Chapter Twenty-One Tyler
Chapter Twenty-One
TYLER
“WHAT DO YOU need?” I snap, the throb from my smarting nose now spreading to my temples.
“Damn, it’s apparent we’re not in our happy place. Talk to Daddy,” Sean coos over the line. “Tell me what’s on your mind, son. Oh wait, Tobias sent me the memo via text, and yeah, you are so incredibly fucked.”
“What the hell, man? This is what is so urgent, you’ve been blowing up my phone for an hour?
” I snap, ducking into the Green Room off of the Cross Hall for some privacy just as Preston shakes hands with the British prime minister.
It’s the partial profile of the man joining them that has me shooting off an inquiry to Russell over my earpiece.
Eyeing two of my most trusted just outside the corridor, I give them both a sharp nod before turning down my earpiece and barking into the phone. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“Apparently nothing worth discussing, by your tone, and so sadly, you haven’t fucked her yet.”
“Sean! Little ears,” Tessa snaps in scold. “Get out and smoke that cigarette outside, damn you.”
“He can barely babble, let alone repeat it,” he remarks of his latest addition and second son, Trace. “And I wasn’t going to light it,” he chides his wife, his tone bordering on petulant.
When I hear his screen door creaking and his grumble as he flicks his Zippo, I can’t help my barb as I engage him. “This isn’t a call to check in. It’s a cry for help due to domestication.”
“I’m as content as a married man gets. Trust me, brother. But I do worry for you, and often.” His exhale is telling as he shifts. “Talk to me.”
“I know what’s at stake and have no intention of going there.”
“This seems all too familiar,” he muses.
“Cecelia wasn’t a threat in the way Larissa is. This is an obstacle course loaded with land mines, and she’s fucking pirouetting through it. Probably spinning past one with ease as we speak.”
A long pause ensues as he puts it together. “You sent Julien?”
“Yeah, I did, because this is that serious, Sean, and you’re one of a few who know why.”
“With us, it’s always fucking messy. Tell me about her.”
“Not this messy,” I remind him. “So there’s nothing to tell.”
“Tobias thinks you’re into her.”
“I’m into fucking her. Other than that, I know little because I don’t want to.”
“And?”
“Her story isn’t all that surprising, if her version is the truth of it.
Violent household, physical and psychological abuse gave her inevitable daddy and trust issues.
I can admit I’m dangerously attracted to her, but I can’t entertain any part of it.
She’s got too much of her father’s blood running through her veins and has the same capacity for violence.
If T gave you the details, then you already know this has all been packaged far too neatly.
But what fucks with me most … is she’s been trailing us for fucking years.
Too many years. How in the fuck did we miss that? ”
“Long game, brother,” he reminds through an exhale. “We’re bound to miss something, and I beg you to make peace with that, or at least take pride in what we haven’t missed. Have you talked to him?”
No need to ask which him Sean’s referring to. This secret, in particular, Sean was only made privy to in recent years by the source. Sean was pissed—at first—but understood the why of our secrecy like any other. He wasn’t there, so it didn’t happen.
“No,” I answer, “and I won’t, I don’t want to put this on him.”
“Forever the protector,” he argues. “But you’re in the shit now, so it couldn’t hurt to get some more details. At least so you may have something to barter with down the line.”
“You know I don’t barter.”
“If she’s legit and you let her in, I don’t think any of us would have a leg to stand on in objecting. We’ve all had debts to pay to get our women in and inked.”
“Sean, I’m nowhere near that, and the only thing I’m worried about right now has nothing to do with my dick.”
“So let yourself feast while you figure it out.”
“Figures you’d call to play the tempting devil on my shoulder. The one I’m supposed to ignore.”
“I just want you healthy and whole,” he sighs.
The idea of healthy and whole seems laughable for the moment, and I hold my sarcastic chuckle to spare Sean from gleaning the truth—about what I’m becoming by the day. To protect him. To protect us all from an implosion.
“But that’s what monsters do, isn’t it? How they thrive.”
Larissa’s words replay in my psyche, along with the reflection I saw so clearly in her eyes today.
What’s worse is that she isn’t fucking wrong in the least. That reflection of the monster I saw in her eyes is sure to become more defined in the coming days, possibly weeks.
And that’s only if she survives the night.
“She isn’t the fucking way,” I insist to both of us, that knowledge also bolted into my psyche. “I’m in a place where …” I rethink my confession. “It doesn’t matter.”
“The fuck it doesn’t. Talk to me, brother. I know it’s hard for you to open up.”
“Because I fucking don’t, Sean,” I state, walking toward a window as the cicadas sound loudly on his side of the line, reminding me of my former life.
“We used to talk, once upon a time, without holding a damn thing back.”
“And then we grew the fuck up,” I clap back.
“Yeah, well. I don’t like, no, I fucking hate the fact that it’s changed so much over the years. I mean, Jesus, when I was at my worst, you forgave me. Gave me guidance when you should have stomped my ass. Hell, you’re the reason I stumbled upon my wife.”
“You were in pain,” I argue, “of the worst kind.”
Silence litters the line, his own way of letting me know he thinks the same of me and my situation.
Larissa’s words from earlier hit harder because she nailed the truth about me.
A large majority of Tyler Jennings died with his wife.
What was left of him raised his son, and the rest remains dangling for his friends to glimpse.
But the remainder makes up the soldier Delphine bred.
The Marine and, within a choice blink, a heartless assassin.
Sean’s continued silence tells me he knows he just got his point across before his words fuel it.
“Let me have some stake, some place in your life. Just … give it to me raw, okay? Talk this out with me,” he urges before speaking up.
“Hold up a second …” He covers his phone before projecting his voice.
“Hey, baby girl.” It’s then I know he’s talking to his daughter, Baily.
“Have fun? Good. Go in and see your momma. You’re filthy and need to wash up for dinner. ”
“K, Daddy,” she calls, and a familiar envy strikes me as he gets back on the line. “Sorry, man, you there?”
I stare beyond the DC skyline, which is lit by a bright quarter moon.
Briefly, my mind wanders to Larissa, curious about how she’s faring with Julien.
She’s too intuitive, too calculating, too damned brilliant to fall victim to him tonight.
If anything, she’ll intrigue him. Tamping down any guilt that threatens, I blank it all out.
It’s that mentality that could cost us. I need to get my head straight and in this game before I fuck this up any more than I did the night she knocked.
“Tyler?”
“You want raw?” I rasp out. “I’m the most exhausted thirty-four-year-old I know and could use a few months of boring.
That’s what I’ve realized recently. Other than a few slow months with Delphine when you went to France, I haven’t stopped, really stopped, in twenty years.
So yeah, right now, I could use a long fucking pause. ”
He waits patiently on the line while I run a hand through my hair in frustration, attempting to free my tongue to speak without thinking of who it might bother or hurt.
“I’ve been protecting people for the entirety of my life before I even realized what I was doing, and then after, I made it my mission.
I’ve exhausted myself standing between cause and conflict and doing it without putting up any fight.
” I let out a harsh breath. “I’ve done a thousand things in the name of protection, most of them I didn’t want to do.
I have at least a thousand more to do before boring is even a possibility.
I’m only a part of the way through. I still have strength in abundance and am sharp in mind, but in my heart—I’m fucking tapped out.
” I glance back at the closed door as he continues to wait on the line, his steady exhales audible.
“But right now, I’ll settle for nine hundred and ninety-nine things to go, because the thousandth thing I’m dealing with right now, she’s going to be hard to get through.
For the first time in a long time, I have no idea what’s on the other side of a plan.
My intuition is screaming at me daily that something is amiss, but I can’t put my finger on it.
So we can talk this to death, but the truth is, I just want to be on the other side of this.
I’m restless in a way I haven’t been in years. ”
The line remains silent for a minute before he finally speaks.
“Brother, I appreciate you in a way I’ll never be able to express, and I know I’m not alone in it. I hear you and know that your sacrifices have been one too many already, so I’d rather you let your fucking ink fade than lose you. That’s the truth. How can I help?”
“You can’t. This goes on too far into the distance to even think about a break.”
“Fine, but think about this, and really think, okay? None of the rest of us are suffering personally or martyring ourselves in that arena because we all know how fucking important that part of it is now, even if we had to learn the hard way,” he admonishes.
“You’re in a place where you can remedy that now, no matter how many stops there are to get to boring.
So, please hear me out in maybe entertaining the idea that what you’re feeling might be self-inflicted. ”