Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
He swallowed his heart, which had found its way into his throat at the sound of Eva’s front door opening. He rose, tucking his hands in his pockets like a nervous kid, like the time he’d asked a girl to junior prom.
“When I said seven, I meant you could meet me outside.” Her brows rose and fell as she tossed her keys on the kitchen counter and moved with slow steps farther inside.
“I’d ask you how you got in here,” she said softly while stopping a few feet away, “but I should know better than to waste such a question.” Her lips twitched at the edges, as if she wanted to smile, but resisted.
“Sorry to bust in here on you, but I didn’t want to take a chance that a door would come between us this time.”
She peeled off her jacket and flung it onto the little two-person kitchen table off to the side.
“And what is it that you came here to say?” Arms crossed her chest as she attempted to hold her ground, but he knew her legs had the same tremble as her bottom lip.
“Is it a coincidence we’re in Virginia together? ”
“No. I would’ve come sooner, but I’ve been out of the country.”
“Oh. Another mission?”
“Yeah.” He filled his cheeks with air. He’d come all this way and spent the last ten hours finding the right words, only to lose them all. “You’re Everly again, huh?” he asked, ditching his script.
“I still go by Eva. Always have.” Her gaze flicked up for a moment in thought. “But yeah, I’m me again.”
“Well, if you’re happy—”
“Oh yeah, I’m like the cherry on top of a sundae. I’m perfect. Really happy.” Her voice strained as her chest slowly lifted and fell.
“Good.” He removed his hands from his denim pockets. “So, uh, did I ever say thank you—you know, for everything you did? Most people wouldn’t have handled the situation how you did. It takes a lot of courage and—”
“That’s why you’re here?” She crossed the short space between them and elevated her chin, her arms falling like weights at her sides. “You’re here to give me a pat on the back and a job-well-done speech?” A lash of anger bit into her words, but he could take it.
He deserved it, in his mind.
“Why wait a month to tell me this? Why not just send an email?” She started to turn, but he captured her wrist and spun her around.
Her eyes dropped to his fingers wrapped over the silk of her sleeve, and he could feel her body heat beneath his palm despite the material. She slowly dragged her hazel irises up to find his, and he knew she’d see what he felt on the inside.
“What do you really want?” The velvety rasp from her lips had his muscles tensing.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he admitted, not letting go of her arm because he’d craved nothing else for the last four weeks but being near her.
She turned her cheek, her eyes falling to the carpet. “Has anything changed? No. You’re still you.” Her eyes darkened when they touched his. “And now to make it worse, I’m me again. I’m in the spotlight, and so—”
“I know, and now I hold even more responsibility at work.”
She faked a quick laugh and attempted to pull away from him, but damned if he would lose his hold of her.
“Luke,” she seethed, and he finally released his grasp. She whirled around and stalked toward the sliding glass doors that looked out onto the beach.
“I was hoping to take you out for a cup of coffee. If you don’t hate me when your drink is done, we can upgrade to dinner. That’s how first dates go these days, right? I’m out of practice.”
Her palms landed on the door, and she bowed her head, touching the glass. “Why are you doing this? Haven’t you done enough? Have you really come here to hurt me?”
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
She lifted her head and looked back at him. “But that’s what will happen when you leave, when you disappear from my life,” she said, emotion cracking through now.
He rubbed at the ache in his chest. “Ninety percent.”
“What?”
He angled his head and swallowed a gulp of air. “That’s the divorce rate for first marriages as a SEAL, especially guys from DEVGRU. Well, according to Google.”
“And were you part of Team Six?” Her eyes thinned, the familiar curiosity he loved about her bubbling there.
He took a hesitant step her way and gave a quick lift of the chin to say yes.
“It’s like the spouses are serving, too, I guess,” she whispered.
A fist tightened in his core.
“If you have the guts to do what you do, then you have to let the people in your life decide if they have what it takes, too.”
He dropped his head but remained quiet.
“If they understand the risks and the challenges, you need to let them make the choice for themselves. You can’t make it for them. And that’s what you’ve done with your rule, not just for you, but for your men.”
“I know.” He swallowed. “My life has been classified for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never been able to share who I am with anyone not in the same boat as me.”
“So why are you doing it now?”
“Because you’re not just anyone.”
Her eyes fell shut, her lower lip quivering.
“But . . .” He needed her to know the gritty details before he could continue.
He knew Eva understood the dangers for her—but did she fully grasp everything?
“When my teammate died two years ago—the only married guy—his wife witnessed his beheading online. I felt responsible for his death because I’d sent him alone on the op. ”
It’d been Will’s call, but what if Luke had said no? Now that he knew Will was a traitor, it had him second-guessing every op he’d ever been on.
“We buried an empty casket. Never recovered the body. Still haven’t found his killer. His wife, well, I’m not sure if she’ll ever be able to move on, and that’s on me.”
She opened her eyes and reached for his forearm, the gesture causing his lids to lower lazily toward her polished nails. “That’s not your fault.”
“Asher was his replacement. I think it’s put a chip on his shoulder, knowing he had to fill one of my best friends’ shoes. What I’m trying to say is what we do is hard. Really fucking hard, but I think it’s harder on the people we care about.” He looked up.
Her mouth rounded, but she didn’t say anything.
“Would you come outside with me?”
“On the beach?”
“Yeah.”
“Um, okay.” She pointed to the glass door. “We can go out that way.”
“I know.” He shook his head. “How do you think I got in?” He grabbed her coat and helped her slide it on before opening the door. “You need to upgrade your security while you’re here.”
“It’s a rental.”
“And it’s your life,” he said while shrugging on his jacket and stepping back to let her exit first.
“And it’s a nice place, by the way.” He reached for her hand once they stepped out onto the sand, and she took it, which dispelled some of the concern he had that she’d forgive him.
“A perk of being Everly again.” She peered at him and smiled, and he tightened his grasp on her palm, guiding her closer to the beach.
“The water always calms me. Same for a lot of my buddies. Maybe it’s because we’ve had to learn to operate in it—I don’t know, but something about it helps me think.”
“Yeah? You have a lot on your mind?”
“Just one thing.” They edged closer, the crest of the waves drawing his eye.
“And what’s that?”
“I’m thinking you already know.” He shifted to face her, repositioning their bodies so he could maintain his grasp on her hand.
“Maybe a girl needs to hear the words.”
He gulped. “You want to hear them?”
“More than anything.”
He squeezed her hand. “I have seven days off before I go back to work, and I was kind of hoping we could spend that time together to help you decide if I’m someone you possibly—”
“I don’t need seven days to know.” She reached for his cheek and brushed the back of her hand over his clean-shaven jaw.
“I’m afraid of losing you though. So, I need to know you’re not going to disappear on me again.
” A light smile touched her lips. “Aside from missions to save the world, of course.” Liquid pooled at the corners of her eyes.
He shifted his face so his lips could brush against the back of her hand. “I’ll make the promise under one condition.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you bring any fuzzy socks with you to Virginia?”
She arched a questioning brow.
“I’ve been dying to see you dance around in them. Hell, I haven’t been able to get the thought out of my head since you mentioned it.”
She cry-laughed. “Really?”
“Well, yeah, but I’d prefer you to be in the socks and nothing else.”
“What happened to the coffee?”
He clenched his teeth, fighting the desire to grab hold of her and kiss her. “If you insist, but I’d really like to—”
Her lips swallowed his words, and the sweet taste of her tongue in his mouth had him groaning as he lifted her into his arms.
“Thank you,” she cried against his lips a moment later.
“For what?” He kept his hold on her but leaned back to find her eyes.
“For not being an idiot and making me wait until I was old and gray to come to your senses.”
He laughed and brushed his lips over her cheek and found her ear. “You make me crazy; you know that, right?”
She arched against him as if in desperate need, mirroring his own desires.
“What made you come to your senses?” She ran her fingers through his hair, and he slowly guided her feet to the sand.
“All this time I had worried that caring and worrying about you would take my mind off missions and put my guys at risk, but in the last four weeks I discovered the opposite. Missing you is so much more dangerous. I couldn’t think straight this last month.”
Her arms looped around his neck, and she pulled herself against him. “I’ve actually been able to write a lot with you gone.”
“Really? So, you want me to leave?”
“Don’t you know writers tend to get creative inspiration from heartache?” She pressed a quick kiss to his lips.
“So, which would you prefer?”
“Mm. No competition.” Her lip wedged between her teeth, and he wanted to taste the flavor of her gloss again. “Happiness all day long.”
“Are you sure?”
Her mouth swept close to his, and he could feel her soft breath dance across his skin. “I’m prepared to show you just how sure I am.” She smiled and he kissed the crook of her lips.
“And are you really going to throw out your rules for me?”
“Honey, the second we met, they went out the fucking window; I just didn’t know it yet.”
She laughed. “What do we do now, Skywalker?”
“Socks, and only socks, Hollywood.”
Her gaze darted to the sand as if a moment of indecision had seized her, and it had his heart folding.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to be shooting a movie with my dad, and now that I’m Everly—what does that mean for you . . . for us?”
Relief struck him. This he could handle. “I’d be happy to take on an alias. How about Luke Cross?”
“You can’t be Luke Scott when you’re with me, I get that, but—”
“It’s only a name.” He pressed a palm to her chest, feeling the rapid beating of her heart. “Names don’t define us. As long as I get to be with you, you can call me Mary Poppins for all I care.”
A deep belly laugh came out of her, and she gripped her stomach. “I think I could fall in love with you.”
He braced both her cheeks, pulling her in with his eyes. “Well, I fell for you the moment you tried to shoot me with a rifle in New York.”
“You did not, and I wouldn’t have shot you.” She playfully rolled her eyes.
“Okay, maybe it was when you mentioned the socks.” He looked down at her tall brown boots. “Speaking of which . . .”
“Mm. Yes, sir.” She stepped back and saluted him. “Maybe I could get used to taking orders from you. Well, as long as it involves orgasms.”
“Is there any other way?” He lifted his brows a few quick times to tease.
“What kind of missions have you been running?” She laughed.
He shook his head. “I’m going to count to ten, and if you’re not back inside and naked by then I’ll be forced to take matters into my own hands.”
She backed up, almost into the water. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“You want to try me?” He grabbed hold of her thighs so fast she hadn’t had a chance to react and tossed her over his shoulder.
“What happened to ten?” she laughingly cried as he trekked up the sand toward her rental.
“Got impatient.” He slapped her ass. “We have time to make up for.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“All a clever disguise to give you more content for your scripts.”
She slapped his back as he carried her. “I will knock the smile off your face. Those muscles of yours don’t scare me, you know.”
“You don’t even know I’m smiling!”
“Trust me, I know.”
He dropped her onto her bed a few seconds later and stared at her.
Disbelief echoed throughout him—that he’d found someone like her.
“Are you sure?” He had to ask one more time.
“It’s not an easy life. The secrets. Even some of my best friends who are SEALs think I’m retired. I lie to them, and it sucks, but—”
“I have you. And Jessica. And the guys. And hey, maybe they’ll even get a chance to fall for someone now, so then there will be more women in the group.
” She stood and held his hand, bringing their clasped palms between them to press her lips to his knuckles, holding his eyes the entire time. “We have each other.”
His eyes thinned, the weight of the world lightening a touch on his shoulders. “We have each other,” he repeated, knowing he’d finally found his mark: her.