High Reward

by Brenna Aubrey

  She grabbed my arm with both of her hands and yanked. Hard.

  It didn’t hurt, but it was enough for me to notice her. I spun and faced her.

  Her face was white, her eyes wide, her jaw slack with disbelief. She was always so steady. A rock, really. To see her revealing this much was jarring.

  Even the day I’d broken up with her, the calmness with which she’d flipped that suitcase closed and told me under no uncertain terms would she be leaving the house had almost bowled me over.

  That even voice that hardly shook. No tears. No accusations. No yelling.

  None of the usual.

  It was just another way in which this particular woman was so uncommon. I swallowed. No need to torture myself with what I’d thrown away. Having her meant turning my back on everything else I cared about. And I’d made that choice already, hadn’t I?

  I wouldn’t change my mind.

  “Tell me,” she bit out between clenched teeth.

  I pulled my arm out of her grip. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t lie to protect him, Ryan.”

  My eyes darted to her, and I blinked. Keeping my own raging emotions in check was a challenge, but not one I wasn’t up to.

  “I’m not lying. You’re under the false impression that your father can tell me what to do. Ending this was my decision. Not his. Not Tolan’s. Mine.”

  She absorbed that with a frown, but I knew this wasn’t over. I folded my arms and waited for her onslaught.

  “Making a decision under duress is not a decision of your own free will,” she said quietly. Even now, I could detect only the slightest struggle. Fuck, she was good. I’d once joked to myself that she was a secret Vulcan because of her uncanny perceptiveness that felt like mind-reading.

  With this ability to control her negative emotional reactions, maybe she was a Vulcan in more ways than one.

  “He threatened the program?” she asked when I didn’t reply. “End it or he’d pull his money?”

  I met her gaze. “I had a choice. I made the choice. I want to fly, Gray. I need to fly again.”

  Her eyes widened, and I could see it there, easily—the hurt, the betrayal. Mixed with a touch of disgust. Or maybe that was just what I was feeling for myself because of the statement that I’d left unspoken.

  But she’d heard it all the same. I chose to fly again over having you in my life.

  “You don’t know what you want. Or what you need,” she said in a quiet voice. A voice that left no doubt she was certain of her opinion.

  “I know what I’ve promised. And I’m sorry, but I never made any promises to you.”

  She bit her lip. “So why didn’t you just tell me all this on Sunday? Or for that matter, why didn’t you tell me before you had sex with me on your kitchen counter?”

  I sucked in a breath. In typical fashion for her, just like that first day she’d shown up at my house and I’d been canoodling with the trainer, Gray was pulling no punches.

  Because I knew what I had to do but I didn’t want to give you up, I wanted to say. I chose to be a callous asshole instead. “I didn’t see the point. I dislike the man intensely, yes, but I have no right coming between his relationship with his daughter.”

  Her hand came up, pointing stiffly at me, her eyes aflame, cheeks flushing. Perhaps the closest thing to anger I’d ever seen in her. “And you had no right to make decisions with him about my life without my input.”

  “It wasn’t just your life. Or mine,” I answered quietly, my heart beating like I’d just run laps in the canyon. Perhaps hurting a little, too. Like some invisible hand was squeezing it, making it harder to breathe. “What about the other astronauts? What about everyone involved in the program? Your boss, your colleagues. What about Tolan?”

  She pressed her lips together until they practically turned white. Now that I’d had a minute to calm down, to find some words to explain to her what I’d been thinking when I’d made my decision, I could take the time to just study her.

  She handled upset and disappointment with unparalleled grace and strength, but I could still see the pain in her eyes. Pain that I had inflicted and that I had no wish to continue. I could also witness in her features the dawning realization of how utterly fucked up this situation was.

  Conrad Barrett had laid down the law. A law that neither one of us could afford to break.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose above her eyeglasses and sucked in a deep, noisy breath. “I’m so pissed at him right now.”

  “You can’t tell him.”

  The hand dropped to her side, and she looked at me—looked right through me, actually. Her eyes were like lasers cutting right through my body, leaving deep wounds even as they cauterized my flesh.

  “I’ll decide how I want to handle this. Just as you’ve made your own decisions, the ones you excluded me from.”

  Fuck.

  She stepped back, holding up her hands as if surrendering. “No decision is ever set in stone, Ryan. Just remember that.” Then she cleared her throat, dropped her hands, and said in a voice so void of emotion it was almost dead, “I’m done.”

  She turned and calmly collected her things from the sofa while I watched, trying to think of what to say. I was still standing there like a fool five minutes after she left the room. Scrubbing my face with my hand, I decided then and there that I wouldn’t do the thing I wanted to do most at that moment—follow her to her room, pull her into my arms, bury my face in her hair. Kiss her. Hold her.

  Tell her it would be all right.

  Because it wouldn’t be all right. Not for her and not for me, either.

  I spent half that night pacing the floor in my bedroom but not from the typical fear of closing my eyes to the darkness. No, this episode was fueled by rage.

  I was trying to fight the killer instinct that burned in my blood. I wanted to go on a murder spree. Target number one would be Dear Old Dad. I could break his neck in his sleep, easy. Number two would be this Aaron creep who better not have touched her. Maybe I’d take my time with that one.

  Fuck. I let a breath go, and in spite of myself, I laughed, too. It was ridiculous, but damn if I wasn’t feeling possessive as hell. Possessive of what I did not have.

  Great going, Tyler. As if you weren’t fucked up enough already. Now this woman had me tied in knots and chasing my own tail.

  And though I knew damn well I didn’t deserve her, it hadn’t stopped me from wanting her.

  The next day, Sunday, I left the house early, desperate to get away from her—and from my own thoughts. Not only would I have found it too difficult to look her in the eye again after the things that had come to light the night before, but the thought of watching her pack up her things and leave my house forever was about to drive me half insane.

  So to get my mind off it, and to practice some great visualization during target practice, I went to a gun range with the guys. It was a long drive. Gun ranges were much harder to come by in Southern California than they’d been in Texas. But we had certifications to keep up on, all of us. Whether or not we’d been assigned to NASA in the meantime, we all still belonged to the nation’s armed forces.

  Happily, I had a new showpiece, a rare find—a Sig Sauer P210 Target pistol—to show off.

  “Where the hell did you find that?” Hammer’s eyes bugged the moment I pulled it out of its case. “These things are impossible to find in the States.” I handed it to him, and he went over every inch of it. The other two guys bent over his shoulders to take a look.

  “I guess being an American hero has perks that keep on giving,” Noah said in a flat voice.

  Without even dignifying Noah’s shitty comment with a reply, I spoke to Hammer. “Don’t get your drool on it. It’ll rust.” I snickered at his open display of lust over my newest firearm. “Did the Air Force even teach their fly boys to shoot a gun?”

  He replied with a single finger, straight up into the air, and I laughed my ass off.


  Kirill got revenge on Hammer’s behalf not too much later, because in my distraction, I was shooting like shit today.

  “Look,” Kirill said, holding up my target to examine how far off the mark I’d been. “Ty is shooting like half-blind old woman.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, snatching the thing back from him. It was embarrassing, really. I’d been a marksman on my team while I’d served as a special operator for the Navy. And I usually won any competition among my astronaut colleagues or came damn near close. Not today. Good thing I didn’t have any money riding on it today.

  “Hmm,” the cosmonaut continued. “Perhaps it’s this German piece of shit you’re shooting with.”

  “No way, Kirya. That’s a sweet piece,” Hammer said. “I shot just fine with it.”

  I frowned down at my target before crumpling it up in my tightened fist. Not even visualizing Conrad Barrett’s smarmy head in the middle of that circle had helped.

  In disgust, I pulled off my goggles and ear protection and sat and cleaned my guns in silence while the guys continued to rib me.

  “Loser buys the beer,” Noah said with a slap on my shoulder. And I did just that.

  When I came home, I saw that Gray had just returned from taking a carload of her things to her house. She’d purposely left the packing to after I’d left, most likely to prevent me from offering her help.

  She wasn’t speaking to me, apparently, because when I asked her a question in the kitchen, she turned around and left like I’d never said a damn thing.

  Tonight would be her last night here. The thought of it made me ache with the loss and the uncertainty. Even while she hadn’t been next to me in bed this past week, having her in the house had brought me some comfort—though I’d never admit that to another soul in a thousand years.

  And I’d miss her, goddammit. I already did, in truth. I would have loved to have planned a special dinner or taken her out. The fake girlfriend was filming movie scenes on the other side of the country. If I were seen with Gray, even for a goodbye, it would cause a scandal.

  I couldn’t stand the roving thoughts anymore. Marks on the bottle or not, late on Sunday night, I grabbed that bottle of vodka and downed three shots in a row. It didn’t make me feel any better.

  But it had numbed me enough to summon up the courage to turn off the light. I’d made the decision on the day I’d broken things off with her—the day I’d had that dream. Since then I’d heard it over and over in my mind, asked in his voice. Why are you so afraid—all the time?

  I decided I’d fight to get over this. Move past this. Be able to function as an adult once more. And most importantly, I’d make good on all the promises I’d made to him. If I couldn’t do right by Gray, at least I could by Xander.

  And I needed to prove to myself that I didn’t need her like a crutch to help me get through the night.

  So I sat beside the lamp in my bedroom and dimmed it slowly over a period of twenty minutes until I was in virtual darkness, my hand on the switch. I remembered the things she’d taught me and tried those—mindful deep breathing, focusing on the physical sensations of my body occupying space around me. Even visualizing something pleasant—her smile filled my mind’s eye and then faded, replaced by Xander’s haunted features. My breath seized, suddenly ice cold, and I flipped on the light.

  I reached over and grabbed for her pillow—the one she’d used when she’d slept in my bed until the past week. I tucked it into my closet every day so that my housekeeper wouldn’t change the pillowcase. I held it to my face and breathed in deeply, taking comfort from her smell.

  It took me a while to calm down, but I promised myself I would do this every night until I could fall asleep in the dark.

  As luck would have it, Gray was in the middle of grabbing her last things from the house on Monday afternoon after work when my guests for the rest of the summer arrived.

  I’d taken off work early to greet Karen, who had insisted on driving herself from the airport since she was renting a car. I was working in the garage, trying to salvage my poor, wrecked bike, when Karen pulled in.

  Wiping the excess grease off my hands, I made my way onto the sunlit plateau at the top of my driveway, blinking in the bright light. A nondescript white sedan—clearly a rental car with out-of-state license plates—greeted me.

  No sooner had the car shut off, than the rear passenger door flew open, and a brown-haired boy of about six years old flew out of the back seat, running straight for me. He looked like he’d almost doubled in size since I last saw him, and my heart pinched to know I’d missed so much of his life.

  “Uncle Ty!”

  My gaze flew back to the car, where a petite and very attractive brunette was extricating herself from the seat belt and exiting from behind the wheel.

  I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat to see them again. Xander’s family was now here with me. Would he smile if he could look down on the scene right now? Or would it just make him angry?

  I bent and scooped the boy up in a bear hug, overcome by true joy at seeing him again. “Who is this tall kid? I don’t know any tall kids,” I said gruffly.

  His hands hooked around my neck. “It’s me, AJ!”

  I placed him back down on the ground with a grim shake of my head. “Nope. No way. AJ is like half your height. He’s a little kid. You’re a big boy.”

  “Ty!” he said, his smile revealing a gaping hole where his front top tooth had been. “It’s me. I grew.”

  My mouth thinned, and I put a hand to my chin as Karen approached, her smile equally huge. “Hmm. Fake news. Not possible. Nope.” I shook my head again. “Don’t buy it.”

  “Mom. Tell him it’s me.”

  She put a hand on AJ’s shiny hair. “I’m afraid it’s true, Ty. Boys grow, and they grow fast.”

  “KareBear,” I said with a grin, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek. She returned the kiss, hugging me tightly. When I pulled back, I noticed Gray watching us from the doorway. With a stiff gesture I waved her over.

  “Karen, you met Gray in Houston.”

  Gray approached, her hands laced together in front of her. I avoided looking into her face or looking at her any more than I had to. These were her last moments at the house, and that thought was leaving me with a cold sense of foreboding.

  “Karen, hi,” she said, holding her hand forward to shake. “Great to see you again in person. I feel like I know you so much better because of all the texting.”

  I frowned at that. The two of them had been texting? About what?

  Karen’s smile widened. “I’m so glad I got to see you. I hope we aren’t kicking you out of the house.”

  Gray laughed and waved toward me. “No, he’s doing it, actually.” I froze, but both the women seemed to take it as a joke. One quick glance into Gray’s lovely face, and I noted that the laughter did not reach her eyes. No, those green eyes showed sadness, hurt, and yes, lingering anger.

  “I’m happy to give you some space. I’m sure you have tons to catch up on,” Gray said, reassuring Karen without another look at me. Then she bent. “And you must be AJ. I’ve heard lots about you.”

  AJ’s eyes widened. “What did you hear about me?”

  “Well, I heard that the Tooth Fairy visited you recently.”

  AJ nodded enthusiastically. “She brought me three golden one-dollar coins.”

  “Wow,” I interjected. “Tooth Fairy is paying good dividends these days. She must really be hitting the big time.”

  “What do you want to do while you’re in California? When you’re not working, of course,” Gray said, straightening and self-consciously adjusting her glasses. She’d addressed her question to both of the newcomers. I had no idea why I was so surprised to see how well she took to people she hardly knew. It was her strength, and a big part of why she was so good at her job.

  “The beach,” Karen answered.

  “No! Disneyland,” AJ said, sending a pointed look at his mother.

  “Yes,” Kar
en said with a weary sigh, as if she’d heard the request a few hundred times before that. She put a hand on her son’s shoulder. “Definitely Disneyland, as promised.”

  Gray’s smile widened. “Well I have good news, AJ. I think you’ll have plenty of time to do both. And then some.”

  AJ’s grin grew wider, and he looked at me. “Will you come to Disneyland with us, Ty?”

  I opened my mouth to answer before Karen interrupted. “Ty has lots of work to do, AJ. He’s, um, he’s got a test flight coming up.”

  AJ’s face clouded, and he grew quiet. In response, Karen tensed.

  Gray reacted quickly, appearing to have picked up on his mood immediately. She extended her hand to him. “Hey guess what AJ? Ty has four bedrooms in his house to pick from. Want me to show you so you can pick yours out?”

  AJ’s eyes widened, his previous sullenness vanishing. Karen looked immediately relieved. He took Gray’s hand, and she led the boy back into the house.

  Karen smiled after her. “She so sweet. She’s been a good friend to you?”

  I swallowed. Friend, yeah.

  And by the tightness in my chest, I knew she was so much more. So much more I didn’t even want to begin to examine for myself, much less discuss with Karen. The less said the better, so I merely nodded.

  Karen turned back to me. “Are you in love, Ty?”

  I blinked, suddenly spooked by the feeling that Karen had read my mind. I sent her a puzzled gaze, hoping that would be enough to cause her to elaborate.

  “Keely Dawson. The two of you are all over the news back home.”

  I took a deep breath and let it go, relieved that my secret feelings for Gray—whatever they were—remained preciously secret. “Oh, that.”

  Her brows shot up in surprise.

  “It’s fake, Karen. It was something that XVenture asked me to do to help—to spruce up my image, I guess. Keely makes me respectable.”

  Karen’s mouth dropped, and she had a strange look on her face. “Oh. Wow. They do that? I mean, I heard rumors that things like that are done in Hollywood, but I always just assumed they were strange Hollywood rumors. That’s….” She shook her head in amazement. “I can’t believe they got you to agree to it. That is so not your thing.”