Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She stared at her hands, at the smatter of blood on her palms.
Her eyes fell to the ground, to the pool of dark crimson atop the snow beneath her boots. More blood dripped from her fingertips, like red dye drizzling onto a snow cone.
Her stomach roiled. Her heartbeat slowed.
She extended her arm, reaching for Ara off in the distance, a backdrop of shining light nearly absorbing her. Her wide eyes stared back at Jessica. Scared, tired eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica choked out.
Her eyelids lifted a moment later, and she inhaled a sharp breath when she found herself staring at her ceiling in her bedroom. Her third nightmare of the day. At least she hadn’t broken into a sweat this time.
She slowly dropped her feet off the side of the bed at the sound of the door buzzer.
“Jessica,” her mother said through the bedroom door a few moments later. “Your brother is here. He needs to talk to you.”
Her body protested the movement as she stood, her knees weak, her heart now racing.
She carefully shrugged on a cotton robe and tightened the belt, wincing from the bruises along her abdomen.
It’d only been a couple days since she’d been back from Berlin. Not quite enough recovery time.
Her jaw hurt the most. The rest of her body was like one giant, achy bruise—like a soreness from doing one too many reps at the gym, only magnified.
She gathered a breath and left the room, but paused midway down the hall when she caught sight of herself out of her peripheral view in the mirror.
Pivoting to face her reflection she found a woman she barely recognized staring back at her. A broken version of the person she’d forced herself to become over the years, a woman her team needed: strong, dependable, able to make tough choices.
All that was left of her now were haunted blue eyes, dry lips, and faint bruises like smudges of dirt beneath her eyes and on her neck.
No confidence. No strength.
“There you are,” her dad said. She followed his voice to find him standing a few feet away, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets, a grim look of discomfort etched on his face.
He’d been military for thirty years, shaped by his experiences, the same as her. He understood what she was going through far better than her mother could.
Of course, her father still didn’t know all the details of her work—it was safer that way—but he now knew enough to worry a parent to death. But the man also bled red, white, and blue—he’d never hold her back if her actions meant helping the country.
He cocked his head to the side, and his eyes thinned as she slowly ate up the space between them. “Luke has some news about your friend.”
My friend. The friend I let down. Her stomach burned like acid swished around, eating at her.
She caught sight of Luke talking to their mom in the kitchen. He was leaning against the center island with crossed arms, a hard look on his face as their mom spoke to him in her native German tongue.
Their father had met their mom when he’d been stationed in Germany almost forty years ago.
“Hey.” The whispered word had Luke redirecting his focus to Jessica, and he pushed away from the counter to approach.
“Thanks for having Eva and Lara stop by earlier. It was good to see them.” Of course, she’d only held her niece for all of five minutes before she’d rushed to her bedroom to lock herself away and cry in secret.
“They’ll be back again tomorrow.” Luke came to stand before her.
As much as she wanted to refuse the offer, she simply nodded, and then she surveyed the living room off to her left, the bouquets adorning the area like she was at a funeral, as if someone had died.
Ara died, she reminded herself. Guilt butchered her, tearing her apart, making her feel like a branch swaying in the wind, ready to snap.
“Her body has been buried. She’s back home in Syria,” Luke said.
She knew he was leaving out the words what was left of her body. Despite his announcement, she couldn’t get herself to look away from the roses.
Bloodred. Bright-as-fucking-sunshine-yellow. Snowy white.
“I want them out of here,” she cried as her hands pressed to her abdomen. “All of them. Get all of the flowers out. Please.”
She turned on her heel, hurried back to her bedroom, and slammed the door shut.
She ignored the knocks on her door. The requests for her to come back out.
At the sound of a text, she padded to the end table by the bed and lifted her phone.
Asher: Hope you’re okay. Worried about you.
With a slightly trembling hand, she set the phone back down. She’d been surprised he hadn’t come over, ignoring her request for no visitors. Some part of her wished he had. But the other part of her was terrified of him seeing her this way.
She could barely look her family in the eyes, and so she wasn’t sure when the hell she’d be able to suck it up and get back to normal so she could see her team again. So she could work again.
And damned if she wasn’t scared she might never crawl out of the hole she felt like someone was burying her in—especially since that someone was her.
“You shouldn’t have come.” Jessica stared at her best friend, Grace Dalton, who stood on the other side of the door, holding wine and a brown shopping bag. She resisted the urge to do something strange, something she rarely did—hug. “Come in.”
“I knew the wine would work,” Grace said once Jessica locked up behind them. “Your parents gone for the night?”
“They left thirty minutes ago. I forced them to head to the hotel.” The perks of having a one-bedroom meant she could be alone, at least at night.
Grace set a bag on the dining table off to the side of the kitchen island and pulled out about five different types of slippers. “I had a feeling you didn’t own any, and these bad boys always make me feel a little better.”
She handed her two of the pairs. Fuzzy, pink slip-ons. And navy blue slipper boots with two white balls dangling off to the sides.
“I couldn’t decide, so I got a few options.”
Jessica forced her lips to curve at the edges as best she could and set the slippers back on the table. “Thank you.”
“Why is there so much uneaten food sitting here?”
“My mom’s been trying to comfort me with her favorite German cuisine: all the dishes her mom used to make.” She thought back to her grandmother’s funeral in Munich four years ago, to all the food shoved at her by relatives. “My family cooks to cope,” she said softly.
Jessica hadn’t found a way to cope this time, though.
She’d barely eaten, so that hadn’t worked.
Binge-watching Netflix hadn’t amounted to much of anything other than blurry eyes.
And sleeping had resulted in waking up with high blood pressure from nightmares.
Fail. Fail. Fail.
“The bruises are starting to fade. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay.” Jessica motioned for her to head to the living area, and she followed behind.
Grace sat next to her on the couch and reached for her hand. “Luke didn’t tell Noah everything that happened, but you were the woman in Berlin I saw on the news?”
She’d be wearing a wig when she left her apartment for a few weeks, that was for sure.
Well, if she ever left.
“Yeah, that was me.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think people will recognize you,” she said, reading her thoughts. “But maybe you could go out as a redhead for a bit.” She hid her emotions with a shaky smile, her tongue scraping along her bottom lip as if fighting a tremble there.
Grace, who used to be nearly as cold as Jessica, was about to cry. She’d changed after she’d fallen in love with Noah, a good friend of Jessica and Luke, and a former Teamguy.
“I don’t know how you do this job.” She covered her quivering lip with her hand and dropped her eyes closed. “If we lost you . . .” She sniffled but reopened her eyes. “I’m sorry. I came here to make you feel better—not for you to comfort me.”
She didn’t know what to say. Because, hell, she wasn’t great at comforting someone, or talking about feelings.
“Thank you for coming.” She reached for her forearm and pressed her palm over the sleeve of Grace’s blouse.
“Thank you for caring, too.” She meant the words, even if they’d been hard to say.
Grace had always been in the dark about her job up until Luke had asked Noah and Grace to be godparents to Lara. Luke knew better than to ask anyone on the team since they all worked in a dangerous profession.
“Of course I care.” She blinked back more tears. “Sorry. Something about motherhood has softened me.” She placed her free hand atop Jessica’s. “Is there anything I can do?”
She lifted her eyes heavenward. “Just be here,” she whispered. “That’s more than enough.”