Chapter Twenty-Eight
Isla
Blond hair, blue eyes, six-and-half feet of muscle, Helios looked at me with disdain. “You know what really pisses me off?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess.” As discreetly as possible, I powered down the cell and put it back in my purse.
“But if forced to, I’d bet my journal on the answer being everything.
” The one and only time I’d met Helios, he’d had two moods.
Pissed off and more pissed off. Nothing seemed to have changed in the past few weeks.
“You’d bet a notebook that’s worth absolutely nothing. What a fucking shocker. Here’s a clue.” Leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “When I get a call not five fucking hours after I get home for the first time in two weeks to come babysit a bullshit trespasser? That pisses me off.”
I didn’t bother mentioning that my journal was my most prized possession. Or that it contained ten years of life experiences—from other people’s perspectives. Because this was how I related to humanity, how I navigated a world full of people when I’d grown up in near isolation.
Now I was a traveler, nomad, drifter—whatever you wanted to call it, but I hated labels.
I lived a solitary life by choice, but I lived it with intent.
No term fit that. Same as how no script reflected my quest to ask every interesting or lonely person I met to write in my journal.
Just one something. A thought, fear, or wish.
But my favorite was when they gave their single best piece of advice.
A decade later, the leather-bound, three-hundred-page journal was full of living, and anytime I needed to fit in a world that didn’t fit me, I opened those pages.
Part of me almost wanted this asshole I’d met the same day I’d met Nix to write something, but Helios didn’t deserve any space on my pages, and I didn’t want his angry thoughts.
But I did want the thoughts of the warfighter who’d sent him.
I wanted that green-eyed SEAL to write all over my pages of life.
I didn’t care that he’d drawn a gun on me or labeled me petite intruse.
I was his little trespasser.
I’d never been anyone’s anything. And being something to that man was a heady, dangerous drug. One I’d been mainlining for the past month, but it wasn’t until tonight that I’d realized how dangerous and pervasive the thoughts of him had become.
Because I was still sitting here.
And I wasn’t putting up any semblance of a front or pasting on any sort of personality flavor as I replied to Helios.
Letting him see my indignation that he was sitting here instead of his predecessor, I set my clutch on the table.
“Sounds like a personal problem.” I picked up my sparkling water.
“You should talk to your boss about that.”
“Nix isn’t my goddamn boss. What the fuck are you doing here?”
Translation, Helios was his own boss. Not that I could picture him working for anyone anyway, especially not following orders in the military.
Which was probably why he wasn’t active duty anymore.
“I was eating dinner in peace until you showed up.” There’d been nothing peaceful about it, which was why I’d sent that text to my brother.
But now I was regretting it. This wasn’t an emergency. It was a crisis of conscience.
“Not what I fucking asked,” Helios snapped.
“It’s exactly what you asked. Just because you don’t like my answer doesn’t make it any less true. And you can add that to your list of you problems.” I needed to text my brother back. And shore up my defenses.
“You’re the fucking problem, woman.”
I smiled sweetly. “Aw, I’m touched.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” He leaned back in his chair and surveyed the dishes on the table before he quickly scanned the busy dining room. “You done here?”
“That depends.” Was he leaving so I could text Wolf?
“Christ. Here we go. Depends on what?”
“Whether or not you’ve paid the bill yet.” I wasn’t letting my brother pay for this.
Helios snorted. “Money. Should’ve fucking guessed.
” He stood and reached into his back pocket.
Coming away with a wallet, Helios pulled out an obscene amount of hundred-dollar bills.
With the same contempt that he’d aimed at me, he threw the money down on the table.
“Let’s go, princess. Your shit’s about to turn into a pumpkin. ”
I tossed an insult right back at him. “Funny, I don’t remember trying out for the fairy-tale princess part in the angry, wannabe Navy SEAL play.”
In a shocking transgression from his usual mode of aggressive Tier One operator behavior, he attentively pulled out my chair for me. Then he reverted to his usual Helios self with a single comment. “Fuck Navy.”
“So you’ve said before.” He’d used the exact term when I was in forced proximity with him on a mega yacht in the Mediterranean. “And thank you, by the way.” I stood.
He grabbed my purse before I could. “For what?”
“Pretending to be a gentleman, paying for dinner, and pulling out my chair.” I purposely didn’t look at my clutch as sudden nerves crawled across my skin like ants.
“Not pretending to be shit, woman. Expediting our exfil.” He scanned the restaurant again. “Let’s go.” Still holding my clutch, he stepped behind me.
“Our exfil?” I glanced over my shoulder.
So close that I could feel his body heat, but not touching me in any way, Helios looked down at me with the hardened stare of an operator. “We gonna have a problem?”
It was most definitely not a question. I read his intent, and the threat was implicit, but all of a sudden, Helios wasn’t the only one ticked off. The nerves from a second ago, the early warning of alarm—they transformed into something so much worse than anger.
Rejection.
Nix had pawned me off on this Neanderthal like I was some sort of problem that had to be dealt with, the same way he himself had tried to pay the hostess to escort me out of the restaurant, and that stung.
Hiding emotions I refused to acknowledge, I took it out on Helios in the form of sarcasm. “Let me guess. Walk out or you’ll carry me out?”
“I was gonna say forcibly drag, but yep.”
I glanced pointedly at my clutch. Now I didn’t care about redacting that text I sent. Helios deserved a visit from my brother. “And you’re going to carry my purse?”
“Yep.”
“So you can search it while my back’s turned?”
His eyes narrowed in warning.
“I can save you the trouble, heathen. We have this little thing called ask—”
“Move, woman.”
Ignoring all the patrons staring at us, wondering if my text had gone through, I walked out of the restaurant.