by Angel Payne
He curled his fingers harder against her skin. His touch turned into scrapes of rough possession, marking her along the backs of her arms. A shiver coursed through her. She wondered—oh God, she hoped—that her words would unlock the chains clearly weighing his gaze too. But as she searched for that freedom in his eyes, she saw devastating truth to the contrary. His mind was barely here anymore. He looked at her but didn’t see her.
Sage endured another tremor. This vibration wasn’t singing a sunny Beach Boys tune.
Where are you, Garrett?
Where had he sent his thoughts? Had he taken a mental vacation back to Bangkok, maybe? If so, to where…or, damn it, to whom? When he’d come back to the embassy drenched in perfume and marked with fingernail scratches, Sage had assumed he’d gone to see a call girl. What if that stranger hadn’t been such a stranger?
His swallow tossed icebergs into the freezing lake of her fear. The way he let her go, as if she were a treasure he didn’t deserve, added more.
He skirted around her and walked to the window.
Shit.
Sage stumbled in a semicircle, forcing herself to turn toward him. He stood with his legs parted, his arms at rigid angles to his sides. The sun was setting over the lake, casting a deep bronze glow that turned his honed torso and long legs into a silhouette that resembled a demigod rising from a pool of fire. Damn it, if this was the moment he was going to break her heart, could he look a little less magnificent doing it?
After a minute of torturous silence, she forced three words out.
“What is it?”
Her ragged rasp seemed to impact him harder than any shriek she could have mustered. That was a good thing, because Sage barely had the strength to stand, let alone speak.
“What is it.” He repeated it as a statement instead of a question. “I think the properly phrased query here, sugar, is who, not what.”
Sage gripped the back of the couch. Okay, this really wasn’t boding well. “All right,” she said tightly, “if you say so.”
Garrett dragged a hand through his hair.
“Fuck.”
The word was horridly ironic—a jut of breath into the air but carrying the weight of so much more beneath the surface. Sage did fight back the urge to scream now. “Garrett, damn it! Just spit it out, okay? I’ve pulled on the big-girl panties. Who the hell is she?”
He laughed. The sound didn’t possess a single note of mirth, but yeah, the bastard laughed. As Sage battled the urge to tackle him out the window, he closed the distance back to her and yanked the option from possibility. Suddenly, he had her wrapped against his chest with her cheek between his pecs and the top of her head locked by his lips.
“Is that really what you think?” he whispered.
She couldn’t stop shaking. “I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”
“I know.” His breath heated her scalp. “And I’m sorry.”
She squirmed. This contact would’ve been a glimpse of heaven, if he wasn’t using it to evade the obvious. “Stop stalling, Garrett, and just give me the damn name. If you’re going to let me go, let’s get—”
“Wyatt.”
Sage froze in the middle of trying to shove against his shoulder. With her fingers locked on his collarbone, she tipped her head up, openly bewildered. “What?”
Garrett’s face was still a study in concrete control. Only one part of his regard went soft by any degree. His gaze.
“You wanted a name.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Command granted, woman. There’s your name.”
“Wyatt?”
“Yep.”
“As in…your uncle? The one back in Iowa?”
“Yep.”
“Funny,” she snapped. “Ha-ha. Way to pluck that one out at random.” She started pushing from him again, but for the second time in the last minute, her instinctual bullshit meter for him registered at zero. Sage straightened her head now, directing a deeper scrutiny into him. “Wait. That wasn’t so random at all, was it?”
Garrett dropped his head as he lowered his hold. He grabbed both her hands into his and then looked at the union of their fingers as if it were the first time he’d done this with her. His resigned energy turned Sage’s heartbeat into turmoil against her ribs. Hell. Why did she feel like some intrepid reporter, about to break through with a celebrity spilling their darkest secret?
Garrett didn’t ease her trepidation by pulling her to sit on the couch with him. Her toes sank into the thick shag of the chocolate-brown area rug that stretched to the hearth. She loved this rug. The memories Garrett and she had created on it had carried her through a shitload of dismal nights, especially after she and Ray had gotten free from the pirates and had no idea what country they were in or who they could trust. She’d spent hundreds of long nights replaying the way Garrett had teased her, touched her, thrilled her in this room.
She had no idea how he was going to change those memories now, but his continued demeanor, too damn composed for normal Garrett mode, confirmed this wasn’t going to be some cozy fireside chat. Sage struggled to borrow his calmness as he wove their fingers tighter together. More silence stretched while he stared into the grate where so many logs had burned into ash while they loved the night away.
“How much do you know about my relationship with him?” Garrett finally asked.
“With Wyatt?” At his short nod, she tilted her head and continued. “Well, I’ve only met him once. He seems like a generous man, though there are parts of him that are closed off, that’s for sure. He seems proud of you, but he’s afraid to show it somehow.”
Garrett snorted. “Afraid to? How about just won’t?”
Sage peered harder. “I’m officially lost here.”
He stabbed his free hand into his hair. As he lowered it, he balled it into a fist. “Guess I never told you how I used to idolize him more than Dad.”
Sage felt her eyebrows jump. “You didn’t.”
He nodded. “I tend to leave that part out of the life story most of the time.”
Sage searched her memory for a recollection of Wyatt Hawkins. When she’d met him during their trip to Iowa just before Garrett proposed, it had been during a big family barbecue at the home in which Garrett grew up. Wyatt and his wife, Josie, hadn’t traveled far. They lived next door. Like Garrett, his dad, and his two brothers, the man was tall, tawny-haired, and all muscle, even for a guy closing in on his late thirties. Josie seemed completely smitten with him. Wyatt clearly returned the sentiment, always kissing his wife or pulling her onto his lap. But around the rest of the family, the man was guarded, even a little aloof.
Like a man who had to keep a lot of secrets.
Comprehension hit her like a tidal wave. “Damn,” she murmured. “He’s ex Special Forces, isn’t he?”
Garrett preceded his confirmation of that with a resolute jut of his jaw. “When I was a kid, Wyatt was larger than life. I didn’t watch the Transformers or the Ninja Turtles or fucking G.I. Joe; I had a real-life version of them rolled together in my uncle. He upped when he was nineteen and was damn near plucked out of Basic for the Special Forces track. A lot of folks said they’d never seen anyone like him. The guy loved being a soldier. He was stationed with the fifth SF group, down in Kentucky, before getting sent to Ranger School and graduating top of his battalion.”
A grin peeked through his lips, turning back the clock on his face by at least five years. “They threw this wild-ass party for him when he made Triple Canopy in record time.” He broke out in a full chuckle, making Sage break into a grin as well. “Not every day a town had a guy who kicked ass in Jump School, the Special Forces funnel, and the Ranger course, right? The bash went on for days, and they used a cleared field on the west side of the farm for what was quite possibly the biggest mud football game ever played. I was only eleven, but I could’ve died that day thinking I’d hit heaven.”
Sage laughed softly. “I can imagine you had.”
The faraway haze in h
is eyes got a little thicker. “For a bunch of years, we didn’t see him a lot. His deployments were long. But man, when he got a chance to make it home…it was better than Christmas. I’d beg Mom to let me skip school. I’d spend the days at Wyatt’s heels, worse than a damn puppy, drinking up his charisma, letting him kick my ass in mock ‘training battles.’”
“Oh boy,” Sage murmured. “The dynamic duo, Hawkins style.”
“Yeah.” Garrett laughed. “Yeah, it was…well, it was awesome.”
She repositioned one of her hands to run her fingers over his coiled knuckles. With the same care, she studied his face. His rugged features had never snagged her breath more. Finally, he was letting her see everything—a landscape of emotion as years of memories bombarded him.
“So what happened?” she asked at last. When he gave her only a tighter scowl, she pressed, “Garrett, what happened?”
The dark haze in his gaze went as thick as grenade smoke. “Iraq happened.”
Sage nodded. “And he was likely in the thick of it.”
“No ‘likely’ about it.”
She winced. “How bad?”
He took in a heavy breath. “I’m not sure. He never talked about it in full. From what I can snap together, he survived at least three roadside attacks. The one that sent him home for good took out everybody in his unit but him.”
“Whoa.”
His face, now in profile, settled on a strangely serene expression. It was almost like he prepared to bow his head and pray. It scared her. She knew that look. It happened when someone went on agony overload and had to detach from what they talked about in order to remain sane. She’d never seen it on Garrett’s face before, even after he returned from missions that had been brutal to his body and psyche. But right now, recalling how the war had taken his beloved hero from him, the grief gouged deeply.
She squeezed his fingers harder to let him know she was still there—with everything she was worth.
“By then, it was no secret to any of us that the war was carving bigger pieces out of him. But I was thirteen and filled with all the never-surrender bullshit the man himself had filled me with. I thought that as soon as Wyatt was home for good, I’d single-handedly turn him back into Soldier-God Hawkins. Only this time, it would be better. There’d be no deployment to take Wyatt away from me. We could just—” The church-worthy expression dissolved off his face. He huffed heavily and closed his eyes, revealing the tears collecting on his lashes. “Well, we didn’t. Wyatt decided the National Geographic channel and Jeopardy marathons were more exciting than hanging out with the kid who still remembered the night he’d scored five touchdowns in the mud.
“Slowly, he realized he was pretty much being a broke dick. He started helping Dad run the farm, but he picked all the one-man jobs that didn’t require him to speak to anyone. He also told Mom not to let me play hooky anymore, because by that time I’d made it damn clear to anyone who’d listen that I wanted to make SF when I grew up.”
Sage unhooked a hand long enough to give a reassuring stroke down his arm. “I’ll bet he was really proud when you did.”
Garrett shrugged on shoulders taut with bitterness. “I have no idea if he was or not. Frankly, I stopped caring—especially after one pretty memorable summer night.”
Until now, the conversation had clearly been uncomfortable for him. But his uneasiness took on a new strand of tension with that statement. Sage had the distinct impression that the celebrity confessional was about to get an R rating. Or worse.
“Memorable…how?”
For the first time since they’d sat down, Garrett looked like the words in his mouth were chunks of something vile.
Oh, yeah. This was going to get awkward.
“We all pitched in and got Wyatt a new Nintendo console for his birthday. He’d play on it at night when the flashbacks from Iraq kept him up, which was pretty much every night. When I couldn’t sleep myself, I’d sneak down the rain gutter and join him for an hour or so. It was barely a connection, but I clung to it. I hoped we’d work our way back to at least a friendship.”
“Of course you did,” Sage assured.
“Well, that night…I only got as far as the barn.”
She accessed more memories. “The big brown storage one, between the two houses, right?”
“Roger,” he confirmed.
Sage’s instinct started kicking in. There was no way it couldn’t. The nervous flicks of his gaze, the color climbing his neck, the finger he drummed on a knee… Oh, yeah. This wasn’t just uncomfortable for him. It was torture.
She tried to ease things for him with a thoughtful tone. “You only got to the barn…because Wyatt was inside?”
He took a prolonged second before answering. “Yeah.”
“Was he alone?”
He rolled his head as if she’d punched him. “No. Josie was in there with him.”
She could’ve filled in that blank too. With that new slice of the image, she started filling in details for herself—but didn’t voice them aloud. Garrett needed to tell her himself. The words needed to come out of him, if his perception of them was ever going to change. If he was ever going to heal.
“What were they doing?” She rubbed his knuckles again in a gentle coax.
“They—he—fuck.”
“It’s me, Garrett. I’m not going anywhere. Tell me.”
He pulled in another hard breath. “Josie was kneeling over a hay bale. Her wrists were hooked together, locked in leather cuffs. She was dressed in this corset outfit, also black leather…with panties that might as well have not been there, and a…a collar that was attached to a chain.” He twisted his hand against her and shoved a foot so hard that the rug bunched up. “Wyatt had his wife on a goddamn leash! And he was—”
“He was what?”
He looked away. “Shit. No. Forget it.”
“No way, Hawkins.” She clung to his arm like it was a parachute rip cord. “Spill it, or I’ll call Josie myself for a little girls’ chat.”
He swung a hot glare at her. She jabbed her chin out, not surrendering even a blink.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
“I’ve had to eat bugs to survive, Sergeant. Do you think I’m kidding?”
His head fell against the cushions. He dragged his hand down his face. “He had a riding crop, okay? And he was striking her ass with it. Repeatedly. And hard.”
“Okay,” Sage answered evenly. “And was she liking it?”
“Hell, Sage. I wasn’t in a position to take a survey.”
“You remember a hell of a lot of details already. You want to tell me that you didn’t notice whether Josie was begging, ‘Get me out of here now’ or ‘Get inside me now?’”
“Did you really just ask me that?”
“Are you really still avoiding the answer?”
He threw her another glower. “Fine. Okay, she was…enjoying things…I suppose.”
He lurched off the couch and stormed to the hearth. Sage rose, too. He didn’t turn when she did. She lifted a hand, yearning to touch him, to make sure he knew she hadn’t suddenly turned to dust at his illicit revelation. Truthfully, she felt the opposite. For the first time since they’d returned from Thailand, she felt clear about her connection to him. This was them, tearing down walls together. This was them, forging into new territory together.
Together.
It felt wonderful to hear that word ringing in her consciousness. Better than wonderful.
“I’ve never told that to anyone.” Garrett dropped his hands as he muttered the confession. “I was afraid of it. Afraid…of what it had done to me.”
“What did it do to you?”
“You’ve been the firsthand witness of that, sugar. A couple of times now.”
She took a tentative step toward him. Stopped. Conflict sat on her shoulders as she carefully considered her next words.
Who was she kidding? There was no careful to be had here. He was either going to understand, once an
d for all, that his burgeoning Dominant was one of the best things that had happened to their relationship, or he’d choose to dive back in to his self-condemnation. She refused to stick around for that sight anymore.
“I don’t think you turned out so bad, Garrett.”
“Really?” As she half expected, he wheeled back around. His shoulders were stiff and his face was gaunt. “You don’t think so, huh? Well, isn’t that special.”
Had she been tempted to hold him a second ago? “It should be special,” she snapped. “I’m your fiancée. Does that count for anything anymore?”
He snorted. “Don’t you get it? After so many years of swearing I wouldn’t be like Wyatt, that I wouldn’t become him, that I’d be better than him at handling my shit…and yet I’ve tromped down the same damn path as him.” His lips twisted. “The only thing I didn’t fuck up was letting some starry-eyed kid get obsessed with me, only to have their hero fall and crumble as they watched.”
Sage dug her nails into her palms. Gazing at him was torment. It was worse than watching him get beat up, because he was the one doing the damage. And nothing she said could make him stop.
“You’re right,” she rasped. “On one thing. There’s no kid this time. But there is someone here who calls you hero.”
He blinked, clearly understanding her. And clearly not happy with that. Tough beans, Hawkins. You’re going to listen to this.
“You think it’s just a cute catch phrase for me, Garrett? You think it’s something I don’t believe with all my heart? Still?” She couldn’t stand the distance anymore. In two steps, she pressed herself against him. She looked up and spread a hand to the side of his head. “And no, you haven’t crumbled. Dear God, in this moment, you’re more strong and amazing to me than ever. You’re my hero in a million more senses. Confronting your truth takes as much guts as facing insurgent fire or an enemy grenade.” She smiled. “Or a slimebag in a jungle, selling women into slavery.”
His eyes went stunningly wide. In their blue fire, Sage caught the intensity of real horror. “Shit, Sage!”
He tried to turn away. She grabbed him harder. “No,” she pleaded. “Don’t close me out, damn it! Don’t run from this, Garrett. Don’t run from us.”
