Chapter Fourteen #2
Kala stared at her parents across the conference table. “I’m fine.”
If only they were the only ones who’d shown up. Unfortunately, Lou was here, too. At least TJ was off somewhere probably trying to find a street food vendor.
Her father’s brow cocked. “Sure. That’s why you didn’t go to your own home last night and instead spent the night in a sex club.”
Well, she’d known damn well what would happen if she went back to her place. First her sister and Bri would be all over her asking what happened with Cooper, and then at some point in time Cooper would show up, and she couldn’t handle it.
He would show up because he was stubborn and didn’t like to fail at anything. She was good at failing, so she accepted the reality of their relationship better than he did.
If she stayed with him, it was only a matter of time before he resented her. It was better to break it off now when there were still some good feelings between the two of them. They still had a shot at seeing each other every now and then and wishing each other well.
Like well was what she wanted for him. She wanted spectacular, fabulous, amazing. He deserved a beautiful life and everything he could possibly want. Even if it wasn’t with her.
“Cooper already came by this morning, and he looked like shit,”
Lou announced. Her bestie had come in with a bag for her, a fresh change of clothes, and some makeup. “He said he was an asshole.”
“He wasn’t. He was fine.”
Kala was calm and cool. She hadn’t slept much but she’d used the punching bag they kept in one of the rooms. She’d tried to cry but it wouldn’t come. Thank the universe she had a key to this place because otherwise it would have been a motel room. She’d known she needed time alone. Not that Hunter had been very talkative. He’d just flown the plane and told her if she wanted to talk, he was there. He’d told her whatever Cooper had done, he would be horrified to know how it affected her because he loved her.
But he didn’t.
“That is not what he told me.”
Her father naturally had found her. Stupid trackers. She knew what happened. Her dad called Lou and her bestie pinpointed her location. Lou had done something to them—there had been a whole lot of technical stuff. The end result being she had a brand-new tracker. Not that it stopped Huisman last time, but maybe the next asshole who drugged her and tortured her wouldn’t have the same level of tech.
“You know I am always on your side,”
Lou began cautiously.
This would hurt most of all, and it was precisely why she should have thought this whole thing through. Lou and Cooper had been friends for years. It wasn’t fair to ask her to choose. She wasn’t going to ask her to choose.
Lou was the only one who had always been hers. Always. Except now she was TJ’s and she was happy.
“It’s okay.”
She was going to stay calm through this. Get through it. Tomorrow would be easier. After they settled the situation with Zach, she could move into her new role and start to find the distance she needed. She could sink into a long-term op and not come out for months, maybe years. “I’m not going to make things difficult.”
Her mother’s brow cocked. “You’re not going to make things difficult? This time? You choose this time to go down easy, baby girl?”
She should have known her mother would have problems with her stance. But there would be no explanation that would serve her mom or any of her and Cooper’s friends. He was the sunny guy everyone loved and she was… She was Kala. They were always going to come down on his side. So she wasn’t wasting her time and energy. “Yes.”
A frustrated huff was her mother’s only response.
Good. They were getting the picture. “So can we get off the topic of my love life and get down to business since I’m due to leave for DC in a couple of hours?”
More like eight, but who was counting. She’d made the arrangements to travel back to Langley with Lena. The big bosses wanted an update on the situation with Zach. Her father had agreed with the way she’d handled things, though he’d wished she’d tried harder to get him to come home.
Her father stared at her like he could see straight through her and knew everything she was thinking and planning on doing for the rest of her life. He didn’t, of course, but this was one of Ian Taggart’s patented dad stares. It worked like a charm on her siblings every single time.
Not on her. She simply stared right back.
“Should we go and make some coffee or something?”
Lou asked. “This looks like it’s going to last for a while.”
Her mother’s head shook as she sat back. “They can do this for hours.”
“There’s zero reason for you to go to DC right now,”
he said, obviously giving up.
“On this we will have to agree to disagree,”
she replied.
“Who convinced you to go to DC because I know it’s not Drake,”
her father shot back. “I talked to him this morning, and he’s happy with a conference call.”
“Kala, you can’t leave Cooper hanging like this,”
her mother argued.
What had he been saying to her parents? “I didn’t. I said what I needed to say in Colorado. It’s not like I up and refused to talk to him, but at some point the argument is done and things are over. I’m going to DC for work. I need some time to think about my career.”
“He told me what he said to you,”
her father explained. “I know it was shitty, but you have to understand that he was in a bad place. He also told me that in the middle of that shitstorm he questioned whether or not I knew and let it happen.”
She should have known that Captain America would own up to his mistakes like the stalwart hero he was. “If it helps, he thought I was in on it, too.”
Her father sighed. “He had a bad reaction to some shocking news and he’s trying to own it. You do neither of you any favors by hiding like a coward when I know damn straight you aren’t one. You chose to let him in.”
“I think what your dad is trying to say…”
Lou began because she was always the peacekeeper.
“My father doesn’t need a translator, Lou. He’s trying to tell me I made my bed and I better fucking let Coop lie in it, too.”
She knew exactly what her dad was saying.
“He’s trying to say you can’t fold the first time there’s pressure on you,”
her mother argued.
“First time?”
Kala felt her eyes go wide. “I assure you this is not the first time.”
“Don’t you think I understand that?”
Her father stood and started to pace, a sure sign he was getting emotional. “I know how much that one night cost you. I do not intend to allow you to waste another fifteen years of your life because you can’t handle the fact that he said some stupid words. I know they hurt you. I’ve said shit to your mother that hurt her.”
“Same.”
Her mother nodded in agreement.
They were always in tune. Always.
And yet she knew they fought.
Her father stopped in front of her, kneeling down. “Kala, I know it’s hard for you to process a fight like this. I know because that’s how it was for me in the beginning. It feels like there’s no way out, but there is.”
“I’ve made my decision, and though I know you all think I’m some kind of selfish shit, I’m actually doing this for him.”
Lou sent her mom a look. An I told you look.
“I know that, too. I know what’s going through your head,”
her father insisted. “You think you’re too dark for him. You think you’re sparing him because one day he’s going to wake up and realize he needs some sweet princess who won’t ever give him a moment’s trouble. You think he can’t possibly know what he truly wants because he keeps saying he wants you. That can’t be right because you don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve it because you’re not good enough.”
“Ian,”
her mom began.
“I can say it because I felt it, too. I’ve had all those dark voices in my head. I am so sorry you inherited them. I wouldn’t wish that part of me on anyone, much less my daughter. You have to be stronger than the voices,” he urged.
But her voices were so silky and smooth. Her voices didn’t feel all that dark. Her voices sometimes told her how nice it would be without that light in her eyes all the time. She was born in shadows, and it was only her connections to these people that forced her into a mold she didn’t fit. How much easier would it be if she could simply be herself?
“I want to know what Lena’s been saying to you in therapy,”
her father announced.
Oh, they were not going there. “Therapy is private. I believe at one point in time you told me therapy is sacred, and I never had to talk about what was said there.”
“Yeah, when you were a kid and I was worried about you never talking about what happened in Virginia. Now you’re an adult and I feel like I’m in some kind of battle where I don’t even know the rules of war,”
her father said, running a hand over his head. He stood and started pacing again. “I don’t like that woman, and I’m working to get her off this case. Drake is going to find someone else.”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but she gives me bad vibes. There’s a smugness about the woman,”
her mother added, “like she knows something and she’s going to use it against us.”
Well, it was obvious Lena wasn’t all Team Taggart. “She’s been helping me see some things more clearly.”
Now her mother leaned forward, a tense expression on her face. “What things, exactly?”
“Kala, when I had my sessions with her, she spent most of the time focusing on my friendship with you,”
Lou said. “It was weird. Everything was focused on you. She was supposed to be learning about Zach and how he functioned in the team, but it was you she wanted to talk about.”
“Lena thinks I’m being wasted on this team.”
She winced when she realized how that sounded. She hadn’t meant to be arrogant. She was simply stating the facts, but she’d learned that people often associated facts with internal feelings. Damn. She couldn’t seem to stop screwing up.
Her father put his palms flat on the table, staring down at her. “If you think for one second you’ll be allowed to go solo, you do not know me at all. I’m going to ask you what you would do if Lou up and told you she was leaving the team and going into the field on her own?”
Kala snorted. “She would never do that.”
“But if she did?”
The question came out between her father’s clenched jaw.
“I would stop it, but it’s not the same. Lou isn’t a field operative. It would be too risky.”
Lou held up a hand. “For the record, not something I would do.”
Dad ignored her. “So if Lou decided to do something you felt was dangerous, you would stop her.”
“Of course.”
It wouldn’t matter that it should be Lou’s decision. She wouldn’t be able to watch it happen. Any more than she would be able to watch Coop do it since he wasn’t a field operative. He was too emotional, too tied into his own morality to make the hard calls.
Not that she would be able to help them if she walked away. They wouldn’t be in her life all the time. They would be reports, whispers, stories she heard when—if—she called home.
The thought made her ache. Would that ache go away if she was far from them? Or would it become a part of her, some pain inside that never went away?
“She’s your best friend,”
her father said with a grave tone. “You love her, but no one put her in your arms when she was born. You didn’t watch her grow up. She’s not a piece of your soul, walking this earth. What do you think I’ll do to stop you from hurting yourself?”
“I’m not hurting myself. I’m doing my job, and I think in order to do it to the best of my ability, I might need to work alone. Hell, I get benched half the time as it is.”
Did he think she wasn’t an adult? Hadn’t thought this through?
Lou had gone pale. “You can’t leave the team. I’m here because of you. I’m here to work with you. I’m here because I don’t want to lose you, and that’s what will happen if you go off on your own.”
The words hit her squarely in the chest. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d been thinking? Now that TJ had Lou, she didn’t need her anymore and it was okay to let go.
But what about Kenz? Kenz had Tash. What about Devi? She was reckless, and Bri and Daisy wouldn’t be able to hold her damn feet over the fire to get her to see reason. What about her brothers?
What about her tiny nephew?
Don’t you think they’re all better off without your darkness? Without you in their lives, maybe there won’t be danger since you’re the most dangerous thing of all.
God, that voice still sounded like Julia Ennis.
“You will hurt yourself if you walk away from this team.”
Her father straightened up and had his “decision made”
face on. “If you isolate yourself, it’ll be easier to give in to all of your dark impulses. I should fucking know because that’s what I did. Only nearly losing Liam O’Donnell to that fucker Eli Nelson brought me to my senses.”
Her mom cleared her throat.
“Well, and your mom died. I try not to think about that part. Honestly, meeting your mother, being with her before she pulled all that bullshit fake death thing was what made me reconsider. After my mentor John Bishop died, I went deep. I pulled away from friends and family. I was starting down a very dark path where I stopped seeing people as humans with hopes and dreams and lives and started seeing them as chess pieces to move around.”
“Isn’t he Henry Flanders now?”
Lou asked.
Her father pointed Lou’s way as though she’d made his point. “Yeah, you get too deep in this ‘career’ and there’s a whole lot of faked deaths. It’s a real theme. My point is it took loving your mother to make me reconsider, and then even when she was gone, I was too changed to go back. If you leave this team behind, you won’t return. Cooper is your shot. Baby girl, please take it. Whatever he did, however he hurt you, it’s fixable.”
But she wasn’t. For all her father thought he knew her, the situation wasn’t the same.
Was it?
She stared at him, not knowing what to say.
Her father shook his head. “You’re not going to DC. I’m still your boss, so unless you want to quit, you’ll stand down. Stay here. Go home. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re in Dallas. We have a meeting in the morning now that everyone’s home. I expect you there at eight a.m.”
She knew an order when she heard it. He would move heaven and earth and probably cut her off at the knees. She needed a new plan. “Sir, yes, sir.”
Her father turned and walked out.
Her mother stood up. “And I expect you at the house for dinner on Sunday night for Travis’s birthday. If you’re not there, I’ll send someone to find you. I know you think your father is the hard case, but only because you’ve never put me in a corner. You try to walk away from this family and you’ll find out how hard I can fight, my love.”
Her mother knew how to make an exit.
Kala watched her, not truly understanding why her heart felt so twisted. There was anger at them not respecting her decisions and treating her like a child.
There was this odd warmth that came with the knowledge that her parents wouldn’t ever let her go, wouldn’t ever stop fighting for her. Even when they had to fight her.
It was a lot. So much damn emotion, and she didn’t handle a regular amount of emotion well. She looked at the last person in the room. “Do you have something to say before you walk out?”
Lou’s head shook. “I’m not leaving. I brought a bag with me. I took the second privacy room. Where you go, I go. So if you’re leaving the team, I’m coming with you.”
Fuck it all.
Too much. It was too much. She stood because she needed some air. She walked through the conference room doors.
“Just remember I can track you, and if you think you can cut that tracker out, you’re wrong,”
Lou yelled after her. “Why do you think I put it in your ass cheek? Your arms aren’t long enough to get there.”
She’d told her it worked best in subcutaneous fat and her butt was the only place she had some. Liar. Her best friend was a liar who was trying to keep track of her.
Because she loved her. Because she worried about losing her.
Too much.
She let the door slam shut and strode to the front of the club in time to see her parents leaving in the massive Navigator her father drove.
They had no right to tell her what to do.
Couldn’t they see this was for the best?
Had her father thought about doing the same thing?
She drew in a deep breath and wished she was back in the woods with Cooper and they’d never found Joyce, never revealed the secret of his birth. She wanted to be with him in that space where nothing mattered but the two of them. Where she’d felt safe to be exactly who she was. Where who she was had been a woman in love with a man.
“I knew I’d find you here,”
a familiar voice said.
She turned, trying to tamp down her shock. Because the man standing in front of her shouldn’t be looking for her at all. The man in front of her had no idea who she really was.
Ben Parker stepped from behind the big oak tree.
She was fucked.