Chapter Seventy-Two
Phoenix
I knew the second she’d left.
My cell had started vibrating, Judas had shown up in my peripheral with a single questioning look, and I’d had to make a call. Holding my sobbing son, shaking my head once, I’d given Judas the order to stand down.
I let her go.
I let the plan to lure her brother in go, and I let her knowledge of my life and my son walk with her.
I let it all fucking go.
I could protect my son’s life.
I could get her back.
I could find her brother.
But I couldn’t get back that time on the lanai with my son. I couldn’t walk back or justify leaving him to chase a woman who’d cut and run the second it’d gotten real.
Fury bred.
The woman provoked a level of anger in me that was fucking transcendent. Hours later, I was still holding on to it when I watched my son draw in on himself and try to staunch his own grief. Then I saw her predawn exfil for what it was.
Isla hadn’t run from grief. She’d left because of it.
I didn’t know the details, and I didn’t have the time right then to figure it out, but I’d seen enough of the human condition to trust my conviction. Not that it did fuck all for the here and now, because I had another problem.
My son knew she was gone.
Beside himself, Linc was fucking panicking.
Eyes red, shoulders sunk, pacing the kitchen, he stopped only long enough to look at me with utter guilt. “This is my fault.” Devastation made his face crumble. “She left because of me, and she doesn’t even have a house to go to. She doesn’t have a home.”
I grabbed him. “This is not your fault, and she’s okay.” She’d fucking better be, because I was going to throttle her for this—after I made sure she was okay. “We’ll find her.”
“She left in the middle of the night!”
“I know.” Fuck, I knew.
“That means she’s gone, gone. And I didn’t get to say goodbye, or thank her for the Milky Way thing, or tell her I was sorry that I—”
“No.” No fucking way. I gripped his shoulders. “That train of thought ends now. This is not on you. You did nothing wrong. Nothing.” But I had.
Same as last night, tears spilled down his face.
“Lincoln,” I warned.
“It is,” he whispered. “I… I told her something.”
I bent my knees so I was eye level with him. “No matter what you said to her, it didn’t make her leave.”
“I told her I was sad about Mom,” he blurted.
“So am I.” For so many goddamn reasons. Most of all that I failed her and never got a chance to thank her for my son. “I told Isla the same thing. That’s not why she left.”
“What if she doesn’t think we like her?”
How did I explain to a fifteen-year-old that the little intruse was a trespasser?
She didn’t wait around for people to decide if they liked her.
She decided if she liked them. Her whole damn life was on her terms. I got it.
I’d respected her for it. I also wanted to wrap my fucking hands around her throat right now for this stunt, but I couldn’t be a goddamn hypocrite.
I couldn’t blame her for the same reasons I respected her.
But Lincoln was bleeding guilt, I had to triage it, and that was something I was absolutely going to hold her to the fire for when I found her.
Aiming for a redirect, I picked a subject I probably should’ve avoided with a teenager, but I wasn’t going to pretend I was only his father and not a SEAL with a past. “Did Isla tell you where we met or what happened after?”
Linc half nodded, half shrugged. “She said it was in France.” Color flushed his face. “Then she, um, she said you….” His gaze hit the kitchen, and he inhaled. Then his words came out in a rush. “She said you swept her off her feet?”
Christ. The little intruse. I stitched together the facts. “She was trespassing. I picked her up because she was breaking the law.”
Eyes wide, Linc looked up at me.
I circled back to his question. “Isla doesn’t think in terms of people liking her. She decides who she’s going to like, then she works her way in. Trust me, she knows how we feel about her.”
Every damn thought played out across my son’s features as his face fell again. It was like watching a wave of emotions as it rolled and crashed. “Then why did she leave?”
I didn’t want to fucking do it, but I gave my son one of life’s shittiest lessons. “Everyone’s afraid of something, and fear isn’t always rational or something you can control. You have to learn to manage it. But that’s not something you can do for anyone else. They have to be willing.”
With an innocence I wanted to preserve forever, my son gave me a gift I didn’t deserve. “You make me feel less afraid.”
So fucking grateful for this moment, I pulled him in for a quick hug. “I’m honored.”
Stepping back, Lincoln glanced around the kitchen that felt empty without a five-foot-three trespasser. “Are you going to bring her back?”
As soon as I found her. “Yes.”
My son’s expression lost the pain of guilt right before it filled with apprehension. “What if she doesn’t want to come home?”
One word.
One single fucking word, and I knew.
I would walk through hell to bring her back because Isla Sennan was what made these walls a home.
I made a promise. For my son, for me, for her. “I’ll bring Isla back.”