by Mia Downing
Then Jake was at the end of the corridor, covered in blood—her blood—and the shock hit Chase in the gut like a sucker punch. He heaved in air and stopped running, unable to finish the distance to ask what he really didn’t want to know.
Someone handed Jake a fresh shirt, and he stripped. His stomach was covered in bruises, his arms splattered in her blood, the blood at the corner of his mouth dried. There was no way she could have lived. So much blood, his shirt ruined.
Jake yanked the clean T-shirt over his head, smoothing it in place, and their gazes locked. Shit no, he looked like hell, like he’d lost his best friend, which Kate was.
No.
Jake strode over, closing the distance, and Chase wanted to throw up, the pain in his stomach was so bad.
“Chase. She’s alive. Barely.” Jake took him by the shoulders. “Look at me, buddy. Take a deep breath. You can’t throw up here, so take a deep breath.”
Jake shook him slightly, and Chase tore his eyes off of Jake’s bloody shirt, hanging from the trashcan, to meet his friend’s earnest blue eyes.
Chase breathed as instructed, his mind racing a mile a minute, trying to picture her… “Where is she?”
“She’s in surgery, but she’s alive.”
“That’s good?” He’d never felt so lost before. Right now he loved Jake for saving her more than he hated him for making her come in the clearing. “That’s good.”
“It’s really good. They’re pumping blood back into her and stopping the bleeding. She’s a fighter.” Jake guided him to a chair in the waiting area and pushed him to sit. “She was fucking magnificent, Chase. Right from the start, she did what she had to do. She saved my life at the end—jumped off a fucking balcony—and took the bullet meant for me.”
Chase closed his eyes, the pain of his job, his responsibility, too much. “I told her you had to come back. You were priority. She thought I didn’t want her to come back.”
“I doubt she was thinking of what a dick you are while she was saving my ass.”
“What happened after she jumped off the balcony?” Chase didn’t want to know, but maybe if Jake talked, the churning in his stomach would stop and the control would return. She’d need him in control when she came back to him.
“She saved me twice, taking the bullet, knocking out the first guard. She killed the other guard. Her first kill. I know you had a hand in that somehow, because she’s never shot like that before. And she was so shocked.” Jake looked at his hands. “She should have looked at me, shocked like that, after she had been hit. But she didn’t. She wasn’t shocked until that man was dead at her feet.”
Jake sounded like he’d been surprised by her magnificence, but Chase knew it was there all along. He sat back, staring at the letters over the door. No Admittance. She was behind those doors, somewhere, hanging to life by a string.
“Was she afraid?” He couldn’t bear it if she had been scared, Jake carrying her out, her wondering if she’d live. And a very selfish part hoped she had thought something of him.
“No. I didn’t know she had been hit until she passed out at the edge of the pickup point. If I had just taken a second more to look at her, maybe she wouldn’t have lost so much blood. She ran way, way too far with an injury like that.”
“You would have gotten both of you killed if you paused for a second.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” Jake ran a hand through his hair. Someone must have given him a rag because his hands were clean, but his arms were still spattered.
Jake said, “She was worried you hated her for my part in the clearing. And I’m not sorry. I knew those guards were there. I could see them out of the corner of my eye before you even said anything. They were ready to take aim until I slid my hand…”
Jake sucked in a breath. “I know that was hard for you to watch, but if she didn’t…”
He started to say something, hesitated, then finally said, “Her last words to me were to tell you she loved you. She wasn’t afraid for herself. She was afraid for you. She thought her pain was over.”
Chase groaned and covered his face in his hands. She loved him. He knew it, but he’d waited over a year for those words, dreamed of them every night. Had demanded them during their bondage play, and had suffered the look of torment in her eyes because he had been stupid enough to command her not to love him. And now he might only ever hear them through Jake. “I don’t know if I can live through this.”
“You can, and you will, because she will live. She’s so strong, and she loves you more than you deserve.”
“I love her, too. I never told her.” Chase stared at that damned door. No Admittance. “I’ve loved her since the day I met her, at her father’s. I fell in love the moment she head-butted me and left me unconscious.”
“You’ll get a chance to tell her, and vice versa.” Jake slapped him on the back. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’re going to wait until she’s out of surgery and while she’s waiting for a room, you and I are going to get wasted.”
“I can’t leave.”
“It’s either a bottle of whiskey or a bottle of tranquilizers. I doubt you’ll let them give you drugs, and I know you hate being drunk, but I don’t see a way for you to make it through this unless you’re two sheets to the wind. I know you.”
Yes, Jake did know him. Too well.
“Your mind is going a mile a minute, and it needs to just stop, so you can reset mentally. So we’re going to get good and drunk. There has to be a bar, a store around here, somewhere.” Jake grinned, no doubt trying to lighten the mood. “You’re going to need it when I tell you what she promised me.”
“What?”
“If I got her out alive, she said she’d get you to say yes to a threesome. Just like the old times. You, Kate, and me.”
“I’m never sending you anywhere with her again.” Chase sighed and closed his eyes. If she lived, he’d give her whatever she wanted. “Thank you for bringing her home.”
****
Kate woke to the sound of light snoring. She wrinkled her brow, unsure where the noise was coming from, so she opened her eyes and regretted it immediately. Her head throbbed, the light far too bright, and she closed them again, biting back the nausea.
She inhaled deeply. That hurt so much more. She breathed shallower this time but caught a whiff of a man’s cologne—Chase’s—and she opened just one eye cautiously.
Chase was asleep in the chair, his feet propped at the end of her bed, snoring softly. He looked exhausted, even in sleep, his shirt wrinkled, and a good growth of stubble covered his face. He was scruffy and absolutely the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen.
She closed her eyes again, not wanting to wake him, but the nausea was too much to keep staring. Instead, she breathed in the scent of his cologne mixed with the light scent of whiskey and focused on the fact that he was here.
Her brow furrowed, and she recalled a time when she was in the hospital, after the plane crash. She’d come awake slightly but was unable to see because of the bandages. But she remembered the scent of that same citrusy cologne, and how a larger hand had held hers, the long fingers squeezing, helping her through the blinding pain.
Chase’s hand. Chase’s fingers. Chase’s cologne.
Had he been there in the beginning? Had he been there for her, all along?
“Chase,” she whispered, opening her eyes again. He stirred, but slept on. “Chase,” she said louder.
He woke, startled, and then his deep brown eyes met hers, and he smiled that devastating smile of his, the dimple in his cheek shrouded in stubble. “Hey,” he whispered. “Let me call the nurse.”
“No.” She struggled for a breath. She didn’t know how long she had to talk, and she only wanted Chase. “It hurts.”
“It should. You had to have surgery. You lost a lot of blood.” He stood and leaned over her, his hand on her cheek. She closed her eyes and sank into his touch. “You saved Jake’s life.”
“He saved mine,” she wh
ispered back, remembering the blood, the pain, and Jake slinging her over his shoulder.
“Yeah, but he didn’t use a bank’s worth of blood.” Chase smoothed the sheets around her sides and took her hand in his. She inhaled again, his scent calming, soothing.
“I know…about it.” Why did it hurt so to breathe? She sucked in another breath and winced. “You were here…before.”
“I haven’t left since they brought you in three days ago.” She heard the confusion in his voice. “Well, I left after you got out of surgery, for an hour.”
She inhaled, wishing it wouldn’t hurt, and tried to make him understand before she lost consciousness again. “No, the first time.” She waved a hand, indicating a time in the past. “You were there, too. In my room.” She inhaled his scent again. “Your cologne. I remember it.”
He blew out a breath and she wished she could steal his air. “Yes. I sat with you every night after the plane crash, until you were conscious.”
“Why? Why…didn’t you…tell me?”
“Go to sleep,” he whispered, kissing her lips gently. “We’ll talk. But you need to heal.”
“Jake told me…stuff.” She sucked in another breath, wishing she could speak more, to tell him she knew what Chase had done to try to save her. She trusted all of him now. He had to know that. “Did you talk…to him?”
“Yes.” Chase shifted. “Jake’s out in the waiting room. He told me the two of you made a deal.”
Ah, the threesome. No, she didn’t want that. Not right now. But she owed Jake for saving her. She’d make him pie. He liked pie. “Am I going to live?”
His hand gripped hers tighter. “Yes.”
“Then tell Jake…I owe him.” She sighed. “You and I…we’ll talk…soon.”
Chase stiffened as she lost consciousness again, slipping from him, her face so pale, whiter than the sheets she lay on. In some ways, he wished she hadn’t come to. He wouldn’t have the seeds of jealousy planted in his gut, waiting to sprout into a green-eyed monster he wouldn’t be able to control.
She owed Jake. What? Sex? A threesome? Fuck. He wanted to hold her, wanted to tell her he loved her. Not hear that she owed his best friend what belonged to him. He wanted to talk to her now, not soon. When the fuck was soon—an hour, a week? He’d waited a year. Over a year.
He felt a little embarrassed that she remembered his part in the hospital after her plane crash. It had started out as duty, keeping her company, because she was his collateral damage. A man took care of things like that.
But it had grown to more, and he had grown to enjoy evenings at her bedside, his laptop open, working as he listened to her breathe. In, out. In, out, the machines beeping, monitoring her heart. Every breath had meant she lived, and one day, maybe she’d love him as much as he already loved her.
But now… He didn’t know. Everything had changed and fuck if Lady Luck didn’t have him by the balls again. He just wanted her to love him. That’s all he wanted.
And now…now he would share her with Jake. On her terms. With no control.
Chapter Eighteen
Two months later, Kate wrapped her sweater around her shoulders and went out back to the range. Chase was shooting, and she wondered if he was remembering the way she’d made him come the weekend of their birthdays.
Probably not, because something had changed since she woke in the hospital, growing worse since two weeks ago. Somehow, in that short time, she had lost him. And she had no clue how.
She rubbed her hand over the scar on her stomach. She’d recovered, slowly, and healed even slower. But during that time he’d fortified the mask he wore with a wall around him, one that grew higher with each passing day.
The change had started slowly, and at first, she thought Chase was just being considerate, careful, polite. They slipped into a different routine. His aunt came during the day while he worked, to take care of her and make dinner. He slept on the edge of the bed practically, avoiding all contact so he wouldn’t hurt her. He had wanted to move across the hall but she refused to let him.
She loved his Aunt Sophie, and she gleaned a lot of information about the boy he’d been. Intense, even in youth, driven. Painfully shy, hating any attention, especially because he was cute.
Until he hit sixteen and the girls beat a path to his door, his window, his car…wherever he was, they flocked. But he never did serious. Not until after he came home from war and met Diane, the daughter of his uncle’s friend. Only that turned out one-sided.
But Aunt Sophie declared her fit after two weeks and it returned to just Kate and Chase. Kate did her physical therapy three times a week, not so much for her injury but more to get her back into shape, slowly.
She wasn’t allowed to work yet so she sat and twiddled her thumbs, entertained her mind with a small mission of her own, and waited. Waited for him to come home and talk, to tell her what she did was okay, and he was pleased, both as a boss and her lover. She waited to hear that she could finally love him, and yes, they would make it because she’d done exactly as he had asked.
But they had never talked as he had promised. And as the days slipped by, she realized he didn’t intend to talk to her. Ever.
Oh, she had talked, but to a handful of men—the general and other government bureaucrats—as they debriefed her endlessly about the mission. Thank God for Jake because Chase had dropped the ball, refusing to talk to her, failing to warn her about what she could expect from his uncle’s line of questioning.
Jake had stepped in, told her she would be fucking amazing and that he loved her, second cousin style. Chase had sat in the back, silent, cold, and she’d been so grateful she could leave out the details.
The powers-that-be didn’t want to know how they got in. They just wanted to know who, what, why, where. But she did finally discover the bomb had gone off and Zareh Sharan was no more, and she was a heroine.
Not to Chase, though. She got that. But if he was angry about what she did with Jake on that last mission, he had no right, not when he ordered it.
She felt he had tossed the Kate part of her aside for being a whore when he had promised her it wouldn’t matter to him. That he’d only said that because she had been terrified of being raped. They never discussed how he would feel if she went and did her job, just as he had taught her.
She fought the tears as she watched him bend and pick something up, his movements fluid and graceful, those long fingers of his dexterous. Damn him, he trained her to seduce. He was allowed to be the boss, to be a hard-assed, egotistical bastard who had a hand in more evil than the devil dreamed of. If he could be that at work, why was it wrong for her to do her job?
Her phone dinged in her pocket—a text. Probably Jake. She’d seen only him once after the debriefing because she sensed Jake was another source of the problem. Jake was getting the cold shoulder, too, but he didn’t complain. He was a good friend like that.
You going to talk to him soon? Jake texted. Ginger had lunch with him yesterday. He’s spiraling.
Her hands trembled on the phone. Ginger was what he called Charlotte, and she was close to both Jake and Chase.
Spiraling was their code for Chase losing control, and that scared her more than anything. If he wasn’t talking to her, and he spiraled, he was going back to that dark place. She couldn’t say he’d cheat on her, because obviously he didn’t belong to her. You can’t cheat on someone you’re not with. But he’d go back, to the women and the dark sex. And it would kill her.
It’s hard to talk to a wall, Cowboy.
Scale it. Find a way in. I taught you better than that.
He’s your friend. You scale it.
Crowded room, busy street. He won’t kill you.
She wasn’t so sure about that. Actually, at this point, she wished he would just kill her and put her out of her misery. She wished she hadn’t lived, not from the plane crash way back when, and she could have died as Emma, a virgin, dreaming of the day when Alexander Bishop would come back and rescue
her.
She texted Jake, If I scale, and he pushes me away… I can’t live without him.
But you already are, sweetheart. Call me when you’re done. I’ll come get you if you need me to.
Yes, she already was living without him. The only contact she had was in bed, when he slept, after her wounds had healed. The wall would come down and he’d drape himself over her, crushing her to his hard body, holding her as if she would disappear from his grasp.
It became so all she wanted to do was sleep, so he’d touch her. There was no sexual contact at all. He didn’t kiss her more than a chaste thing on the corner of her mouth when he had to.
He’d made no attempt at making love to her, even though they’d cleared her for that a week earlier. She’d told him, and the look he had given her was like an icy knife being driven into her heart.
He only had to twist the knife in her heart to kill her, and she was waiting for it… Waiting like she had when she almost died, waiting in that quiet, silent place where he said he would be. Waiting for him to return. Only this time, the room was full of pain.
Jake was right. She had to talk to him. She couldn’t bear waiting any longer. He needed to twist the knife and kill the love she had for him, so she could be free. She didn’t see him coming back from this, to love her again. She’d let it go way, way too far.
Chase stood at ease in the shooting range, loading the pistol, oblivious she was there, which surprised her because he noticed everything. He didn’t wear protection of any sort. Protection was for wimps, he had said once.
She remembered how loud the discharge had been when she’d been shot, and after, when she had shot the guard. She wished now she had practiced some without any protection. It might have been easier.
