Blaze: A Small Town, Nerdy Girl, Opposites Attract, Protector Romance (Ghost Ops Book 1)

Chapter 29

Blaze stood in a hellish landscape, his heart pounding so hard he could barely hear the gunfire raging around him.

His team was falling apart. The gunfire was coming from all around, tracer rounds exploding against a background that was oddly blurry. Blaze was screaming into the comm, begging for air support.

Except he couldn’t remember the words. All that came out was, “Help! Help!”

It was his fault his men were dying. Because he couldn’t get the right words out. That’s all he could think of. His team was falling apart around him, men bleeding out on the desert floor, and he’d forgotten his words. What kind of fucking operator was he anyway?

On the other end of the comm, the voice maddeningly kept asking what he needed. Who he was. Where he was.

Nothing felt right about it. Nothing at all. He’d been doing this job for years, knew how to call for air support, and he couldn’t fucking find the words.

He sank to his knees, screaming in frustration. A bullet whistled through the night, coming straight for him. Any second it would hit. Any second and his misery would be over. It would all be over. He bowed his head, waiting…

But it didn’t hit. Instead, someone pounded on a wooden door that he hadn’t realized was there. To his left. Pounding, calling his name?—

Blaze woke up. It was Emma pounding on the door, Emma calling his name.

“I’m okay,” he said, his voice hoarse. From screaming, no doubt.

Embarrassment crawled over him. And despair.

It’d been almost a month since he’d had a nightmare, but he’d known in his gut they weren’t gone. Just slumbering, waiting for a trigger. Like always.

He pushed upright, his body wet with sweat, the covers pooled at his feet. He shoved a hand through his hair and gulped in air.

Fuck.

“Blaze, open up.”

“It’s fine. Go back to sleep. Just a dream.”

“Does it happen often?”

His heart hammered and his head pounded. Did it happen often? He didn’t think so, but what was often anyway? For him, anytime it happened was too often.

“It happens when it happens. Go back to bed, Emma.”

She didn’t say anything for a long minute. “Okay, fine. But if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

Talk about it? Hell, he didn’t want to talk about it at all. He just wanted it to stop. He should have known tonight would trigger the dreams. He’d gone on plenty of missions that hadn’t ended badly. Hundreds of them. So why did he obsess over the one that had? It was years ago, and it still haunted him.

Ghost said it wasn’t his fault. But he still felt responsible. Always would.

He’d been due to dream. It’d been weeks since the last one. Then Chance took a hit while they were escaping tonight, one small hit that created a bigger problem when he was clumsy going over the fence, and Blaze had to go and spiral down a rabbit hole in his dreams.

Chance was fine. In a bit of pain, but fine.

He shoved a hand through his damp hair. The dreams were why he lived here instead of on the farm. If his team knew he still woke up drenched in sweat, hoarse, his body trembling, they’d probably think twice about trusting him to have their backs on any mission, let alone one so important it had involved them separating from the military and moving across country.

Chance’s misstep tonight had been his own, but what if it had been Blaze who’d caused his teammate to get injured?

“I’m good,” he called out, swallowing. “Thanks.”

“Okay… What if I want to talk?”

Blaze dropped his head to his hands and squeezed his eyes shut. It had been a tough night for Emma, too. He couldn’t forget that or that he’d promised to keep her safe.

She’d been upset with him earlier. He’d thought about that kiss on the drive home, wondered if she’d be waiting for him. About kissing her again, where it might lead.

If he was up front with her that it was just sex, maybe she’d want it anyway. She’d just gotten out of a bad relationship. Wasn’t likely she wanted another one.

Blaze sighed. He wasn’t getting back to sleep right now, so he might as well get up. If Emma wanted to talk to him, maybe she’d gotten over it.

“I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Thank you.”

He got up and went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and stood beneath the spray to wash away the sweat. Then he toweled off, brushed his teeth, and slid on sweats. He grabbed a fresh T-shirt but didn’t put it on right away. He was still too hot, so he slung it over his shoulder and stalked out of his room.

Emma was on the couch, legs curled beneath her, a cup of something hot in her hands. He didn’t smell coffee, so it must be tea. Her gaze slid over him. He didn’t miss the intake of her breath, and he started to think maybe he should have dragged the shirt on anyway.

He knew what she saw. A few scars, the pucker of a bullet hole in his side where he’d been hit during the mission he still hadn’t gotten over.

Shit happened on the teams. Nobody got out without a few scars here and there. Not all of them were physical, though.

He tossed the shirt over the back of a chair and stalked into the kitchen to grab a beer. One cold beer would do him good. Maybe help him get back to sleep.

He was conscious of the desire for it, but he never let it get the best of him. He was Mary Connolly’s son, and he knew the addiction gene was locked away inside him.

If he let it, it might rule him the way it ruled her.

He would never allow that to happen. One beer, maybe two, and he was always done.

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” he said as he returned to flop onto the chair opposite her, beer in hand.

“It’s okay. I wasn’t sleeping all that well anyway.”

“But you were asleep.”

She shrugged. “Yes, but like I said, it wasn’t good sleep. I kept dreaming that Simon was standing over me. The instant I fell asleep, he was there, hovering, waiting. So I’d wake up again and he wasn’t there at all. But I can’t seem to stop it from happening.”

“I’m sorry, Emma. It’ll get better, but what he did tonight—last night—is too fresh for you. You’ll probably sleep like a baby tonight.”

She nodded. “Will you?”

“Yes.” The word was clipped. A warning not to push.

He took a pull of the beer. It slid down his throat, rippled heat through his stomach despite the cold.

“I’m sorry I had to leave you alone earlier. I should probably explain that it happens like that sometimes.”

“I admit I don’t understand why you can’t make people wait until normal business hours, but it’s not up to me how you run things.”

“Some clients are old contacts from the military. We go when they can be there. Things like what happened tonight—that was an accident. It’s not typical.”

He sure as hell hoped not anyway. They were better than that, but shit went sideways sometimes.

What’d happened was that Chance knocked a crowbar off a container. He hadn’t seen it lying there because it was above his head, but when he headed back toward the exit, he hit it with his helmet.

Because the damned thing had been on the edge of the container, it fell before he knew what was happening. He’d still been trying to figure out what had beaned him when the clatter broke the sound barrier.

One of the guards made a lucky shot when he winged Chance.

Fortunately, they’d run like hell, scaled the fence, and despite Chance getting tangled up, got out without having to disable a guard.

“I hope not,” she said softly. “I have to admit it scares me to think you could get shot doing your job.”

“I’m not going to get shot,” he said roughly.

Hell, he couldn’t promise that, but he was going to anyway.

Her gaze dropped to the puckered scar beneath his ribs. “Looks like you weren’t so lucky before.”

“It was a long time ago.”

She sipped her tea. Her small hands curled around the mug, and he thought of the way she’d sewn up Chance earlier. Delicate stitches. Even.

In combat, you patched up your teammates with clotting agents and bandages. You applied tourniquets and pressure, and you figured out how to keep someone alive until you could get them back to the base.

They were all capable of it, because they had to be, but it wasn’t their main skillset.

Without Emma here tonight, he’d have applied more clotting agent, bound the wound tighter, and checked it in the morning.

Chance had antibiotics and pain relievers, and he knew the drill. Blaze had told him to stay in the farmhouse with the others, but he’d wanted to come back to town, stay in Emma’s apartment. Be ready to help if Emma needed it.

“Were you in combat?” she asked.

“I was.” There was no point in lying when the answers were written on his body.

Her eyes were big as she stared at him. He thought he might drown in those eyes given a chance. What he wanted, more than anything, was to drag her beneath him and lose himself inside her body.

“Is that why you have nightmares?”

He took another swallow of beer, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back on the chair. He didn’t talk about this shit. He’d had to talk about it after the mission because they’d all had psych evals and counseling—those who were left—but he didn’t talk about it now.

Maybe that was the problem.

“I chose to join a combat unit. I was good at my job, and what I did mattered.”

“You were screaming for help.”

His eyes snapped open, and his heart rate picked up. Of course she’d heard him. She’d been pounding on the door for fuck’s sake.

“Not every…” He searched for the word he wanted. Not mission. “Deployment. Not every deployment went as planned. But I’m still alive, and sometimes I dream about the ones that went wrong.”

She dropped her gaze to the rim of her cup as she traced it with a finger. “I’m sorry, Blaze. I know it’s not my business. I’m here because you’re helping me, which means I should probably be grateful and keep my mouth shut, but my job is to help people, too. Differently, sure, but it’s hard for me to see someone in pain and be unable to fix it.”

“I don’t need fixed, Emma.”

His voice came out colder than he intended, but he wasn’t prepared to open a vein for this woman, no matter how much she wound him up inside. Not only that, but he couldn’t.

The more he said, the more questions she would have.

And he couldn’t tell the truth. He hated lying to her, but he had no choice.

He got to his feet, emotion roiling his gut. “I know you mean well, but I don’t want a prescription, I don’t want a counselor, and I don’t want to talk it out like bestie girlfriends at a sleepover, okay?”

“Okay.”

She looked chastened, and he hated seeing that look on her face. Knowing he’d put it there. But it had to stop. She had to know there was a line she couldn’t cross. He wasn’t going to risk the mission or, more importantly to him, her safety by getting her involved.

“We done? You say everything you wanted?”

“Yes.”

Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. He wanted to sit beside her and drag her into his lap, hold her close. Apologize for being a dick.

He couldn’t, though. He couldn’t let her mean that much.

He gave her a sharp nod and walked away.