5. Dax
5
DAX
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Chuck snaps at me, grabbing my shoulder and trying to pull me away from the bed—but my eyes are fixed on her, and I’m not about to let her get away with speaking to us like that.
I don’t give a fuck what she’s been through. I don’t care how she knows this James. It doesn’t interest me how she found herself in the middle of the woods, driving in a snowstorm and running her car off the road. No, right now, she’s under our roof, which means she treats us with some fucking respect. End of story.
“You really think I’m going to play nice when I don’t even know who you are?” she fires back at me, voice laced with anger. “I—I woke up here, you didn’t give me any choice, I didn’t ask you to bring me here and now you won’t let me go!”
“Yeah, because if we’d left you in that car, you’d have frozen to death,” I snarl at her, pushing my face closer to hers. I can feel it, that red mist coming down, and even as I know I should stop it, I can’t. I don’t do well with anyone fucking up the good thing we have going here, especially not when they act as though we’ve kidnapped them to do it.
“Maybe you should have just left me, then!” she exclaims.
“Trust me, if I’d had my way, I would have,” I mutter. A shock of pain runs up my bad leg—on cold days like this, I swear I can still feel the impact of the bullet where it shocked into my hips, the fragments that were too small to remove still scattered through the muscle and bone.
“I didn’t ask for your help,” she protests. “And I’m not asking for it now.”
“We’re not letting you go back out there, and that’s final,” Callum intones. I turn to face him, eyebrows raised.
“I don’t know, man,” I reply with a theatrical shrug. “If she’s so certain she doesn’t want to be here, then I don’t see why we should force her.”
“Dax,” Chuck growls, clearly not up for my bullshit right now. I ignore him.
“She’s clearly got somewhere she wants to be,” I continue, tossing my hands in the air. “And it’s got nothing to do with us.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Callum snaps at me, but I stare down at her again. I can see something in her eyes, just for a moment—a flash of something I recognize, though I wish I didn’t. Vulnerability. Fear. Covered up with anger as best she can, though it takes everything she has to frame it as fury. Whatever she’s running from out there, whatever brought her to our doorstep, it’s bad—really fucking bad.
And that’s all the more reason for us to get her out of here before it catches up. Because this place we’ve built, this life—it’s the only way I can feel like a functioning member of society. And I’m not going to sacrifice it for the sake of this woman who doesn’t want to be here any more than I want her to be.
“He’s right,” she counters, scrambling up to her knees on the bed again. She looks totally ridiculous, still wearing her wedding dress—still looking as though she’s just a few moments from walking down the aisle. And as much as I hate to admit it, the guy she would have been going to meet was one lucky bastard—she’s hot as hell, even after the mess she’s been through, and even more so with that fiery defiance in her eyes.
“Just give me a coat or something, some shoes,” she begs. “I can leave. I need to leave. You don’t understand, he’s?—”
“Who?” I ask her, before she can go any further. I’m not going to just stand around and let her keep spinning these stories to try and win some sympathy. My brothers might have fallen for it, but I won’t.
She presses her lips together. I take a step closer to the bed.
“Who’s after you, huh?” I demand. “Tell us.”
Slowly, she shakes her head. “I—you wouldn’t believe me. Even if I did tell you.”
I let out a snort of derision. “Damn, that’s handy for you. So you don’t have to tell us anything, huh?”
“That’s not why I’m?—”
“Dax, with me. Now.” Chuck’s tone leaves no room for argument. I glance over at him, Callum standing just by his side, and my heart sinks. I can tell I’ve lost. Chuck jerks his head toward the door, and I grit my teeth.
“Someone should stay here to keep an eye on her,” I mutter, and Callum steps forward.
“I will,” he replies. “Go, Dax. You’re not making this any easier.”
Shooting one last look in the direction of our unexpected guest, I follow Chuck outside, to the main living space of the cabin—a fire is crackling in the hearth, and there’s food on the stove, filling the room with a warm, savory scent. I would normally be starving by this time of night, but food is the last thing on my mind as I glare my brother down.
“What is it?” I ask bluntly.
He narrows his eyes at me. “You really need me to tell you?”
I sigh, and toss my hands in the air.
“I don’t see the issue,” I protest. “I’m the only one talking sense out of the three of us. Listen to the girl, for God’s sake, Chuck! She’s telling us that she wants to go. She’s practically begging to leave, and?—”
“And you know as well as I do that when you’ve been through something serious, you’re not always thinking straight,” he finishes up for me, his voice firm. I bristle. I know what he’s getting at—and I don’t like the implication.
“This is different,” I snarl. “This is a girl crashing her car near the cabin and acting like she’s got a whole army on her tail. This is nothing to do with us. This is?—”
“And that’s exactly what the people who found you out there would have said,” he reminds me, pushing his face close to mine.
I fall silent. I hate to admit it, but he’s right. I can still remember the flashlight beam in my face after the explosion, our truck smashed into the side of the road, the men who had made up my unit scattered around me in pieces. My own leg, twisted underneath me, a bullet lodged in my hip, though I could barely feel it then, the shock too intense for that. The civilians reaching down and pulling me out of the ditch and taking me to the nearest hospital, and if they hadn’t done that—if they had looked at me and decided that I was more trouble than I was worth—then I would have died there with the rest of them, I was sure of it.
“She’s not going to die if we let her out,” I protest, but it’s weak. Truth is, if she walks out into that weather, she’s going to be in serious trouble—and that’s without even considering whatever is actually going on that she’s running from.
“Dax, she’s in trouble,” he murmurs. “And I’m not going to ask some woman in a wedding dress who’s clearly going through something to walk back out there and face it. It doesn’t sit right with me. And I know it doesn’t sit right with you either, no matter what you say about it.”
I tear my gaze away from him. Fuck, I wish he didn’t know me so well sometimes. That’s the downside of living so closely as brothers—there’s not a damn thing they don’t know about you, not a thing they can’t read in your reactions or responses to any given situation. It’s infuriating.
But at the same time, I know he’s right. This girl…she’s been through something heavy. Running away on her wedding day? I don’t even want to think what kind of marriage she might have been facing if this seemed like the better option. And even now, all she wants is to get out on the run again, like she’s terrified that whoever this guy is might already be on the brink of finding her.
“If she causes us any trouble?—”
“Then we’ll deal with it,” Chuck replies, his voice smooth, calm. Times like this, I get why he did so well as a comms operator—he knows how to handle people, even assholes like me.
“She’s not going anywhere, Dax,” he finishes. “You try fighting Callum on it if you’ve got a problem with it, but you know he’s not going to back down on this.”
A small smirk curls up the corners of his lips.
“Hey, what do you think happened between them?” he asks, lowering his voice slightly. “You see the look on his face when he saw her there?”
I shake my head. “Yeah, it was crazy,” I agree. “He’s never mentioned her to me before…”
“Or me,” Chuck replies. “Which means he probably screwed things up royally with her, and he’s trying to do his best to pretend he didn’t.”
“Sounds like the kind of shit he’d do.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, maybe this is just his chance to play the white knight,” he agrees. “She comes crashing in on her stallion, and he’s there to pick up the pieces and make it all right…”
“Shit, I feel bad for her if all she’s got is Callum to rely on,” I joke. I know his reputation with women—he’s never exactly been good at the whole dating thing, part of the reason he came down here to be with us.
“She’s got us too,” Chuck reminds me.
I roll my eyes, but nod. “Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, waving my hand. “She’s got us too, I guess.”
“Don’t say it like that,” he warns me. “She needs us, D. And I’m not going to renege on that duty.”
“Duty?” I fire back. “You left the SEALs four years ago, Chuck. Remember?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I forgot how to be a decent person,” he replies evenly. I know he’s calling me out—making sure I know that he’s not just going to let me steamroll over him with my frustration and anger at the way this woman reacted to our help.
“Who do you think is after her?” I wonder aloud, lowering my voice as I glance toward the door. “She seemed pretty stressed about them…”
“No idea,” he admits. “I mean, if I had to go by the wedding dress, I’d say her fiancé. But it’s just a matter of finding out who that actually is, and figuring out whether he’s going to be any real trouble for us.”
“He’d be an idiot to try and take us on,” I laugh. “Especially on our turf. Especially in this weather.”
“Yeah, agreed,” Chuck replies, but a slight furrow appears between his brows. “But people do stupid things sometimes, when it comes to love. Or, at least, when it comes to what they think is love.”
He lingers at the door for another moment, and then shakes his head, as though dismissing the thought.
“Come on, I need help with dinner,” he tells me. I know it’s not true—he’s the best cook I know, and if anything, I’m just going to make a mess of whatever perfect dish he’s thrown together.
But I follow him into the kitchen anyway, because I know this isn’t about me actually helping him cook—this is about keeping me busy so I don’t have time to overthink what’s happening in the next room, or to spend my time wondering just how much trouble this woman might have brought to our door.
It’s been a long time since anyone but the members of our family have been in this place. And that is honestly how I would’ve liked to keep it. This cabin belonged to our great-uncle, who used it for hunting trips, and our father inherited it when we were young, turning it into our go-to vacation spot every summer. When the three of us got together after he’d passed a few years ago and tried to figure out what we were going to do with this place, it all came together—we were all looking for a break from the real world, and this cabin, out here in the woods, gave us the chance to do just that.
We hadn’t intended to stay for long. At least, they hadn’t. The moment I set foot in this place, it felt like a weight was lifted from my shoulders, one that I was unwilling to replace by pushing myself back into the rush of the city. When I’d arrived back from combat—when I’d healed enough to be able to walk again, take care of myself, not rely on everyone around me for every little fucking thing like I had to in recovery—even the studio apartment I was living in above the store I worked at was too much for me to handle.
Everything was overwhelming. Every sound, every movement, every flash of light in the corner of my eye, all of it was more than I could take on. The world seemed too big all of a sudden, and I couldn’t control any part of it, let alone myself.
But out here? Out here, things are quiet. They make sense. The sun rises, you go through the day, the sun sets. I don’t have to deal with anyone other than Chuck and Callum, and I’ve spent so much of my life with them that they’re known quantities to me by this point.
And now…now, there’s a girl in the next room. A girl I have no idea about. A girl who was part of Callum’s past, but not a part that he decided to share with us. And I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t bother the hell out of me.
But Chuck’s right. Whatever she’s gone through, she needs help. And I’m not going to turn my back on someone in their hour of need.
Even if it means putting the comfortable life I’ve gotten so used to on hold.
And even if I don’t know how long this newfound patience will last.