a brow at her. “And look, I really don’t actually need to know-”
“Quinn,” she cuts me off as she cocks her head at me. “He’s my brother.”
Whatever scathing retort I’m about to let loose on Peyton freeze in my throat as her words hit me full-force. “Excuse me?”
Peyton’s usually stiff face breaks into a grin, and it’s an expression I actually recognize because it’s the same one pretty much permanently plastered on Logan. “Well, half-brother,” she says with a shrug. “Our mom- well, that part I might let him tell you.”
“I had to find her a few years ago for- I just had to go home for this thing.”
Holy shit.
“Look, I’m sorry for being…” She trails off and looks at the floor.
“A bitch?”
Peyton looks up at me, grinning. “He’s always been protective of me, and so I guess I just get protective right back.” She shrugs, just like her brother. “I kind of figured you probably had the wrong impression,” She says, grinning at me in that wholly Logan way. “He’s a dick for messing with you like that. Sorry, he’s like that sometimes.”
I choke out a laugh. “Tell me about it.”
She squeezes my hand in hers as her face takes on a softer loo.; “So, how’s the big guy doing, anyways?”
“I- I- He’s-” And right then it’s like all the pent up fear and stress and emotion of the past twelve hours just comes draining out of me at once, and I find myself collapsing into her. Peyton, of all people.
“Hey, hey now,” she’s stroking my hair and helping me to sit before she pulls out her cell phone and looks me in the eye. “Hey, just sit tight, I got this.”
And, she does.
Bryce is there within hours, and if he has any questions about what at that point is pretty obviously going on with Logan and I, he doesn’t say a word. But it’s really when Major Lawson arrives soon after and starts mentioning things like “national security” and “State Department” to the concerned-looking State Troopers and hospital staff that the whole thing sort of just gets fixed. Half an hour later, we’re all on a jet headed to New York, and for the first time in what seems like a day, I can finally breath.
Contrary to what I guess eithe
r of Logan or I thought would happen, Bryce and Hudson actually ended up taking the news about us pretty well, especially when they heard the story of my spur-of-the-moment heroics back in Florida. Actually, I believe Hudson’s exact words on the entire matter were “You know, the deal was that we protect them, not the other way around, idiot.”
As it turns out, Chelsea ended up being the most pissed about the whole situation, and that was only because I’d spilled the beans to Reagan and not her. But even she got over it pretty quick as soon as she heard about me stabbing someone in the neck.
“Holy shit, Quinn When did you get so bad-ass?”
I have no idea, but I’d like to think a certain tattooed boxer had at least something to do with it.
“You totally ruined the honeymoon, you know.”
My sister whirls and punches Hudson in the arm, scowling at him as he grins and holds his hands up. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” Logan snorts out a laugh from the bed he’s propped up in, and Hudson pats him on the shoulder.
Logan’s penthouse isn’t quite done being renovated, but it’s finished enough that he’s decided to recoup here rather than the hospital. Which, by the way, I’m still furious about, especially since everyone else seems to think this is totally acceptable as well. He did let me bring in a few old colleagues from the hospital to check him out though, which at least puts me halfway to at-ease.
“You’re an idiot, you know.” Bryce frowns, shaking his head at Logan from the foot of his bed.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You should have told us, about Javier and all of it.”
Hudson scowls. “So how long had Javier been holding this over your-”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s over.” Logan says slowly. “Except I don’t know what he’s going to say now.”
“I do.” Major Lawson’s been quiet in the corner of the room until this moment, and as he stands, we all turn to him/ “He’s going to say nothing, because his story has no evidence and no proof.” He arches a brow at all of us. “As it turns out, I’ve got an old colleague working in the records department in Blackriver, and as of this morning, you three were never employees. The three men stare at him, their jaws dropped. Bryce starts to say something, but the Major just chuckles and waves him off. “Oh, and Javier’s currently on a plane to a detention facility in Spain.”
Logan’s eyes go wide. “What?”
“Yes, apparently Javier Toro is wanted for just about every law they’ve got back in Spain, and when I realized who he was I took the liberty of alerting my contact at Centro Nacional de Inteligencia in Madrid and letting him know.”
“You- wait-”
The Major raises an eyebrow at a very shocked looking Logan. “William Archer was one of the finest men I knew, son, and I intend to do everything in my power to protect his own.” He winks at me before turning a stern eye on Logan. “Of course, you hurt this one and I’ll send you right back to Cuba, but I think you’ll find the continental breakfast at Guantanamo Bay slightly less accommodating than the one at the Hotel Nacional.”
Logan grins and just squeezes my hand tighter. “The thought never crossed my mind, sir.”
“I want to show you something.”
It’s later, after everyone’s gone and left us to each other, when Logan grimaces as he slides out of his bed. He takes my hand, leading me through the huge expanse of his penthouse, past the paintings on the wall, past the floor-to-ceiling windows with the jaw-dropping views of Manhattan.
He see’s me taking everything in and shakes his head. “This is all meaningless, you know,” he says quietly. “It’s a disguise that your father taught me put on. To hide who we are and to blend in.”
“Logan, you don’t have to tell me anything, you know.”
He shakes his head. “Hang on, this is important.” We’re at the end of a hallway in front of a door, and he fishes a key out of his pocket and slides it into the lock. “You asked me before what your father saved us from.” He opens the door and leads me inside. “I want- I need to show you my life. Where I really came from.”
He flicks on the light, and I gasp.
The whole room is full of framed photographs, hanging on the wall, hundreds of them. They’re of dusty, run-down-looking streets running past grimy looking oil derricks, of a young kid who can only be Logan with that grin on his face leaning against a beat-up looking pickup truck. My eyes scan over the walls, seeing pictures of the desert, of tanks and burning buildings. I stop on a snapshot of Logan in full combat gear, older now than the boy with the truck and looking completely shattered.
I gasp, bringing my hand to my mouth as I step into the room and let my eyes just follow the timeline of the life of the man I love. There are villages in Africa, of smiling kids kicking a soccer ball around a grungy looking field. Pictures of Hudson and Logan gritting their teeth and grinning as they sit in chairs getting tattoos in some hut of a building, Bryce smiling sadly at the camera, Hudson striking a pose, Logan wearing boxing gloves, looking sweaty and triumphant with Javier of all fucking people standing with his arm around him.
And then there are pictures of my dad.
From there the pictures change. We’re out of the jungle and in a city that can only be New York. There’s Logan grinning and looking completely out of place behind a thick wooden desk with a view of the city behind him. There are shots of him looking bored at lavish looking parties, and standing next to a new sports car, followed by more of both.
And then we’re back in what must be Africa, and my dad’s there as well and the two of them are holding shovels and standing next to what looks like a new water pump. We’re in the desert somewhere, Hudson, Bryce, Logan and my father standing alongside others I don’t know in front of a brand new building that I can tell is a school from the playground out front and the boxes of books being unloaded from a truck.
And it’s when I realize that this is everything I never knew about my father that I start to cry.
“This is our past, Quinn,” Logan says quietly from behind me. “It’s the past that I need to remember.”
He touches my arm and I turn as he takes my hands. “I need to know the past, because it’s the path I took to get right here to you.”
Epilogue
Quinn
What’s funny about growing up is watching yourself and those around you change and grow in ways you’d never have imagined. For instance, who would’ve known that my tom-boy of a middle sister who would have just as soon gotten her teeth pulled than wear a “stupid dress’ would’ve been the first one of us to have the romance novel of a happy ending. The one where everyone ends up barefoot and pregnant and getting married? And by the same stroke, if you’d have told a younger, nerdy, never-miss-a-curfew, never-step-outside-the-lines me that I’d end up with the swearing, tattooed, bareknuckle boxer of a bad-boy, I’d have thought you were nuts.
But hey, that’s love; totally nuts.
Logan and I aren’t getting married, not yet anyways. Reagan and Hudson, for all that passion and drama, had their history. Theirs is a story that they started writing five years before they found each other again. But Logan and I are just opening our book up. Ours is a story we’re still learning to write, and one I might add that seems to get steamier by the page.
We’re also not pregnant. Not yet anyways. For now, we’re too busy helping the frankly staggering amount of kids out there in the world already that don’t have anyone. There are the hospitals we’re finishing up with the Archer humanitarian program in Cuba, Liberia, and Guatemala, but also the schools in Ghana and Afghanistan that Logan and I are just doing on our own on the side. I mean, just the traveling is enough to keep me busy enough that getting knocked up really isn’t an option.
Of course, that’s not to say we aren’t “practicing”, as Logan puts it. And let me tell you, practice makes perfect. Especially with that man.
The world is an imperfect place, and sometimes it’s painful, and full of hurt, shadow, and sorrow
. But, it can also be full of light and joy, of peace, of healing, and of love. Sometimes you just have to fight for it, because some of those things are worth fighting for.
There are words inked across Logan’s chest that I love to trace my fingers across. I imagine a younger, more lost version of him may have gotten them there in another time, another life, and with a heart not yet whole.
“Never Back Down”
But I know they mean something new now. Something even fiercer than the fighter ceaselessly swinging at the darkness. And they’ve also never been more true.
Because you never back down from love.
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Also by Aubrey Irons
Shelter Harbor Series:
Thief: A Second Chance Romance
Sinner: A Bad Boy Next Door Romance
Saint: A Dark Mafia Romance
Sports Romance:
Score: A Stepbrother Sports Romance
Player: A Secret Baby Sports Romance
Jock: A Secret Baby Sports Romance
Rivals: An Enemies To Lovers Romance
Soldiers of Fortune Series:
Heat
Burn
Scorch
Roar
Standalone Bad Boy Romance:
Secret: A Military Stepbrother Romance
Cockney: A British Stepbrother Romance
Wicked Tease: A Bad Boy Next Door Novella
Bloodlines: A Second Chance Mafia Romance (currently exclusively available in the Begging for Bad Boys anthology.
