20. You Never Told Me
Chapter 20
You Never Told Me
Taz
He covered me with his body, blocking the wind that came down from the darkening sky. He was trying to be gentle. It was almost off-putting, and so unlike him. Still, he made it clear that he wasn’t going to give me space.
I knew he never would. He wouldn’t be Kai Griffith if he did.
Instead, he leaned back, pulling me with him until I was on his lap. His hard cock still hung out of his open jeans, the zipper pushed open to the sides.
He wrapped an arm around me, pulling my back to his front, and he placed his left hand over mine, our fingers laced together. It wasn’t hard to notice what he’d seen. It was the dent of an old wedding ring. One that I had thrown into Smith Lake on Fort Liberty.
“You were married,” he said, quietly. “You never told me.”
My jaw clenched.
I hadn’t said his name in over five years. I had refused to, since I finalized my divorce months after joining Lucky 13. I had refused to think of him, even before the ink was dry on our separation.
“What was his name?” Griff asked.
I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to. But I knew I should.
Veder had said that I needed to. But what purpose would that do? To show him how weak I was? How pathetic and small I had been? That the person he met in Afghanistan was a woman so broken, she had run away from a bad, bad man. Then went back to him after we came home, because I was so fucking lonely that it was better than being alone? That I would still be married if Veder and Top hadn’t stepped in? If Charlotte hadn’t noticed a bruise under my collar?
“Taz…”
I shut my eyes.
I felt it. The moment when I’d lose him. He’d never look at me the same. I’d never be the Taz I had always been. But maybe this was for the best. I could rip him of any illusions he had in his head.
“Heath Carlin,” I said, slowly, feeling the acidity of the name on my tongue.
I pulled away from Griff’s soothing touch, pulling off of his lap, until we faced one another, sitting on the ground like two kids in a play yard. I didn’t want to touch him for this. I didn’t want to touch anyone.
“I met him at AIT.” Advanced Individual Training, or AIT, was the time after Basic Training where one learned the specific skills of their trade. Infantry school was where I had gone, with a fast track to the Qualification Course to Special Forces as an X-Ray candidate. “He got injured at Ranger School and couldn’t move on, but I did. We got married after Sapper school.”
“Did you love him?” Griff’s fists were clenched, his jaw set.
His eyes were on me, laser focused. Kai Griffith, doing what he always did. Acquiring a target and focusing on it with extreme prejudice.
“Yes.” There was no other answer to give. “Of course I loved my husband.”
It was stupid to ever think that I hadn’t, though I tried not to. Even as I signed the divorce, there was a part of my soul that screamed that I had to make it work. I could work harder, I could be better. I could give in just a little, and bend just a bit more. If I was just a bit more careful, then he’d be kinder. He wouldn’t hurt me as much if I became what he wanted me to be.
Better.
But I couldn’t.
“Veder knows,” I said, because it was best that I tell him everything all at once. Give him all the reasons to disappear. “He was in the team room when I came in bleeding–”
“Bleeding?” He shouted the word so loud that the birds flew from the trees, and little creatures skittered from the bushes.
This was probably a bad idea. The worst idea I had ever had. It was one thing for Veder or Top to see it.
It was something else for Kai Griffith to know.
But his illusions about me had to end sometime. The fantasy of us. His pursuit of me. He had to see it to believe it. He had to see it before he’d finally leave.
Then the world could be right again. Me, alone. Him, living the extraordinary future that was laid out for him.
I pulled the shirt off my body, letting it roll over my head and down my arms until I was in nothing but a bra.
Then I unclasped that, and let the rest be seen.
Griff had never seen me without clothes on. Not really. Not without the haze of lust. And even then, I was always half clothed, sure to cover what I had to hide from his prying eyes. God bless him for always looking me in the eyes, even in our most physical moments.
But now… he had to see.
“He broke my rib, right here,” I said, pointing at where the bone hadn’t healed right. The small bump beneath my skin that sometimes hurt if I breathed too hard.
Then I pointed to a small scar on the back of my forearm.
“He broke my arm, here,” I said, touching the hardened skin where I had once seen bone. “Dislocated my elbow, too.”
I looked up to look at his perfect features. His sun kissed, tanned face and the beard that always grew out just a little more auburn than the dark hair on his head.
“He stabbed me here,” I said, pointing to a place covered by the black lines of the dandelion tattoo split apart, its white seeds blowing in the wind. “The first time I said I’d leave.”
Kai’s eyes hardened and I had to look away.
“If I wasn’t with him, then I wasn’t allowed to exist,” I said, paraphrasing Heath’s words.
I lowered my head, resigning to the fate of forever being alone. Even if Kai Griffith, son of the Director of the CIA, and heiress Kamilla Griffith, had ever thought that there was a future with me, he’d know that it was bullshit now.
“The sad part was that my chain of command - the one before I was in Lucky 13 - told me what I was going through was just a domestic dispute. That reporting it to the authorities was petty, and cruel…” I almost laughed at the memory. “They said I could ruin a good man’s career.”
“He fucking stabbed you!”
I didn’t bother to hear him. I just barreled on, because I couldn’t stop once the words spilled out.
“He went to work with a bruise on his face. He was choking me and I struck him with a coffee cup. He told everyone we had been in a fight. That I was violent.” I lowered my head in shame. “They called it mutual abuse .”
I remembered the accusations, and the lectures. That we were both to blame, equally .
“You see, I was in the X-Ray Program,” I said, referring to the fast track to Special Forces. “Heath was… well, he was fighting for a slot, you know? But he didn’t make it past Ranger School. He said that his instructors were unfair but…”
“Bullshit!”
I looked up again, to glance at Griff’s expression. His eyes were stuck on the Dandelions.
“Well, whatever the reason, he hated that I made it through the Q-course and hated it when I was sent to you guys as a replacement.” I lowered my head. “Then I got my CIB.”
“Which you fucking earned!”
I almost smiled. Griff had been there. It was an ambush. And when the dust settled, and we came out unscathed, Griff had been the first to clap me on the back and congratulated me on getting my cherry popped. I had never felt more alive than that exact moment.
Being with Lucky 13 gave me strength, until I was able to rebuild myself into someone who could finally leave Heath.
“He didn’t see it that way,” I admitted with a shrug. “I filed for divorce while we were deployed, but the waiting period…” I had to wait months.
He had fought me tooth and nail, contesting the divorce again and again. It wasn’t because he loved me. It was to punish me.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were married?” Griff’s hand reached out, and he grabbed my, circling my wrist, until his thumb rubbed over the pulse on the delicate underside.
“Because I was on my way out of it. You didn’t need to know.”
“But Veder knew?” He looked hurt.
Was his jealousy always centered on Veder?
“Top knew, too.” I said, slowly. I knew it would bother him to be the last to know. “He had to be told, because my husband called in a Red Cross Message to get me back home. He said his mom was dying, and I needed to come back right away.”
“You never left the deployment,” Griff said, his brows furrowing together.
“Because he had faked it, and I knew it.” I forced out a laugh.
Griff smiled, a little, in response. And I liked that. I liked that when I laughed, he laughed. If I was sad, he was sad. He always mirrored what I felt.
“Why was he trying to get you to come back?”
“He said that anytime I was out of range, and not on Facebook, that I was probably out slutting it up and getting gangbanged by you, Top, Goose and Veder, of course,” I shrugged.
“The fuck?” His brows furrowed. “You were in a combat deployment and he thought…”
“Yup.” I said, not waiting for him to finish.
While I knew, in my heart that I was not what Heath said I was. But that never lessened the sting. There was a part of me that believed, beyond what was reasonable, that everyone else’s opinions meant more than my own. That other people’s words had more truth than mine.
“He said I’d sleep with anyone. That I was so desperate that I’d spread my legs for—”
“Is he alive?”
I almost laughed. “As far as I know.”
“Where is he now?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I didn’t want to know.