Chapter 3
Black Knights Inc.
“What do you love most about being a soldier?” Sabrina angled her chin toward Hew but fixed her gaze on the fire pit. The red-orange flames danced in her pretty brown eyes, reminding Hew of melting chocolate.
“Notice I didn’t say ‘airmen,’” she added, with a self-satisfied grin. “Airmen are Air Force. Soldiers, even the ones who fly helicopters, are Army. Oh, the things I’ve learned in three months.”
Three months.
A mere ninety days.
In some ways, it felt like she’d just arrived. In others, like he’d known her forever.
When the Lake Michigan wind wasn’t sharp enough to slice through their clothes, it had become their custom to sit out by the fire pit after dinner. There was something mesmerizing about a fire. Something ancient and fundamental. The dancing display calmed the senses and soothed the synapses.
That’s what Sabrina needed. Calmness. Safety. Security.
He’d been doing his best to see that she got all three.
When he’d stayed quiet too long, her expression grew concerned. “Sorry.” She winced. “Was that too personal? I mean, I get how enlisting in this kind of work might be something you don’t want to talk—”
“The thing I like most about bein’ a soldier is makin’ a difference,” he cut her off. “And what’s this bullshit about too personal? I thought we’d established nothin’ is too personal between us.”
He started ticking things off on his fingers.
All the things he’d come to know about her in the three months she’d lived at Black Knights Inc.
and took on the role of his best friend and confidante.
“I know ya got your first period at twelve, and 'cause your ma was a mother in name only, ya thought you were bleedin’ out.” He sat back in his Adirondack chair.
“I know Travis Parker was the first boy to kiss ya. Although I like to refer to him as Little Shit, on account of him catchin’ your lip with his braces. ”
“He came at me like I was a pail of chum and he was a shark.”
“Ayuh. And when he made ya bleed, instead of apologizin’, he told the whole middle school you were the worst kisser in the history of kissers.”
A small smile played on her full lips. “He really was a little shit, wasn’t he?”
“And I know what happened the night Cooper was killed.” That stole the smile from her face, so he quickly switched gears.
“And you know how I used to run to the Portland Head Lighthouse to get away from my foster homes and group houses. I told ya all about how I’d stare out at the ocean and dream about growin’ wings so I could fly above it all. ”
“And I know how you spent weeks trying to find the perfect paint for your motorcycle,” she murmured. “That very specific gray/blue color that matches the Atlantic off the New England coast. I know you named your bike Freedom because that’s what it represents to you. A means of escape.”
“See?” He spread his hands. “Nothin’ is off-limits with us, right?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She slid him a sly look. “I bet there are a few things you’re keeping to yourself. Like the blonde at the bagel shop across the street.”
“What blonde?” he asked, all innocence.
“The one who desperately tries to get your attention every time we go there,” she said, her South Carolina drawl softening the edges of the words.
The first two months she’d been at BKI, she’d kept herself inside the compound. Since Eddy Torres’s death, though, she’d started venturing out—never far, and always with Hew in tow.
The bagel shop was one of their regular stops.
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout.” He took a pull from the beer bottle resting loosely between his gloved fingers.
“You are so full of shit,” she said before throwing back her head and laughing.
He gaped at her.
He’d seen her grin. Heard her chuckle a few times. But her grief had eclipsed any real laughter, and this? Oh, this was as real as it got.
And it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard.
She pointed a gloved finger at his nose, eyes dancing. “You’d have to be blind to miss her signals. She’s like one of those airport people. The ones with the orange flags?” She flailed her arms like she was directing a Boeing 747 into Gate B12.
“Ayuh,” he allowed with a dip of his chin. “But that doesn’t mean I’m interested.”
“Why? You don’t like big boobs and gobs of cornsilk hair?”
Instead of answering, he lobbed his own question. “Let’s say I did take her up on it. How would she feel ’bout you sneakin’ into my room three, four nights a week?”
He’d meant it as a joke. But the way her teasing smile faded told him it had landed all wrong.
“I’ll stop,” she said quietly.
Fuck.
He didn’t want her to stop. The best sleep he got was when she crawled beneath the covers, still cool from the air in the hallway, and warmed herself up by curling against his back.
Him—six foot two, two-ten, trained to kill.
And her—one-thirty soaking wet, and yet holding him like a shield against the dark.
He opened his mouth to tell her as much. But she kept going before he could get a word out. “Or you could just tell her the truth. That we’re only friends. Nothing more.”
Hew lay sprawled on his back, one arm folded beneath his head, as he replayed the memory while staring at the dim lines where the bricks of his walls met the mortar between them.
He liked the idea of brick walls, soaked in years of stories, steeped in a thousand memories. They were permanent. Enduring.
He hadn’t experienced much of either in his life. That is, until he’d come to Black Knights Inc. and, for the very first time, understood what it meant to be part of a family.
Turning onto his side, he buried his face in the extra pillow and imagined all the times Sabrina’s head had lain right there. Right in that very spot.
He’d convinced her after that night by the fire pit that he welcomed her after-hours visits. That he was honored to help chase away her nightmares. That their friendship wasn’t the reason he hadn’t gotten the barista’s number. But even so, her visits had become fewer and farther between.
It’d been nearly a month since she’d slipped through his bedroom door, her luscious brown hair a tangled halo, her dark eyes bleary with sleep and shadowed by the vestiges of bad dreams as she grabbed the stuffed toy from atop his dresser and climbed into bed beside him.
He breathed deeply, imagining her sweet smell lingered even though he’d changed his sheets since her last visit.
Why would it remain? he thought. To remind me she’s past the point of needin’ me?
The idea rankled, hitting a place inside him he hadn’t realized was sore.
Of course, he shouldn’t want her to need him. He shouldn’t want her to be haunted by nightmares that dragged her from her own bed and sent her running into his. But hell if her midnight visits hadn’t been the best thing to ever happen to him.
And he missed them.
Missed the way she hooked her knees behind his. Missed the way she spread her fingers over his ribs and murmured barely there nothings against his neck. Missed the heat of her breath and the softness of her breasts against his back.
Sabrina, the river goddess.
She didn’t know it, but her ethereal sweetness, her delicate vulnerability, had knitted his broken pieces together. Pieces he hadn’t even realized needed mending.
And now, she was dating. Dating.
Not that he begrudged her happiness. Not that he expected her to remain a nun. And certainly not that he didn’t want her to move past the hurt and the horror that had kept her trapped inside BKI and inside her own mind.
But it’s too soon. She’s not ready.
As her friend, he hated the thought of her pushing herself when there was no reason for—
Are ya sure that’s all it is? The unwelcome question zipped through his mind, and he clenched his jaw so hard his back teeth creaked.
Instead of answering, he reached for his watch on the bedside table. Depressing the side button made the face glow blue.
Almost 6 A.M.
Seven hours since she left.
Any other guy might assume she’d snuck in while he was out cold. But Hew slept with one eye open and both ears cocked. A pin dropping was enough to rouse him from stone-cold slumber.
If Sabrina had come home, he’d have heard her footsteps. Heard the tiny whine of her door hinges and the rustle of her sheets.
Seven hours since she left, he thought again. And his brain spooled out a series of horror reels.
Her, stuck behind the wheel because her car lost traction on the wet roads and plowed into a tree.
Her, desperately trying to escape her Prius as it filled with water because she missed a curve and drove into one of the many small kettle lakes that dotted the countryside outside the city.
Her, broken and bleeding and needing him and—
Another thought stabbed into his brain with the destructive force of a Ka-Bar.
Martin...
What if she’d gone to see Martin?
An image of the charming bastard with his perfect hair and even more perfect smile emblazoned itself in Hew’s mind’s eye.
He was reminded of Martin's possessive hand at the small of Sabrina’s back in the parking lot at Red Delilah’s after they’d paid the tab and made moves toward home.
Reminded of the blush on Sabrina’s cheeks when Martin had leaned in to kiss the corner of her mouth.
Hew had pretended not to watch the couple’s exchange as he slipped on his motorcycle helmet. But behind his visor, he’d read Martin’s lips.
“Come home with me tonight.”
Sabrina had made excuses, and Hew had heaved a sigh of relief.
But what if she changed her mind? he thought now.
What if, right at this very moment, she’s curled up against that fuckstick’s back, her nose pressed to his neck, her fingers ghostin’ across his ribs like they used to ghost across mine?
He squeezed shut his eyes, hoping to stop the images that poured through his head. But that only made things worse. On the backs of his eyelids, he could actually see her there, in Martin’s bed, her pale skin contrasting with Martin’s and—