Sweet Girl (Titan)

by Cristin Harber

  A knock at the door startled him. Roman was closer, so he stood and answered it. “Hey, Ray.”

  Raymond was a TKX who’d graduated last year. He had lived in their frat house when they’d been freshmen and had made sure he and Roman didn’t go through too much hell while pledging. Not that the dude had been nice about it, but he had been decent.

  Cash stood, walking toward the door. “Ray. What’s up?”

  Raymond was in his cop uniform, his face paler than Cash remembered. “Can I come in?”

  Roman stepped back, and Cash’s stomach dropped.

  Ray looked sick, ill, ready to fucking die on the floor, and something very bad was about to happen. Dread spiked in Cash’s blood. Certain disaster loomed, and he didn’t know why.

  “I don’t normally do this. But.” Ray swallowed, and Cash watched a knot travel down his throat. “It was her. And you two—”

  Roman stepped forward. “What?”

  Terror tingled in Cash’s fingers, made his lungs ache and his arms go numb. “Ray?”

  “Nicola was in a bad car accident. It careened off the road, caught fire.”

  “Fire?” Roman coughed out the word.

  Cash couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t think or breathe or function.

  “There was an explosion. I’m sorry.” Ray’s brow furrowed.

  Roman shook his head. “What do you mean you’re sorry?”

  Ray’s lips were flat; his jaw ticked. “Someone’s talking to your parents now.”

  “What hospital is she at?” Roman’s voice cracked.

  “She’s not.” Ray cleared his throat. “Nicola died.”

  Cash couldn’t listen anymore. He walked away, his stomach turning. He was going to get sick. Nausea whipped through him, and his eyes burned. His vision blurred, and he didn’t get far. Turning around, he couldn’t believe it was true. But Roman and Ray were still there. He staggered to the couch, dropping. Crumbling. Falling apart. I’m sorry… Nicola died. It repeated over and over and over. Slapping his hands over his ears didn’t help. Threading them into his hair and pulling didn’t either.

  Roman, shouting, brought him back to the living room. Tears fell down Roman’s angry face—Cash’s too—desperate and disbelieving. He’d just seen her. Just left her. Just loved her. Fuck it all, just bought her a goddamn engagement ring because he was going to marry her.

  His head pounded and soul shredded. Bleeding. Dying. Pain too intense, too all consuming. Cash left them, heading to his bedroom. He slammed the door and collapsed onto the bed, clinging to the rabid belief this was an awful nightmare, that this couldn’t possibly be happening.

  Through the wall, Roman’s angry, unbelieving shouts morphed into a heart-wrenching wail. The noise—pain made audible—was all he needed to know. This was real. This was hell, and his life was over.

  Cash grabbed his phone. Hit her name on speed dial. Hey this is Nic. You know what to do.

  No. He didn’t. He’d never been more lost, ever. Over and over, he redialed, listening to her voice until exhaustion made it impossible to push the button again, and he gave himself over to black out.

  ***

  The gray sky matched his gray heart, and Cash had never been more sure he couldn’t make it through the day. Roman was at home with his folks. Cash could’ve gone home, could have gone to their home. But instead, he stayed at his place, hoping to God this was a mistake, a nightmare, and Nic would walk through the door. He waited, watching it for days. Anyone who came by, he ignored. Just him, with a bottle of Jack Daniels, sitting on the couch, waiting until he could wait no more.

  Bleary eyed, he knew today was the day he had to get up, find a dark suit, and make the drive home. Today was the worst day of his life because it ended hope. Cash swallowed, choking on the thought of burying her.

  He made it to the shower, hung-over and wishing he could make the pain stop. He had to pull it together. Now. Nicola deserved better than him showing up unable to walk, swaying and smelling like booze. He scrubbed his hands over days’ worth of a beard, then looked in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes and a tortured face stared back. Just survive today. For her.

  He showered, managed to choke down some toast, and dressed in a suit he’d never be able to look at again. Stuck in a fog, he drove on autopilot to his folks’ house. His dad gave him a hug. His mom cried. Everyone said how sorry they were. And they had no idea.

  No clue how much he loved her.

  No idea how much he hurt.

  He didn’t want to drive with them to the services but didn’t want to sit and wait. He walked over to Roman and Nic’s house. Roman’s house. Because Nicola was gone. He didn’t knock. Didn’t even say hello when he walked in and planted himself on the couch. Slowly, he shook his head, remembering the last time he’d talked to Janet. Nicola’s ring was in his pocket. He hadn’t been far from it since he bought it the day she died, and he wasn’t quite sure what he would do with it. Maybe leave it with her as she was buried? Was that a possibility? He didn’t know what else to do with it. It was just an object, but damn, it meant the world to him. That ring was the only thing he had left.

  Janet walked into the living room and sat on the couch. She wore a black dress, and it somehow made their tragedy all the more real.

  Patting his leg, she smiled sadly, and he couldn’t get any words out. Something would be appropriate. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m so sorry. So many people had said sorry to him, and it didn’t help. So why even volunteer that trite of a conversation piece?

  Janet did what moms do and wrapped him in a hug. “She loved you so much.”

  The knot in his throat had to have started bleeding because raw pain exploded. He should be comforting her. He needed to be the strong one. But the only thing he could focus on was the empty hole in his heart.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came. So he nodded in her hug, hugging her back, then sat up and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  She patted his leg. “Would you like to ride with us, or are you driving with your parents?”

  “No thanks.” He swallowed after finding his voice. “I’ll drive myself.”

  Janet’s brow furrowed, uncertainty painting her features. “You’re family, Cash. You know that?”

  He nodded and stood. “I’ll see you there.”

  Before he collapsed in on himself, he walked to his truck. Hands on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, it felt as if hours had passed, but he checked the dashboard, and only ten minutes had crept by.

  He drove to the church and pressed against a wall in the back. Folks from their hometown, friends he hadn’t seen in years, came up to him, offering condolences. They must’ve all thought it was like he’d lost his sister.

  Tight chested, he faked a half-hearted smile when his parents walked in.

  “Mom…” Words ached when he spoke, so he decided to stop doing it. Besides, the only thing he wanted to do was shout that he loved Nicola, that she was stolen from him, and that his life was over. Instead, he tilted his head toward his dad to say hello.

  Like the man understood, Dad gave him a look that said enough. Hello. I’m sorry. This sucks. I hurt too. Because as much as the Harts loved him, his parents adored Nicola and thought of Roman like their boy. His mom’s eyes were red. Her black dress, just like Janet’s, made his heart hurt. Cash took his mom by the elbow, and they filed to the second row. Like the moms had an unspoken code, his mom pushed him to Nic’s mom, and somehow he found himself seated in the front row, next to Roman, and staring at a closed casket. And he couldn’t breathe.

  The accident had done bad things to her. She’d lost control around a curve, careened off a steep edge, but they’d been assured she didn’t suffer. Because if she’d been alive when her car exploded, if she’d been scared or trapped or… Pain sliced his throat, seared his eyes.

  The service started. People spoke. The church sang. The room moved around him, the service unfolding, but he couldn’t think. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t
focus on anything except the casket. Besides, no one would say anything he didn’t already know.

  Roman stood. Cash’s stomach sank, as though it hadn’t done that a million times over the last few days, then he stood beside his best friend. They stepped forward, meeting four others. With Nicola’s engagement ring still in his pocket, he took his place across from Roman as a pallbearer and walked down the aisle.

  It struck him then that just recently, he had thought about walking down the aisle of their hometown church, but with her on his arm. As his wife. Cash took a deep breath, put in place a stiff upper lip, and did the job that was expected of him and died a little with each step.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  There were a lot of things Nicola had been told she couldn’t do. Couldn’t call, couldn’t write. Couldn’t drive by, couldn’t have any accidental run-ins. But all of the lectures and information had failed to keep her from begging and pleading to see her family, to see Cash, one last time from afar.

  The US Marshal now in charge of her life had pitied her. That had to have been what it was. But no matter, Nicola got her way. And from a faraway hill almost a mile away, tucked in a nondescript car with binoculars, Nicola watched as her casket was buried. Watched as her friends said goodbye, as her family did the same. And she watched, tears streaming as Cash stood there long, long after everyone had left.

  Witness protection had been the wrong decision. But it was done. She couldn’t get out of it if she wanted to, and in reality, she was saving all of them, saving their lives, saving them from physical pain and heartbreak. The more she learned about the Gianori mob, the more she knew about their history of dismembering and destroying families in a physically, painfully, tortured-until-all-were-dead way. And she’d stopped that from happening to her loved ones. She had saved them.

  But Cash.

  Standing there.

  All alone and not leaving.

  All the color bled from her heart as he dropped to his knees and stayed there. Her heart and soul fell with him. There was nothing left of her, just a shell of a person.

  Her eyes blurred through the tears, and she blinked them away, failing to stop their flow.

  “This isn’t good for you, Nicola.”

  Nic looked at the worried Marshal next to her. No kidding. Watching wasn’t supposed to help. This was supposed to hurt. It was punishment for doing what she did, no matter how much she believed it was to save them.

  “Just another minute.” Nic brought the binoculars back up, and she watched pain personified.

  Her stomach fell again. She could handle anger. But somehow, watching the strongest, surest man she’d ever met, come apart… that was too much.

  Gasping for breath, Nicola opened the car door, unable to think clearly. Her lungs ached, feeling like they pumped too fast, but no oxygen made it in. She coughed and sputtered, running from the car, unsure where she was going or what she was doing on a faraway hill.

  Strong arms wrapped around her. She shook her head, screaming for this to stop. It was more than she could handle. The Marshal held her, hugged her, told her it’d be all right, eventually. Nic lost her footing and didn’t try to get it back. But the man took her dead weight, let her sob, and carried her to the backseat of their vehicle.

  This was all too much.

  A steady voice promised her, “One day, everything will be okay.”

  The door shut, countering the Marshal’s promise with nothing will ever be okay. They hit the highway, driving toward a new life and leaving the one she’d wanted since the first day she could remember smiling at Cash.

  ***

  The silence would’ve been too much if it weren’t for the screaming in his head. The noise was so loud Cash couldn’t think about the world around him. He’d been on his couch for hours. Maybe days. Didn’t matter. The second he’d arrived home from the funeral, he took off the suit and threw it away. That didn’t help, so he took the trash out. Still didn’t help. The ring was still with him. He’d transferred it from his suit pocket to the pocket of the closest pair of pants he could find, jeans he’d left on the floor.

  His front door cracked open, allowing a slice of sunlight to come in the dark cave he’d made. Brandy and Hannah. Flinching from the light, he waved at them to leave. “Go away.”

  That was all the energy he had. But they ignored him. If Roman were here, they could focus on him. But he wasn’t, and they would’ve known that. Roman’s car wasn’t out front.

  Hannah lifted a bag from Cracker Barrel. “We thought you might be hungry.”

  “Nope.”

  “Cash…” Brandy’s eyes cut him to the core.

  “Just go.”

  Brandy shook her head. “Hannah, can you give me and Cash a minute?”

  Christ. He scrubbed his face, unsure and uncaring of whatever Brandy had planned. Maybe a good dose of get-the-fuck-up. Perhaps she’d take some tips from a psych class and try to talk him into moving off the couch. Whatever her plan, it would be a waste of their time.

  She sat next to him. “I’m really sorry, Cash.”

  “Everyone is really sorry.”

  “But I don’t think everyone knows how in love you two were.”

  His eyes stung. “Fine. Big secret’s still a secret.”

  “I think everyone thought that you guys were… Well, maybe everyone but Roman. But—”

  “Brandy, I really don’t need this now. I appreciate the food and all—”

  “That day you told me how much you cared for her. That day—”

  “Last week,” he growled. “That day last week when I thought I had life completely under control. That day?” When he knew what the hell was happening, where life was going. Goddamn, his throat hurt.

  “Yes.” It was so unlike Brandy to whisper. “The day you told me you couldn’t imagine your life without her.”

  “Yet here we are.”

  “Here we are.”

  He reached into his pocket, wanting to show her the ring, wanting to throw it across the room, but deciding it was almost sacred. Withdrawing his hand, his fingers grazed over the edge of a piece of paper. He pulled that out instead. Not a piece of paper, but two business cards. Two possible distractions: the seedy world of mob poker and the regimented life of the military. Two ways he could go and maybe survive this.

  “Cash?” Brandy brought him back to his crappy reality. “I just want to make sure you don’t, I don’t know, do something stupid.”

  Hannah walked in with a couple of plates of food. “Hey, Cash, honey. You should eat.”

  There were a lot of things he should do. Eating was on the list but not high enough, and that was part of the problem. Avoiding something stupid wasn’t anywhere close on his list. “Excuse me. I have to make a phone call.”

  Both cards in hand, he headed to his bedroom, still unsure which number he would dial. Cash scraped the corner of the cards across his palm, weighing his options. Whichever one he chose would serve the same purpose: distract him until he could function or at least until it killed him.

  His phone rang. Roman. Cash dropped his head, hurting so bad he didn’t know how to live. But he answered because Roman was his boy, and he was in the same head space as him. Cash crumbled one business card up as he answered, tossing it to the trash. Decision made, it was going to save his life. Roman’s too. “Hey, man. Get home. I know what to do.”

  THE END FOR NOW… Until Cash and Nicola find each other again in GARRISON’S CREED.

  A LOOK AT GARRISON'S CREED

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sighting the target in his crosshairs, Cash Garrison accounted for all of the variables. Wind speed and direction. Distance and range. Now the world would be free of one more bloodthirsty warlord in less time than it would take for the walking dead man to finish his highfalutin champagne toast.

  Hours had passed since Cash nestled into place, high-powered rifle held like a baby to his chest. A thousand yards out from the extravagant mansion, he’d burrowed into position,
melting into the landscape, and waited for this moment. Antilla Smooth, dressed like the million dollars he made as an arms dealer and unaware of the grim reaper sighting his forehead, made his way past the French doors.

  Cash caressed the trigger, knowing exactly how many pounds of pressure it would take to fire the round. He monitored his breaths and heart rate. When his entire body was still, in between beats and respirations, he’d take the bastard out. One less piece of shit strutting on God’s green Earth. The world would be a better place, and Cash’s job for the day would be done. He and the team could find a local bar, find some ladies, celebrate and make a night of it. Good plan.

  He adjusted for a breeze, blinked his eyes, counted down his breaths, and—stopped. Stunned. Frozen in place. Heart pounding like a coal-eating locomotive.

  A woman in a golden dress and sparkled-out jewelry that’d make royalty jealous wrapped her arm around Antilla. A soldier would sell his last bullet for a kiss from her lips. Cash saw her through his scope as though she stood a mere twenty feet in front of him.

  She looked like… but it couldn’t be.

  His spotter spoke the direction in his earpiece. “Send it.”

  Cash spoke into his mic. “Stand by.”

  His spotter whispered again. “Eyes on your target. All conditions accounted for. Go. Send it.”

  Nothing. Cash didn’t speak.

  Earpiece again. “Go, goddamn it.”

  The woman slunk around his bull’s-eye, her beautiful hair piled on top of her head, save for the loose pieces framing her face. Her smile slipped into a laugh. I’ve inhaled gun oil fumes. I’m losing my mind right this second.

  “Cash, man. You there?” His spotter grabbed his attention, wrenching him back to reality.