Chapter Thirty-Eight Tyler #2
Knowing now that I would trade everything for the chance to explore what I felt, for the chance to make more. Moments that aren’t motivated or fabricated by mission. It was my decision before I came here, and if I’m going to die for it, I’m not letting go of that. Not yet.
I have only once kissed her honestly, the night we met.
Even then, I was insatiable for her. That connection never once left me, even as I denied us both.
In the same sense, I’ve never taken her body without a hidden motive just beneath the surface, except for the one night I let myself go.
Even then, that blink wasn’t long enough.
I’ve never once shared a laugh with her that could truly ring free.
I deceived her in an unimaginable way. Other than those brief seconds I allowed myself to be intimate with her, I came for this exchange.
Where she knows exactly who I am, and no matter what the moment ends up being, it will lack that deception.
But as my inevitable end draws closer—with no sign of that exchange within reach—I make peace with what truth I have.
Since becoming a protector and Raven kickstarted and shaped my life, I guess it’s only fair it ends it.
“Please, Larissa, let me look at you,” I croak. “Please.”
“It was all lies,” she counters, her tone flat, as if telling me everything I already know.
“A lot of it, yes,” I admit roughly. “But not all, and you know what wasn’t.”
“Why are you here?”
“To confess,” I continue hastily, knowing a venomous objection is on the tip of her tongue and confessing more rapidly as bodies begin to swarm us.
“That what I learned—mastered—long ago”—I swallow—“is that in order to keep a secret, you have to be able to successfully tell a lie. You have to live and breathe that lie. Trick your mind into believing that invention you created as the absolute truth … and create markers in your mind of where the lie stems from.”
She takes a few steps toward the edge of a large tree, and I match her step for step, eyes desperately searching the gap for more of her profile as I continue.
“From there, you branch out a barrier of false details around it to eradicate any trace of what the truth once was. Once you believe it, you live it, instilling those details into the minds of those that surround you, convincing them of the same false reality so they, too, invest in and strengthen your lie as truth. Once that’s done, it’s no longer a lie. ”
I can feel the anger festering opposite me as I confess my failure.
“I’ve been keeping secrets for so long, Larissa, I’ve become a living, breathing fucking lie.
Though I’ve never once lost sight of why I started doing it—for the protection of those I love, it was always that simple—until you,” I admit hoarsely.
“I had all those tricks down pat. Convinced I had the capacity to bend my mind in any direction I want to, without real consequence. To decide when and what to feel and not to feel, but I lost that ability when I deceived and hurt you.”
“So what was the lie?” she asks, though I know she knows.
“That you were my enemy,” I rasp out. “I convinced myself, my brothers, I even convinced you for a time, and it worked. It became the truth, even if it wasn’t true, even when it became a lie again because you called bullshit.
And the whole time, the whole time you were trying to fucking save me,” I grunt through the pain of that truth as it divides me dead center, and she sounds again in the growing space between us.
“What was the secret?”
“That I still had a salvageable heart. You saw it, you noticed even when I tried so fucking hard to hide it. You searched my face every chance you got. So I started to use it, but I was still fucking failing to convince myself, while I convinced myself you were the enemy, believed and behaved like you were. Even the first time I fucked you. But you saw every flicker of doubt when things turned real, every time I faltered, every time I started to believe you. You saw it. Felt it. My reaction to my feelings for you was real, but I maintained the lie to the end. That you were my enemy. That you would betray me. But you know,” I finish, hating myself for her.
“I didn’t know your secret, so how could I know that I never needed to believe the lie? ”
“What do you want with me, Tyler?”
“To look at your face one last time,” I tell her. “I swear it’s all I want. I swear.”
“And your want should mean something to me?”
“No, but it’s the fucking truth.”
“The truth has never existed between us.”
“Yes, it did. You’re outraged and humiliated, but you deserve to know I’m the goddamned fool, Larissa.
I’m the fool. It’s not your fault I lost my faith long before I met you.
Aside from my son and my brothers, I saw no reason to keep going, to be their soldier.
I lost all confidence and conviction in my purpose, in humanity.
I saw no reason to fight anymore. You called me out on all of it.
For being the coward who gave up, and in a way, I hated you for seeing it so clearly when everyone else believed my fucking lie.
But you bravely said what my parents and brothers wouldn’t.
Know you earned my respect for that. Know that fighting with you got my heart fucking beating again, as useless as it is.
” I swallow as I let my severed heart speak for me.
“See, I needed a miracle, had been begging for it for years, but it wasn’t your fault I couldn’t see that miracle when it was confronting the man I’d become.
Refused to recognize it in your touch, your eyes, lips, and words.
It wasn’t your fault that I was too far gone. ”
I see the first suit as he approaches, and Larissa does too, the jerk of her chin denying him the release of the bullet inside the gun trained on me. Hope sparks in my chest at the sight of her refusal.
“You shouldn’t have come here. I have no use for your fucking words.”
“And where would I go?” I ask, knowing there’s no refuge for my reflection.
“Home.”
“I have no home.”
“You expect my sympathy?”
“Please, just let me see your face. Your eyes,” I rasp out. “I want you to see mine. I want you to see me. I’m begging you,” I croak, seeing the intent of the suit closing in. “He’s about to pull the trigger,” I urge desperately. “Please.”
Her hair flies around her shoulders as her eyes briefly meet mine between a set of branches.
“You don’t want that, Tyler,” she warns, and I know exactly why. Have known, because while I was wrong about her intention, I was fucking right about her abilities. The ability to mirror my own behavior in every sense.
The danger I’m in now isn’t from the men surrounding me from twenty feet away, but on the other side of the tree that separates us. I feel it now—in her voice, in her movements, the disconnect—my betrayal triggered the soldier inside her like Delphine’s death did for me.
Just as I think it, she begins to step through a break in the trees, her eyes dark despite their light honey hue, her face impassive as she surveys me as if we had never met.
My bred soldier immediately recognizes hers, and seeing it shatters what’s left of me.
Gun in hand, finger on the trigger, she shakes her head with pure malice.
“Make me understand why you would be foolish enough to come here and die.”
“You’re worth it,” I tell her. “I’ve been searching high and low for you since I withered away in that field the day I lost my wife.
I’ve walked a million steps as a soldier, so few as a man, but for you I’ll walk my last as a man because you restored my faith by loving the worst in me.
” I slap my tears away as she stares down at me, not a single shift in her expression as I crack myself open wide, allowing her to see the spoils of her war.
One she unknowingly won. A flag I give to her freely now in my unconditional surrender.
She sneers at me in victory, perfectly formed, every bit my equal and adversary. Every bit the opponent I saw in her when she wasn’t even fully aware what she was capable of.
“You know,” she drawls, “I swore the man I killed in cold blood before I came to you would be my last, but wouldn’t it be ironic if it were you,” she expels with pure venom.
The accompanying twitch of her lips menacing and devoid of all humanity, and I know it’s my fault it’s there.
Because no matter how strong she is now, it’s her broken heart that fueled this change—that’s speaking for her.
It’s her broken, deceived heart that will pull the trigger.
“If I need to be your last, then let it be me. I won’t beg you for my life. But before you do, just let me look at you.”
She raises her gun, her eyes lit with fury, disbelieving every word I’m uttering.
“Look at me, Larissa.” She does as I declare the only truth she needs to know. “This is me, this man before you—not Master Sergeant Jennings’ son, or Delphine’s soldier, or the Raven or Marine.” I close my eyes against the hate swimming in hers. “This is the real me.”
Forcing myself to take in my reflection in her eyes, I blink rapidly to clear my vision. “The man you now own because you brought back what’s left of him, and the father of the baby growing inside you.”
The gun sounds as the bullet whizzes past me, and I recover in time to see Tula holding Larissa’s wrist. The wrist holding the gun that Larissa just fired as her incredulous eyes search mine.
It’s then that I shatter fully in the truth.
There will never be forgiveness. It’s not possible.
I wish that bullet would have ended me, if only to escape this reality.
I’ve lost all access to her, and I knew it, but it doesn’t make the agony any less debilitating.
Sentence passed, I refuse myself the ability to blink the burn away.
I deserve this. I deserve to feel the hellfire in my chest. In these damning seconds, I recognize exactly where the ache I feel stems from.
The spark of the promise that I found with her, only her, something I thought lost to me—hope.
“Give me that,” Tula snaps, snatching the gun from Larissa like it’s a toy she’s been told never to play with. “You think you can survive killing the man you love? No one survives that, you damned fool,” she says before turning to zero in on me.
“You made a grave error by showing up here. My captains heard me threaten you, you goddamned fool! Do you know what happens to donnas who don’t back their threats?”
“I understand,” I tell her, swallowing my fate, “but you need to know, I acted alone—”
“Yes, yes, this stupid suicide mission of a grand gesture. Look at her,” she snaps, and I do, seeing the shock on Larissa’s face. “Does she look impressed?”
Impressed, no, but stunned as she frantically scours me in wide-eyed shock. She didn’t know.
She didn’t know.
“That’s my baby growing inside you,” I repeat, ignoring Tula’s reaction to the news to take in this moment with her. And it’s worth it, this honest exchange where my mind quiets all reasoning and my heart roars with absolute truth.
The truth that revealing this to her is worth dying for.
That she saved my life not once, but twice.
That she gave me a legacy by simply believing in me.
In that brief break, her eyes flit with emotion as she realizes the true result of our war.
Of her belief in me. In those eyes, I see it.
The minutes we stole, the truth we shared around our deception, and the fucking toxic mess I created as a faithless man.
Knowing they’re hopeless and pointless, my mangled beating heart fuels more words.
“The man you sought out to help you, you brought back by loving him, by loving the worst in me … I’m full,” I whisper, my heart breaking for the baby I’ll never lay eyes on, for the piece of me I’ll leave with her.
“The air I breathe feels like life again.” I crack wide open.
“I feel more now than I have in nearly a decade because of you. You did what you came to do, Larissa, you saved me.”
“Get him out of here,” Tula snaps, and I’m immediately snatched by the shoulders as I give her all the truth I can.
“That’s the truth you need to know, you did that, and I … I’m so sorry, Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry!”
The need to reach her, touch her, and whisk her tears away blinds me as I gaze upon her face.
Realizing that I’m now staring back into the eyes I know.
She’s still there, buried beneath the wreckage I made of us.
In seeing it, a new fight—a different fight—sparks inside me as I shake my head at the debilitating loss of what could have been, against the truth that sets me free. “I’d give anything for the chance to—”
The struggle I’m in cuts me off as my entire being screams for the life I abandoned and the glimpse of what I could have had.
And I want more, goddamnit—I want more! Elbowing the fucker keeping me from her, I break free, desperate to truly live for the first time since I lost my future in the field of wildflowers even as I’m being dragged toward certain execution.
“You’re my miracle,” I rasp out as she stares on at me, “you and that baby we made are my miracles, please—” I struggle against the arms binding me.
“That’s my baby!” I roar as I plead with God for the second time in my life.
With fate or karma or any of the fucking things that can alter my cruel sentence for being a merciless crusader who lied to himself that he wasn’t a man.
Who lived that lie year after year, mission after mission, until he believed it.
It’s my acknowledgment of that man and the hope feet away that has me fighting again.
So simple and so utterly complicated because I destroyed us before we even had a chance to begin.
“That’s my baby!” I shout gutturally, but my view of her is blocked just as I rage against my own stupidity.
Raging against the faithless man I’ve become as the cost of it overtakes me.
Raging against the damning fate that blinded me to the hope staring back at me, her name cracking from my lips before it all goes black.