This time, we take a car and I’m glad for it. Not because I think there will be someone waiting there to shoot her again, though that’s always a possibility in this life. But because I can keep her pressed tight against me in the back seat, my arms locked over her. As soon as we pull away from the curb she curls toward the backseat and rests her head on my shoulder.
The driver doesn’t say a word.
At the door to her apartment my feet stop working. A threat was on the other side of this door. Part of me will always be in that room, watching her pull the trigger, just like part of me will always be down in the bottom of a well, waiting until it’s safe to climb out again.
I can feel her watching me.
“Home sweet home,” she says. Her dark eyes reflect back my own exhaustion and relief.
I wait for her while she takes her key out of her purse and turns it in the lock.
It’s obvious as soon as she steps across the threshold that we’re not alone.
All the lights are on, like my brother wanted to be sure I’d see him. He stands in Holly’s living room, looking for all the world like he’s in a business meeting at North Security. He has his phone pressed to his ear, one hand in his pocket. His face says you’re late.
Holly stops next to me and tosses her purse—a flat, small thing—onto a table by the doorway.
Liam ends his call, his green eyes flashing with relief when he sees us. “What do I have to do to convince you to stop sending yourself on reckless, dangerous, pointless missions that are only going to get you killed?”
Heat crawls up the outside of my neck, spurred on by old anger. “There wasn’t time to do an extensive risk assessment, Liam. I wasn’t sitting on my ass in a cushy leather chair, giving out orders while other people are in the field.”
He growls. “If you had kept working for North Security this never would have happened.”
“And leave Holly on the run? No, thank you.”
Holly steps to my side and puts an arm around my waist. It hurts even more now that the adrenaline has ebbed away, but I wouldn’t stop her for the world.
“The point is,” Liam goes on, “you’re a loose cannon. Every time you go off on another one of these suicide raids, it makes it harder for me to do what I’m trying to do. What I’ve finally succeeded in doing, no thanks to you.”
“Yes, you made your piles of money all by yourself. Are you here for a reason or just to piss me off? I never asked for a share in North Security. I never asked for a fucking thing from you. Which is just as well, because you taught me what to expect from you early on, when you left. Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.”
Liam looks like he might strangle me. Well, he’s too late. The time for strangling is long past. “I’m trying to tell you that there were other options. I took one of them. I’ve been in contact with representatives from three other allied countries, and every single one is putting pressure on the government to expose the colonel as a traitor. Once his secrets are out, the senator’s won’t be far behind. The news breaks tonight.”
Tonight has lasted forever, and when he says this, it stops some essential function of my brain. The news breaks tonight.
Holly’s brain still works.
“Elijah is exonerated?” She takes one tiny step toward Liam, like she can only believe him if she’s standing close enough. “We’ll both be exonerated? We’ll be free?”
“Yes.” Liam sighs, and for the first time I can see the toll this has taken on him. He’s all serious looks and expensive suits in his regular life. Right now, his face slips into an expression so familiar it makes my chest ache. “All the details have been leaked to the public. There are a few things left to be declassified, but that’s happening now. Right now.”
I don’t know what to say.
My skin doesn’t feel like my own skin. My body belongs to someone else. For so many years, I’ve been running and hiding and putting myself in the darkest corners of the world. I thought I would always stay there. Until Holly, I thought that’s where I belonged.
After Holly, I knew there was no way out. Resurfacing was too dangerous for me, and it almost killed her. What Liam is saying now—
It means I could have a life.
A million futures spring into being in front of my eyes. They’re wild fantasies, and they only have two things in common: Holly by my side and the oldest possible jealousy.
Through an accident of birth order I was the last one left at home with my father.
Not a day has gone by when I haven’t resented my brothers for leaving. And worse—for staying together when I was alone.
Now they all work together in the same place. Meanwhile I’m as unemployed as a person can be. And yes, I do want a vacation. I do want some cottage on a lake with Holly. I do want to hear the reeds in the lake while we lay on the sand.
But I can’t be that person forever.
“You have options,” Liam says into the cavern of my thoughts. At first he sounds far away, like he’s calling down to me from the top of the well. “Take your time with it.”
My mouth feels dry. “Options.”
“Are you thinking of coming back to North Security?”
“Do you want me to?”
Wanting hits me at the speed of a bullet. It hits all the sensitive parts of me. All the cracks in the armor I’ve worn all my life. All of it crumbles like weak concrete. It’s payback for the years I spent denying that this jealousy and need existed. It’s a good thing Holly’s standing next to me, because if she weren’t, I think I’d fall to my knees on her apartment floor.
I want it so much.
I want it second only to wanting her.
It makes me a different man, a better man, when I work for my brothers. And with them. They’re proof positive that a person can climb out of a dark pit and make a life for themselves that’s not all mayhem and guilt.
Some mayhem, sure.
That comes with the territory when you work in security.
But there’s more.
It’s pure instinct to deny it to him right now, even with Holly’s arm tight around my waist and the question hanging freely between us. No is on the tip of my tongue. But Liam didn’t ask me if I felt worthy of the job, of my place in the family. In some ways I still don’t. In some ways I never will. He asked me if I wanted it.
Not just for me, but so that I can be good enough for Holly. She followed her sister to France out of love. She’s not the type of woman who wants a life on the run.
“Yes,” I tell Liam.
He nods. “Okay. Call me when you’re ready to start.”
Then he leaves, pausing only to clap me on the shoulder. It hurts like a motherfucker. It also feels fucking amazing. We aren’t exactly huggers. Our family didn’t grow up with love and cookies. We had sucker punches and dark wells, but this feels like a start. It feels like a home.
Silence pulls itself over the apartment like a clean sheet. Holly traces the inside of my wrist with her fingertips and takes my hand in hers. The radiator kicks on.
It’s the most normal thing I think I’ve ever experienced with Holly. In another life we could be coming back from a fundraiser that we went to because we wanted to help people, not because she was trying to save me from the clutches of a corrupt government. She’d look just as beautiful in that dress, and I’d look less like a torture victim. It wouldn’t hurt to think about taking off my suit jacket. It wouldn’t hurt at all.