Chapter 11
Hemlock
I'm not a man who deals in regrets.
Shit happens, and although I can acknowledge that things could have turned out differently, I don't let shit like that bother me.
I can't recall a moment in my life where emotions made me reconsider an action I've taken. I have had shit go sideways, making me recalibrate and consider what could've been done differently to get the result I initially desired.
But regret? That's for sane people to deal with.
I also can't recall the last time I woke up with my cock aching so badly I have no other recourse than to grip the fucking thing in my fist.
I've never struggled to keep my body under control.
Sex has never been a factor that drives my needs. My control over other aspects of my mind has always made that part of me one of the easier things to manage.
Being around Zara is proving to have the ability to change shit, and I don't fucking like it.
I mean, last night was beyond fucking spectacular, and it pisses me off. She fucking pisses me off.
The quiet around her pisses me off despite every other cell in my body begging for the silence. I know what to do with the struggle. The absence of it at this point in my life is cause for concern. There's no alternate reality where I can just exist. Normal isn't something I've ever hoped for. Hope is for people who don't know any better. Hope is for people who believe in shit that isn't real. It's how people explain all the good and all the bad, taking away free choice and leaving it all to chance.
Hope is absolute bullshit.
Needing to find my restraint, I release my aching cock and manage a shower without touching the fucking thing. My jeans abrade my skin when I pull them on, my length only subsiding a fraction.
As I walk down the hall and take the stairs to the main floor, my irritation grows.
It's too fucking early for death metal, but that hasn't stopped Jericho from blasting the shit through the house.
I bark out a command for the fucking smart device to lower the volume as I cross the kitchen and set to making a fucking cup of coffee.
"You seem more on edge than normal this morning."
I lift my right hand, K-Cup in my grip, and throw up a middle finger.
He doesn't chuckle like I know the men back in New Mexico would. We aren't exactly known for laughing around here.
He doesn't speak again until I turn around, a smoldering hot cup of coffee in my hand.
"Late night?"
I narrow my eyes at him. Is the man keeping tabs on me or some shit?
As if he can read my mind, he holds his hands up. "I got in at two, and your bike was gone."
I know he doesn't owe me an explanation, but there's a part of me that's glad he's giving me one.
"What's with the twenty fucking questions?" I growl, leaning against the counter and taking too large of a sip of coffee.
I fight the urge to wince as the nearly boiling-hot liquid scorches my throat.
He shrugs. "My next job is a bartender position down the mountain. Just trying to get into character."
"Practice on someone else," I growl .
He waves his arm around him, indicating the lack of people.
I continue to glare at him. The man looks like he should be pushing the buttons for the administration of lethal injections for the state rather than pouring drinks and chatting up folks getting drunk.
On the other hand, there's a new wave of women who want to be manhandled because of shit they've either read in books or seen on television.
And there my body goes, responding to what happened last night with Zara.
"When are we getting some more new people?" I ask, needing the information because I have to make the decision either to call an end to this farce of a job or make a plan for when I'll need to have my shit together enough that I don't look like a complete failure when new people arrive.
"Won't be long," Jericho says, his eyes roaming toward the upstairs balcony as if he's not looking forward to there being more people in the house.
I know I'm not really interested in there being more people here, but I knew coming in that nearly every room in this place would have an occupant. Although, I doubt there will be many times when all the team members will be here at the same time. This is more of a landing place between jobs more than anything else. The more we work, the further those jobs will take us from this place. It only makes sense to have other temporary housing in order for us to respond quickly to a situation when we need to.
"Will we know anything about them?" I ask, feeling like a fish out of fucking water carrying on a full conversation with this man.
This may be the most we've tolerated each other since moving in here together.
"If Ace thinks to tell us a fucking thing. He's been more than a little distracted lately. "
I nod, knowing this for myself, but since I can't seem to make much of a dent in my own case, I've seen it more as a relief than an issue of contention.
"Is it always like that with him?"
Jericho narrows his eyes before speaking, annoyance clear in his face. "Eddie Yarrow is an excellent agent."
I take another sip of my hot coffee without speaking.
When he doesn't speak again, I carry my coffee out of the kitchen, feeling his hot stare drilling into my back all the way out of the room.
I have no plans other than going to the bar. Despite it being Christmas Day, I know I'll head in that direction to see if Zara is working. I imagine she'll be the one to take that shift so the old lady can spend time with her family.
I should probably put a little distance between the two of us so she doesn't get any wild ideas about what this is between us, but I know I won't. I know I'll end up at the bar tonight at some point as much as I know that I'll at least be watching her from the shadows when she locks the door and heads home.
Instead of trying to shove all that realization down into a dark corner of my mind, I pull out my cell phone and make a call.
"It's five in the morning here," Hound says instead of offering me a hello.
"I know," I tell him instead of offering an apology I don't mean.
I hear him whisper something to his wife, Gigi, and then the rustle of sheets as he climbs out of bed.
The next sound to meet my ears is the closing of a door and all this time he waits to speak. We talk often, but neither of us fill the time with pointless chatter.
"Is there a problem?" he asks, and I know he's somewhere alone.
Hound is well aware of some of my struggles. Early in my time with the Marines, I got closer to him than any other person I had before or since. I confessed the crazy shit in my head, and he urged me to look on the bright side of things—that there was a use for my type of skills that could keep me on the law-abiding side of things.
My situation here in Tennessee is slightly different, however. My knife skills have the ability to land me on death row, and that's of course something I'd really like to avoid.
"This isn't going to work out."
Silence fills the line. The man knows me well enough to know that it takes a lot for me to make such a confession.
"It's only been a few weeks," Hound says, his voice even and void of judgment.
"Jericho has cleared four cases. I'd like to walk away before I put Ace in a position to fire me."
"You're not there to compare yourself to any other person working on this team. It's an individual job, and Ace isn't going to fire you. You're working with him, not for him. Kincaid is still your boss."
"Do you know something I don't know?" I ask, suspicion in my tone.
"I know that you're good at what you do. I know as well as you do that there was going to be some adjustments with this new assignment."
I nod my head despite his inability to see me. We had several long conversations working through the pros and cons of joining this new team in Tennessee. I chose to focus more on the pros of leaving New Mexico than anything else, convincing myself that anything would be better than all the damn smiling faces and couples in love.
For the longest time, Kincaid thought Hound was planning on uprooting his family, Kincaid's daughter, and grandchildren, and moving them to Tennessee because Hound asked many questions in team meetings on my behalf because it wasn't something I could do myself. I'd rather rage and flip a table over than be put on the spot, asking questions in front of a group of people.
"You got this, Pax. "
I hang up the phone without another word, and I know it won't irritate Hound the way it would most people. He understands a lot of the nuances of my behavior, and I think that's what drew me to him in the first place. Although he kept in touch and ultimately got me the job with Cerberus, we only had a couple of years together with him as my commander in the Marine Corps before he retired.
His plans took him to New Mexico to work with Kincaid, and it only felt right to join him there once I was done in the Corps.
I can't help but feel a sense of failure with how things are going right now.