In Deep - A Secret Twins Romance (Once a SEAL, Always a SEAL Book 6)

by Layla Valentine

  God, how can I have lived so long without this? I feel like I’m going to cry, or maybe explode, and I bite down hard on his shoulder. He moans in response and calls my name and then we’re both collapsing, clinging to each other, refusing to separate even as the earth rushes up to catch us.

  Chapter 9

  Tammy

  “My God,” Connor whispers.

  It’s the first thing either of us has said aloud. I’m still not ready to move, but I do manage to flop my head over to look at him. He’s staring straight up, an awestruck look on his face.

  “You’re amazing,” he says.

  “I can’t believe we did that,” I say.

  He looks worried. “You don’t regret it, do you?”

  “God, no. How could I?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not the way things are done here. I know you take that stuff seriously.”

  “Xavier doesn’t need to know about it,” I say.

  “Okay, but…” his face freezes. “Shit.”

  Panic lances through me. “What?”

  “Xavier. I’m supposed to meet with him tonight.”

  “You are?” I frown. Why would Xavier want to meet with Connor? Xavier rarely meets with anyone, and when he does, it’s usually for something bureaucratic, like giving permission to marry, requisitioning a new building, or changing a work assignment. The only other time I’ve heard of Xavier taking a personal meeting is for disciplinary reasons, but that hardly ever happens.

  Suddenly, though, I’m afraid. After all, Connor and I did just break a pretty enormous rule. True, Xavier must have requested the meeting before we did any concrete rule-breaking, but it’s not like our connection was invisible. If people have been asking Connor whether he and I were planning to marry, that means everyone has picked up on the fact that there’s something between us.

  And that means Xavier knows.

  Connor’s reading my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you think he knows about us?” I ask. “What if he’s planning to punish you?”

  I can see Connor struggling not to laugh. “Punish me?”

  “It’s not funny,” I tell him. “He can exile you from the ranch. We’d never see each other again.”

  The thought is excruciating. How could I cope with never seeing Connor again, after this?

  He kisses my forehead gently. “He doesn’t know anything about this,” he assures me. “He couldn’t. It was that guy Elias who told me Xavier wanted to see me, and that was hours ago, before you and I had done anything Xavier could possibly object to. Even if he wants to talk about you, it can’t be to punish me. Maybe he wants to see what my intentions are toward you.”

  I know better than to ask what his intentions are. Neither of us has any idea whether or not marriage is in our future. That much is clear. I just want the way to be open for more rendezvous here in the forest. I don’t care if it’s against the rules, as long as we’re never caught. There’s no way I can give this up now that I’ve tasted it.

  Connor adjusts his clothes and gets to his feet. He pulls me up and kisses me deeply.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. “First thing. I’ll meet you for breakfast in our usual spot.”

  “First thing tomorrow,” I repeat.

  He kisses me once more and runs away, down the side of the hill, leaving me alone in the woods to ponder the crazy turn my life has just taken.

  Chapter 10

  Tammy

  Three nights later, I lie awake in bed wondering what the hell went wrong.

  I didn’t see Connor at breakfast the morning after our encounter. I stood by the entrance and waited for him for at least twenty minutes, watching as virtually everyone else on the ranch filed in, many of them staring at me and no doubt wondering why I didn’t take a seat.

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I sat in the corner where Connor and I had agreed to meet. I picked at my bacon and eggs, hoping against hope that he would come through the door and surprise me.

  No luck.

  I didn’t see him for the rest of that day. He didn’t show up to lunch or to dinner. I went to bed that first night feeling concerned, but still hopeful. We would have heard, wouldn’t we, if Xavier had exiled him from the ranch? Someone would know. Someone would have said something. Things don’t stay secret long at Pyrite.

  By day two, though, I hadn’t heard anything, and I still hadn’t seen him. When he didn’t show at breakfast, I snuck out of morning sewing and made my way over to the carpentry lodge. I peered in the door. I wasn’t sure where exactly Connor works, but I scanned the rows carefully. No sign of him.

  “Looking for something?” a voice asked. I turned around to see Aaron.

  I threw caution to the wind. “Is Connor here?”

  “He’s been missing for a couple of days,” Aaron said. “We’re not sure what happened. We reported the absence to Xavier, but he told us not to worry about it.”

  That was not encouraging. I mulled it over as I worked on my sewing for the rest of the day. Was it possible that Connor was still on the ranch? It was starting to seem increasingly unlikely.

  Now, lying in bed, gazing at the stars through my skylight, I wonder whether or not I completely misjudged Connor. How could he have disappeared so thoroughly after the time we spent together? Didn’t it mean anything to him?

  Did he vanish voluntarily, or against his will?

  I roll over, punching my pillow. I don’t know what to think. This paranoia, this worry, has infected me like a virus, and I know I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

  Will I ever find the answers? Will I ever know what went wrong between Connor and me? I wish I could speak to him. Somehow, when we were together, the world always seemed to make more sense. Even when we were just sitting together and not talking, I felt calmer and more centered with him beside me.

  Now, I feel more confused and lost than I have in years, and the thought that I might never see Connor again twists in my mind like a burr, agonizing and impossible to ignore.

  “Did you hear about Connor?” Miriam whispers at work the next day. I’m not sure whether she’s even talking to me—Miriam is always whispering at someone while we work on our clothes—but of course, my ears perk up at the sound of his name.

  “What about him?” I ask, setting aside the shirt I’ve been mending.

  She raises her eyebrows. “You don’t know? I thought for sure that you would know, Tammy. You two were so close.”

  I can tell she’s enjoying having information she knows is important to me. “Just tell me,” I hiss, desperate for answers. “Is he okay?”

  “As far as I know,” Miriam says. “The rumor that’s going around is that he just got sick of Pyrite.”

  “What do you mean, got sick of it?”

  “Commune life isn’t for everyone, you know,” she says in an authoritative voice. “He isn’t the first person to come here and decide after a few weeks that it just isn’t a good fit. Well, I guess maybe you wouldn’t know that. The last time it happened was before you joined us. But anyway, people are saying he decided he didn’t want to live off the grid like this, and he went to Xavier and announced his intention to go back to the outside world.”

  “And he just left in the middle of the night?” I find it hard to believe. “Without saying goodbye to…to anyone?”

  A smirk appears on Miriam’s face, and I know she knows what I’m really thinking. Why didn’t he say goodbye to me?

  “I guess there was nothing here he felt that attached to,” she says, coolly threading a needle. “I know you liked him, Tammy. I’m sorry. But you have to realize, he wasn’t really one of us. It takes time for that kind of commitment to grow. I’m sure he had lots of things on the outside that he was more attached to than any of us, or to anything here.”

  I don’t know what to say. It has occurred to me, as I’ve pondered Connor’s prolonged and mysterious absence, that he might have left the ranch. But I had hoped that his reason for leav
ing was temporary. Maybe he had responsibilities to take care of on the outside, or people to say goodbye to there. Maybe he wanted to make sure his finances were in order, since all worldly possessions are left behind when you join.

  I’ve been trying to take it as a positive sign, an indication that he’ll be coming back soon to join us for good. Because why else would he go away without even telling me? What we had between us was real. I meant something to him. I know I did. Our time together in the forest answered that question conclusively.

  I get through the rest of the day feeling like I’m sleepwalking, my hands on autopilot as I operate my sewing machine. I wish I could talk to someone, confirm what happened with Connor, but asking would make me look as desperate as I feel, and some small part of me is holding on to my dignity and refuses to do it. I know, based on the way Miriam talked, that people are already looking at me with pity. As if I’ve been jilted.

  They don’t know the half of it.

  I should have listened to Xavier, I decide as I make my way back to the dormitory. There was a reason he told us to avoid premarital sex. And he was right. How can I possibly be my best self when I’m feeling like this?

  It’s not until I’m climbing into bed that the fear I felt in the forest returns to me—what if Xavier knew, somehow, what transpired between me and Connor?

  He couldn’t have known we were involved sexually when he called for the meeting, of course, because that hadn’t happened yet, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have figured it out at the meeting. I’ve often had the impression that Xavier can read minds; he’s extremely perceptive. He’s also good at getting people to open up, whether that’s getting them to share their feelings or persuading them to confess to infractions.

  Could Connor have been kicked out?

  That would explain why he never said goodbye to me. What if Xavier made him leave right away? Perhaps he’s out there, missing me, hurting just as much over the fact that we’ll never see each other again. Maybe he’s even working on a way to get in contact with me…

  But as this hope starts to balloon in my chest, another idea immediately comes along to burst it.

  It doesn’t add up, I realize. If Xavier knew what Connor and I had done, there would have been consequences for me too. I would have been thrown out alongside him, probably. There’s a chance I would have been allowed to stay, as an established member of the community—Xavier might have seen Connor as the corrupting influence and me as simply weak and susceptible. But there’s no way he would have let me walk away from the incident without so much as a conversation. He doesn’t know about it.

  Which means that Connor wasn’t forced to leave because of what we did. As much as I’d like to think it, as much as it would lighten the load on my heart, the truth can’t be denied. Connor left because he wanted to. Everything ranch life has to offer—me included—isn’t enough for him. He left us and went back to the outside world, and I’m guessing it won’t take him long to forget this place entirely. To forget me.

  I wish I’d gone with him.

  It’s a disturbing thought. I have never, since the day I came here, wished to leave Pyrite. But now, facing the idea that Connor is gone forever, I wish he’d told me he was going to leave. I think I might have actually left with him.

  I roll over, punch my pillow into a more comfortable shape, and try to sleep.

  I wake to a hand on my shoulder, shaking me.

  “Tammy. Tammy, hurry. Get up, get dressed.”

  I blink awake and force myself to sit upright. The hands belong to Nora, a woman in her forties who sleeps in the bed across the aisle from mine. She looks me over and nods, satisfied that I’m awake, then darts out of my sleeping area.

  What the hell is going on?

  I realize that in the distance I can hear the sounds of screams and wailing sirens. Is someone sick? Wounded? We’ve never had an ambulance visit before. It’s against ranch policy, since we’re supposed to take care of all our own needs. I wonder if Xavier would allow medical professionals to be called in for a severe enough case. Maybe it’s a child.

  A group of women are clustered around one of the dorm windows. After pulling on my pants and tunic, I make my way over to join them.

  “What’s going on out there?”

  As usual, Miriam prides herself on having the scoop. “A bunch of cars pulled up just now. They’re bringing the kids out of their dorm. See?”

  I look in the direction she’s pointing. Sure enough, a row of confused and sleepy looking kids are filing across the lawn. I spot Olivia, her hair tousled from sleep, being led to a huge black van that looks like it must be armored.

  “Who are they?” someone asks.

  “Look!” A bunch of men and women in uniform have jumped from one of the armored vehicles and are now running across the lawn. “They’re military!”

  I watch the rifles bouncing on the backs of the strangers as they run. There are no weapons on Pyrite Ranch. This is a peaceful place, a retreat from the violence of the world. It feels so wrong having them here. I can tell the women around me are thinking the same thing. The dorm goes quiet as we watch them.

  “What are they doing here?” Nora whispers, and I hear my own fear mirrored in her voice.

  The soldiers split into three groups in practiced formation. One of them runs toward the men’s dorm, while a second heads for us. Instinctively, we all shrink back from the window, and I don’t see where the third group of soldiers goes.

  A minute later, there’s a knock on the door.

  “This is the U.S. Navy. Open up.”

  The Navy?

  None of us move. We’re frozen, shocked and terrified by everything that’s happening. A moment later, a pounding on the door begins, louder than any knocking. It’s as if a battering ram is being brought to bear on the wood. As we watch, the door splinters and crashes to the floor, and the Naval officers begin to pour in like a flood.

  I back away, feeling for the wall behind me. What’s going on? Are we in trouble? I saw the flashing lights of police cars before, when I was looking out the window…but what could we be under arrest for? Nothing that goes on here at Pyrite is a crime. This is a peaceful place! I want to cry out, to tell the officers they’re making a mistake, but I’m too afraid.

  One of them—a woman—approaches me. “It’s all right,” she says in a firm, quiet voice. “Come with me.”

  “Where are you taking me?” I stammer.

  “Out of the compound.”

  “I haven’t done anything…”

  “We know. You aren’t in any trouble. I promise you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  I don’t know what to think. She sounds trustworthy, and the look in her eyes is gentle. On the other hand, she and her squad have invaded my dorm in the middle of the night. Not to mention that she has that rifle slung over her back—do I dare defy her?

  I decide the best option is to do as she says. I join the line of women filing out of the dorm and we emerge into the cool night air. Some ways ahead, I can see the men marching toward the perimeter gate, outside of which several military vehicles are waiting.

  The third group of soldiers, the one I’d lost track of, reappears. Two of them have Xavier by the shoulders. He appears to be handcuffed. I’m so shocked that for a moment, I stop walking, staring at them. What are they doing with him?

  Before I can get a better look, a hand closes on my wrist and pulls me out of line. I glance up and over my shoulder at a familiar face.

  “Elias? What’s going—”

  “Back off!” he yells. He whips around, maneuvering me in front of him, and I realize to my horror that there are guns aimed at me. “We’re going. Me and the girl.”

  “Let her go,” an authoritative voice calls. “Release the girl and you won’t be harmed. This is your last chance.”

  Elias squeezes me tighter, positioning me as a human shield. I whimper. How can he be so cruel? Elias is one of us!

  One of the soldie
rs steps forward. His nose and mouth are covered with a bandana. Unlike some of the others, he isn’t holding a rifle. He grabs Elias and pries his arms away from me, and I duck out to freedom, quickly rejoining the line of women. Nora wraps her arms around me and I shiver, feeling like I might cry. The soldier is still wrestling with Elias.

  His bandana has slipped and is hanging around his neck, exposing his face. As the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, I get my first good look at him…

  “Connor?”

  He doesn’t react—he’s too busy reaching for cuffs to fix on Elias—but it’s definitely him. Same jawline, same lips, same gentle eyes, even now. How can it be Connor? I don’t understand. This makes even less sense than his leaving the ranch did. I can understand not liking it here, but how could Connor be responsible for the destruction of my home like this?

  Didn’t he care for me at all? What’s going on?

  “Connor?” Miriam appears at my side, clearly having overheard me. She squints at the tussle taking place before us. “That’s not really Connor, is it? Tammy? Is that him?”

  I don’t answer, but it’s him. I’d know him anywhere. I can’t believe that just a few days ago those arms now flexed against Elias, were twined around my back, holding me up as he backed me into the tree in the forest. I can’t believe I once placed kisses along the line of that jaw. I can’t believe he told me he was in marketing, of all things, when he’s clearly part of this military unit.

  How much of what transpired between us was a lie? Was he always planning to destroy the ranch? Or was it something he decided after he and I spent time together?

  And, it suddenly occurs to me to wonder, what happened between him and Xavier that night?

  As I watch, Elias shakes free of Connor’s grip, sending Connor tumbling to the ground. Immediately, he’s off like a shot, sprinting toward the forest. Connor is back on his feet immediately and chasing after him.