Chapter Six – Human
Chapter Six
Parker
HUMAN
Performed by The Killers
TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO
HER: Thank you again for showing up tonight, especially after I’ve spent the last few months ghosting you.
HIM: Nothing will ever stop me from coming when you need me.
Will watched from the corner of the couch in my rental as I tossed my keys on the side table.
“Fallon okay?” he asked.
My jaw worked overtime. I’d nearly been too late. The cops had gotten to her before me. Even though it was eating away at my insides that I hadn’t been the one to save her yet again, that wasn’t what had me longing to pound my fists into the wall—or into fucking Jasper Johnson’s face.
“She will be. She’s one of the strongest people I know.”
She’d faced so much in her short life. Murder. Mayhem. And tonight, she’d protected someone who didn’t deserve it.
I headed for the garage with my fury and Will following me. I taped my hands, tearing off the edge with my teeth, and then started in on the bag hanging from the ceiling in the corner. I envisioned Ace’s face on it. Then JJ’s. I hit the leather with a ferocity that had the ceiling groaning.
Coming home after our mission, my house had felt even more silent and staler than usual.
The relief I’d felt seeing her name pop up after she’d ghosted me for months had wiped it away, until I’d heard the fear in her voice. That brief moment of relief hadn’t returned, even once I’d known she was safe. It had actually grown while I’d watched her walk away with JJ.
The loser who would never be good enough for her.
But it explained why I hadn’t come back to my normal flurry of Fallon texts catching me up on her life.
Damn, I’d missed her. The smell of her. Her smile. Her snark.
And it had been my fucking fault. We could have avoided months of drama if I’d simply taken her back to her apartment that night instead of to my place.
We could have played off her kiss as a drunken mistake, if she even remembered doing it.
She wouldn’t have been humiliated like she had been by my second rejection. By my words.
I’ll never say yes to you…
Fuck. What had I been thinking?
My hands shook at the memory of how she’d looked that night, desire and vulnerability in her eyes, rosy tips peeking through the magenta lace.
My fists picked up their pace.
That image of her spread out on my bed hadn’t faded. It had tortured me ever since. I’d wanted so desperately to give in that night. To take her. To claim what was mine.
Except, she wasn’t mine.
She’d never be mine.
The torment of wanting her had been nothing compared to what I’d felt when I’d heard the terror in her voice, heard the banging of metal on metal over the phone line.
And when I’d pulled into the parking lot tonight and seen her, pale and scared, in the stark light of the streetlamps, I’d have done just about anything to turn back the clock, make her mine, and keep her safe.
And that had scared the shit out of me. The idea of just what I was willing to give up.
The oaths I’d sworn that I was suddenly willing to walk away from.
It had been a good thing the cops hadn’t let me through at first, or I might have said something I couldn’t have returned from. Waiting that handful of minutes had allowed me to rein in my emotions. Get my head on fucking straight.
At least until I’d had her in my arms.
Then, everything had slipped again. I’d nearly demanded —
No. I wouldn’t let myself even think it.
Instead, I emptied my head and concentrated on the jolt of my fist against the bag. The slam, slam, slam. The vibrations up my arms and shoulders.
“Want to tell me what’s got you beating the hell out of a bag at midnight?” Will asked. I glanced over at my best friend. His hair was longer than usual, sticking up all over the place because he’d been running his hands through it while fighting with his ex over his son.
“She’s back with the loser,” I growled. “He was right there, on the fucking beach, partying it up while she was locked in a bathroom, terrified for her life.”
“What the hell happened?” Will was instantly on the defensive. “And why the fuck didn’t you take me with you when you stormed out?”
I took a moment to explain what I gathered about Ace attacking his wife and Fallon stepping in. My gut turned nastily. She’d put herself in danger to save someone else. And that right there was the essence of her. Standing up for the things she believed in.
She may have been an heiress who owned a five-thousand-acre ranch and the daughter of a billionaire bar magnate, but those things weren’t what defined Fallon. In fact, she’d done her best over the last few years to make sure no one knew those things about her.
What hadn’t changed was the fact our fathers had tasked me with looking out for her while she was here.
But between my deployments and training, I’d been away almost as much as I’d been here.
Silver One Squadron was in demand, and after this latest assignment, my team would be in even more.
The intel and connections we’d made would ensure they called us back for a new mission sooner than the four months we should have had off.
Which meant I wouldn’t be here yet again.
She’d be stuck with fucking JJ looking after her.
That burned as much as it concerned me.
Maybe I should call my dad. As the chief of security for her ranch and her dad’s corporation, my father could send someone to watch over her.
Except, Fallon would hate me for it. She didn’t want a bodyguard hovering around her, requiring her to explain to her equestrian teammates, her roommate, or her friends why she needed one.
“Question, Baywatch,” Will said quietly, and it was his tone as much as the nickname that let me know I was in for something I wouldn’t like. “Why the hell are you standing by and watching her with someone else when it’s clear to everyone who knows you that you care about her?”
My fists stopped. I rested my forehead on the bag.
Care was such a mediocre word for what I felt for Fallon. Worse, since she’d come to San Diego, I couldn’t shake the desire I felt whenever I looked at her. But none of that was enough to overcome the truth of us. Of my life and hers.
“You know I don’t do relationships,” I told him. “Fallon spent an entire childhood on the sidelines. No one, not even her parents, put her first. The team is my priority. I can’t ask her for more and then be just another person who puts her second.”
“And you think JJ will put her first? Like he did tonight?” Will asked, and I growled in protest. “Being a SEAL doesn’t mean you can’t have a serious relationship or marriage or kids.” I heard in his tone the love he had for his son. Theo was two and the absolute joy of Will’s life.
But my lingering anger at myself, as well as JJ and the situation tonight, had me snipping at my best friend in a way I knew I shouldn’t. “Because you and Althea worked out so well?”
He shrugged. “Not every woman is a money-grabbing cheater.”
I pushed off the bag, stepping toward him.
“I’m sorry. I was out of line.”
He’d loved Althea—or at least, he’d thought he had until he found out she was cheating on him with pretty much anyone who looked her way, and that she was more interested in the fortune he’d inherited from his dead parents than in him.
She constantly used his money as a weapon, withholding his son until he coughed up thousands of dollars at a time.
He’d finally stopped giving her more when he realized it was disappearing into the hands of her drug-dealing family.
These days, he paid her rent directly to the management company, paid her utilities himself, and had groceries delivered to her house, but he didn’t give her cash.
And when he wasn’t deployed, he kept Theo with him as much as humanly possible.
He’d even started talking about getting full custody, but the fact he was away more than he was home wasn’t in his favor. My parents had offered to keep Theo when Will was out of pocket, but that meant moving to Las Vegas, which only presented a new slew of logistical problems.
“Look,” Will said, “all I’m saying is, life is too fucking short to spend your days watching the girl of your dreams with some douche.
But if you’d rather spend your time punching a bag and jerking off alone in the shower, that’s on you.
I gotta get some sleep. I’m picking Theo up tomorrow and don’t want to be a zombie. ”
He left, and I knew I had hurt him more than he’d admit.
I’d taken my frustration with myself out on him.
I’d failed Fallon yet again. I hadn’t been there when she needed me once more after I’d promised she’d never face danger without me.
Except, we both knew it was a promise I shouldn’t have made to begin with.
I was already just another person in her life who put their own goals, their own wants and desires, above what was best for her. Just like her parents had.
Did I think Jasper fucking Johnson would put her above himself? My immediate reaction was hell no. But I wasn’t sure if that was a jealousy I had no right to talking or the truth.
The animosity between JJ and me was because of that same jealousy. He hated that I’d been a lifelong friend and that she wouldn’t give me up. I hated that he touched her. That he put those narrow, slimy lips on hers. That he caressed her skin.
Then again, I’d hate anyone who did.
Except, I also had no intention of ever being the man who touched her that way.
If that was the case, I needed to step the hell back.
I needed to let her live her life, have her relationships, and find the man who would eventually give her the family she craved.
The family she needed to finally heal the wounds of a childhood spent feeling like she was more an obligation than a beloved daughter.
The idea of that man being JJ slithered in my gut nastily.
But Fallon would find out if he wasn’t the one for her, and she’d move on to some other guy who was.
She deserved to have someone who would be at her side every day.
If she hadn’t had my number in her favorites tonight, she might have called JJ or the police before me.
They would certainly have gotten to her sooner.
I could never be the man who put her first because I had already chosen the teams over her.
I’d spent twenty-seven years honing my body and mind in order to be the best of the best. To build on my father’s and grandfather’s legacy by becoming a SEAL.
I’d promised my grandfather on his deathbed that I’d earn a Bull Frog trophy just like him.
The military would celebrate my career the same way they had his—as a SEAL with the most years of cumulative service after completion of BUD/S.
I was barely three years into my SEAL career. I had decades left to go.
I couldn’t give it up now.
SEALs didn’t ring any damn bells.
So, why did it feel like I was doing just that?