Beyond His Control

by Stephanie Tyler

  THE TRAFFIC WHIZZED by and Ava had to concentrate on looking straight ahead out the windshield. “Leo’s supervisor’s looking into it, but she couldn’t confirm—” she started, then stopped before her voice broke more.

  “Ava,” Justin said, but she remained facing the window and wouldn’t look at him. “Your brother’s trained.”

  “So was my father, remember?” She hated the way her voice cracked with fear and grief and anger.

  Sometimes the emotions hit her hard and unexpectedly. Although she’d spent her life trying to slam down the various doors that led to them, they kept popping up in front of her. Because she was a woman, because she was a little sister of an overprotective big brother and because she’d been in love with her brother’s best friend for years.

  That realization hit her like a giant punch in the stomach, probably because it was the first time she’d actually allowed the full truth to break through her consciousness.

  Ava was always much more comfortable around men, felt their mind-set better suited hers. They got her drive in a way few women did.

  Or maybe she was lying to herself, since she knew the man who could handle her could also, and had, brought her so much heartache.

  She didn’t believe that teens didn’t know what love was. No, she believed that teens had a clarity of the soul and that love was best suited to describe what some of them felt because their lives were usually far less complicated.

  She’d convinced herself that she’d gotten over Justin as far as her heart was concerned, that it was just her body that was the problem. She knew better now.

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” she began. “I don’t want you to have to lie.”

  “I didn’t lie…much,” he said, glanced at her and gave her a smile that said, I’m used to trouble. “No one can prove I didn’t come up to visit you on my own. No way for anyone to disprove it, either. That’s good enough in my book.”

  “We need a better plan, Justin. For everything. If you’re not going to let me do anything to help Leo, you’ve got to let me make sure you’re not going to suffer the consequences, and that Leo won’t get into more trouble.”

  “How’s that going to happen? Once they realize that your brother called me first, we’re both screwed.”

  “Not if you were there with me at the time for personal reasons—they can’t prove otherwise. We can just stick to our story.”

  “You know the truth, I know the truth.” He shook his head and stared at the road ahead. The white lines whizzed by so fast that she felt dizzy and out of control. And angry. So very angry.

  “You have no right to come back into my life after nine years, yank me from my home, my job, and then tell me that there’s nothing I can do to help save my brother or my friend.”

  “What do you want from me, Ava? He’s my best goddamned friend. Don’t you think I’m worried, too? Don’t you think I’d lay down my life for him? For you?”

  “You owe me the truth,” she said, her voice back to sounding firm and strong. “You’re asking me to trust you—the way I used to. I’m having trouble doing that. I want us to get past what happened.”

  “We don’t have time for old home week.”

  “That didn’t matter to you back at the motel.” She practically spat the words at him.

  “Believe me, that didn’t matter to you back there, either.”

  “You never even tried to get in touch with me.”

  “You didn’t exactly come after me,” he said, unable to keep the hurt out of his tone.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you knew. You and the entire freakin’ town knew that Gina miscarried and that she found another guy. The worst part was that it didn’t matter that Gina had hooked up with someone else. I didn’t know what to do for her or for myself.”

  “Wasn’t your family there for you?” Ava asked. “I mean, I know you and your parents didn’t always see eye to eye, but they’re still family.”

  “You have a hell of a lot of misconceptions about my family,” he muttered.

  “Your family would’ve done anything for you.”

  “You’re in some very dangerous territory, Ava.”

  “Why can you know all of my family secrets, but I’m not allowed to know any of yours? Probably because there are none.”

  “You wouldn’t have been able to handle my secrets, or my family’s,” he said in a tone that should’ve warned her to back off.

  But she couldn’t. It had been bottled up too long and there were too many unanswered questions between them. “Did you and Gina break up because she lost the baby?”

  The tension Justin gave off was palpable. She wasn’t sure he was even going to answer her, but finally, he did.

  “I don’t know if we’d still be together today if she hadn’t lost the baby. But I stuck to my responsibilities. I stayed faithful to my vows. She didn’t.”

  But he didn’t look comfortable.

  “It’s okay if you’re still in love with her. You’ll probably always be in love with her.”

  “I’m not, all right? I didn’t love her,” he said, his voice raw now.

  “I don’t understand.”

  He wouldn’t look at her, kept his attention on the road. “She didn’t deserve what she got. She didn’t love me, either.”

  “You guys didn’t have to get married. I mean, there were other options…”

  “I wasn’t the father.”

  “What?”

  “My brother was—my millionaire, three ex-wives and God knows how many mistresses by now, brother was the father. And when she told him about the baby, he laughed and threw a couple of hundreds at her, told her to take care of her own problem.” Justin sounded as if he was being strangled, as if it killed him to talk about this.

  But at least he was still talking.

  “So what happened?”

  “She refused. She went home, told her parents and they threw her out. I beat the shit out of my brother. And that’s when everything hit the fan. Since I wasn’t the golden boy, the one poised to run the family business and marry the proper woman anyway, my father threatened to have me arrested for assault if I didn’t comply with his terms. And I sure as hell didn’t want a criminal record—it would have ruined my military career before it’d even started.”

  “So you were forced to marry her?”

  He nodded, his jaw tight. “She also had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. I couldn’t let that happen. I told everyone that the baby was mine, and took all the flak. Everyone in town believed it and I got cut off, but my father kept his end of the bargain and the cops didn’t arrest me.”

  “They would’ve had no right to arrest you.”

  “I put him in the hospital. And then I got married. I enlisted to get a steady paycheck, moved out and Gina and I got a shitty apartment. I never even consummated the marriage. But I would’ve been a damn good father to that baby,” he said fiercely.

  “I know that.” She touched his arm but he jerked it away, as if the gesture was too much.

  “We’ll be there in about an hour,” he said. “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you, and I already have too many things I can’t forgive myself for. I’m not going down with this one on my conscience.”

  “WE’RE GOING UNDERGROUND.” Leo managed to speak the words through panting breaths. Callie was faring much better than he was, although he refused to admit that she’d been holding him up on their run through the dark woods.

  “Underground?” she asked.

  He reached into the pile of leaves before him until he felt the handle. One good yank that nearly tore out his arm and made his head throb harder and in tandem with his heartbeat, and the trapdoor creaked open.

  She peered down. “It’s dark.”

  “It’s safe.” He put a hand on her lower back. “There’s a ladder along this wall. Take it slowly. There’s a flashlight at the bottom of the stairs. Don’t turn it on until I shut the do
or.”

  She paused for a second, until she heard alarms begin to blare. Lights flashed and the sound of barking dogs seemed to come at them from all directions.

  “Go now, Callie,” he told her, and she did.

  Minutes later, they were in pitch-darkness. Then Callie clicked on the flashlight and the thin beam of light helped him down the rest of the ladder to the safe ground she’d already found.

  “What is this place?” she asked, touching the dirt walls then staring up at the low ceiling. Leo crouched down so his head wouldn’t hit it.

  “They used the hideout and tunnel in the 1920s, during Prohibition, to run their illegal liquor. No one’s been down here in a long time. O’Rourke thinks it’s been demolished.”

  “What’s waiting for us at the other end?” she asked.

  “Hopefully, freedom.”

  But before he could explain further, the flashlight dimmed and then went out completely.

  “That’s not good,” she whispered.

  “Scared of the dark, Callie?”

  “No, it’s not the dark that gets me. It’s the small space. Walls closing in and all that.” She tried a laugh but he could hear the real fear in her tone.

  “Put your hands on me,” he said. She reached out and made contact, clearly careful not to grab him too hard, even now. He put one of his hands over hers, where she held him at his waist, and the other he kept extended to ward off walking into any walls. “Your eyes should adjust soon, it’ll get easier.”

  Her figure pressed his again and his entire body reacted. Again.

  Not the time or the place, Leo.

  Sensitive parts of him let him know that they didn’t care about his mind’s cautionary warnings. “Is there anyone at home who’s going to be looking for you?”

  “No, there’s not.”

  “Work?”

  “Considering it was Friday night, not until Monday.”

  “No boyfriends?”

  “No.”

  “Husband?”

  “Is this an interrogation?”

  “I’m just a naturally curious guy, Callie.”

  “What about you? Who’s waiting for you?”

  “There’s no one at home,” he admitted, wondered why it unexpectedly hurt to say that.

  For him, there hadn’t been anyone serious since high school, when Justin had stolen Leo’s girlfriend and told him that Ava was hot all within the first five hours of their meeting. Leo had punched Justin square in the jaw and then pushed the bigger guy right down to the gym floor.

  Back then, Justin had been well versed in the art of the brawl, but Leo had the advantage of his father’s Delta and DEA training. Justin was immobilized in minutes.

  Justin came over later that same day to apologize…and to ask Leo to show him those moves.

  As Leo got more and more involved in his own DEA job, everything else, including the hope for a relationship, fell away. Single-minded, just like his father, he supposed. “Are you doing all right back there?” he asked.

  “Keep talking. It helps when you talk. Tell me about yourself. Tell me a story—anything.”

  “I’ve got something for you. When we get out of this, I’ll take you out someplace. I’d want you to dress up. I can picture you with your hair down, your feet bare…”

  “No place is going to serve us in bare feet,” she told him.

  “I’m thinking of someplace private—an island, the beach—our own private dinner. Your dress swirling in the wind. You’re laughing.”

  “And I’ll know your name, finally? Or will I have to just keep calling you green eyes?”

  Leo smiled. “I’ll let you know once we get there.”

  8

  AVA TRIED to imagine being eighteen and facing the world alone. Having no family or friends, ostracized, facing a threat of jail time and a baby on the way. Then married to someone without love, or possibly little more than pity, and a chill overtook her.He’d been so alone, especially with Leo away at college when Justin first enlisted and went through boot camp.

  She and Justin, both heartbroken.

  She had no idea what to say to him. The story he’d told her was so different from what she’d imagined over the years. Leo had never let on, so she’d assumed that Justin and Gina had been happy but that the pain of losing the baby had torn them apart.

  To know that Justin had never felt anything for Gina, that his family hadn’t stuck up for him…that they’d all been so alone in their pain was nearly too much for her to handle.

  “I wish I’d known,” she said. “I wish I could have helped. Done something.”

  “It’s over.”

  But it wasn’t over for him. She could still hear the pain in his voice when he’d talked about it. “That part’s over, yes. But the feelings—”

  “I told you. There were no feelings between Gina and me.”

  “I don’t mean between you and Gina. I mean, the feelings between you and me, Justin. Maybe they weren’t strong enough…Maybe that’s why you didn’t come to me for help.”

  “You’re trying to make sense out of a senseless situation,” he told her.

  How could she say that’s what she did best? “If you had to do it all over again…” she started to ask, even though she didn’t want to know the answer. Even though she already knew what it would be.

  “I don’t second-guess myself. I’d have done the same thing, Ava.”

  WOULD THE UTTER and complete humiliation never stop? It was made worse as Ava watched him with a look that had too much sorrow in it for Justin’s comfort.

  It’s time to act like a man. His father’s words bounced between his ears until he wanted to scream. The horrible night when his life’s plan had been irrevocably altered was stuck in the forefront of his mind.

  Justin and his brother, James, were fraternal twins, Justin being older by three minutes. Light to James’s dark, that was only the beginning of a long line of differences guaranteed to make sure the brothers were never really friends.

  His brother had laughed—laughed, when Justin had tried to talk to him about Gina being pregnant.

  “You have to help her,” he’d said.

  “I don’t have to do anything…she was stupid enough to get pregnant. That’s not my fault.” James had stared him down.

  “She said you told her that you loved her.”

  “I tell all of them that. That’s what women want to hear, Justin. That’s all it takes to get them into bed,” James had said, sounding so much like their father.

  At his brother’s words, the rage had built inside of Justin to an almost unbearable level.

  The fight had been brutal. And Justin had had to restrain himself from using some of the moves he’d learned from Turk and Turk’s dad. Moves that Turk’s dad had told him made Justin’s hands deadly weapons, which was not a responsibility to be taken lightly.

  He could barely see straight during most of the time he and James had slammed around the floor. He still wasn’t sure who called the police because his parents hadn’t been home at the time. It could have been the housekeeper or even one of the neighbors.

  The police were already there when the ambulances arrived. Next, it was the E.R. James had suffered a concussion, as well as bruises and contusions. Justin had broken his left hand, which still ached to this day when it rained. It was a persistent reminder of the day everything in his life had gone sickeningly downhill.

  His hand still throbbed as he was married a week later. He’d felt worse. The deal, made behind an E.R. curtain, had made him so sick to his stomach that he’d thrown up all over the doctor.

  Marry Gina so she wouldn’t spread a rumor that James, the perfect son, had gotten her pregnant. Take responsibility for the baby or get charged with assault and battery. Justin had planned on enlisting in the navy and getting his degree with the military’s help rather than take money from his parents anyway. But any kind of criminal record would haunt him, and make becoming an officer next to impossible. />
  He’d been so young, so scared and cornered. Turk’s father had died months earlier, the only man who, at that point, might’ve been able to help Justin out of the situation. The man whose influence gave Justin the moral code he’d needed to make something of himself, instead of continuing along the bad-boy rebel path that was getting him nowhere.

  Water under the bridge.

  Gina had sobbed through their lonely, rushed ceremony. Come to think of it, Justin probably would’ve sobbed too, if not for the fact that Gina’s father held a gun to his back. Literally. He’d shown him the pistol hidden in his suit jacket right before the ceremony began.

  He’d never felt more alone than he had on that day—no family to support him, Turk already back at school and Ava gone for her first year of college and no longer speaking to him. Turk would’ve been there for him, but Justin didn’t tell him anything until weeks later. They’d had their own fight about it and hadn’t spoken for over four months, until that horrible day when Gina went for an exam and the doctor discovered that the baby was no longer moving.

  Turk had caught the red-eye, found Justin sitting in a park near his apartment building with his head in his hands and his world once again spinning out of control.

  “I just want to be in control—in charge of my own life, not just following it along,” he remembered telling his friend.

  “Then take it back. Now,” Turk told him. It had taken Justin another few months, but eventually the divorce proceedings were in place and he’d entered BUD/S in his bid to become a SEAL. At that point, he’d wanted the most bone-crunching, emotionally tiring experience he could get, wanted everything wrung out of him bit by bit.

  Becoming a SEAL had been like being rebuilt from the ground up. His instructor at the time told him that he had everything it took to become a SEAL. He just needed to believe it, and in himself. And finally, he had—made it through Hell Week and been secured with twelve others, down from a class that started with over a hundred and twenty men. Control had been hard won, but it had been worth it. And it was all his.

  A firm grasp on his wrist shook him back to reality. And no, this wasn’t the old courthouse in Norfolk. He was headed for his home, with Ava, and his future was uncertain. Again.