Chapter 25
Rav
I stared in the direction where Brooke had vanished. We were all frustrated with hitting wall after wall, but her words were more than frustration. They were words she’d been carrying inside her for a long time.
Scarlett rose from her chair. “I’ll talk to her.”
“No.” I wasn’t moving yet. My brain was fully aware I had to deal with this, but my body rejected the prospect. “I need to do this.”
She came closer, standing next to me near the doorway. “Are you sure that’s wise right now? We need everyone’s heads in this game. There are only two days left.”
“It’s my mess, Scar.” I lowered my voice. “I have to be the one to fix it.”
She nodded once. “Just don’t make it worse.”
I’d marched into battle zones, run into danger, and jumped in front of live ammunition. But this? Facing her?
Move, you idiot.
I finally did. Slowly. Each step felt like walking into an ambush, but it was one I’d set for myself. I paused outside the bedroom door. Six years of silence. Five since she’d last reached out.
What the hell could I possibly say?
Figure that out when you’re inside.
I knocked twice.
No answer.
“Brooke?” I tried again, louder this time. “It’s me.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.” Her voice was steady but muffled.
“We need to clear the air.” I leaned closer to the door. “We need to be able to work together, if nothing else.”
A long silence followed. The door eventually opened enough for her to stand in the gap, one hand still on the doorknob, ready to slam it in my face. “Say what you need to say, then.”
I glanced over my shoulder, toward the staircase. “Not here. I don’t want everyone listening.”
Her jaw tightened, but she stepped back.
The bedroom was neat, with Scarlett’s things on one side and Brooke’s on the other.
Brooke moved to the partially open balcony doors, putting an ocean of space between us.
She stared out at the remarkable view, so similar to the one we’d taken in last night when we’d shared… what? Something? Nothing?
A chilly breeze drifted through the room. I took a few steps toward her until she turned to face me, fixing me with a gaze so full of pain that it glued my feet to the floor.
“I’m sorry.” Those two words were supposed to be powerful, but they were weak on my tongue. Pathetic. Not nearly enough for everything we’d been through.
“Sorry?” Her eyes were hard, challenging. “For what exactly?”
I was exposed, so I shifted my weight as though readying for an attack. “For everything?”
“If that’s all you’ve got to say”—she pointed at the door—“then leave, because I don’t give a shit.”
“For everything that happened at Barin Kala.”
“Which part?” Her mouth gaped open, and she tilted her head as though I were speaking a different language. “The part where you took bullets for me, or the part where you disappeared afterward?”
I looked away, unable to face her. “I should have contacted you.”
“Six years of radio silence, Rav.” She tried to keep her voice steady, but the tremor in it was unmistakable. “Not a word. Not even after I called you.”
Needing movement, I paced to the wall. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t?” She laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. “You mean wouldn’t. Or also didn’t give a shit?”
“No, I—” I stopped, struggling to find words that wouldn’t sound like excuses. “It’s not that simple.”
“Then explain it to me.” She threw her arms open wide, her control slipping. “Because I think our story is pretty damn simple. We were together, the mission ended, and you walked away.”
“I didn’t walk away. I was carried out on a stretcher.”
“And after? What about when you recovered? What about when I called you? When I told you—”
I stared at the floor, the wall, anywhere but at her. My chest seized, as though the bullets were still on the move, digging their way deeper inside me. “I couldn’t face you.”
“Face me?” Her eyebrows rose. “Or face what happened?”
I couldn’t face anything back then. I’d been looking for an escape. “Both.”
She waited, clearly expecting more. When I didn’t continue, she shook her head. “That’s it? That’s your explanation for everything?”
Despite my efforts to keep this private, my voice rose to meet hers. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me the truth! I deserve that much.”
“Fine.” I turned to face her fully. “I failed you, all right? Is that what you want to hear?”
“Failed me?” Her brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw the gunman too late.” The admission ripped a hole in my chest, laying my heart bare in front of her.
I’d never confessed to anyone, not even my doctor.
As much as I’d eventually focused on my mental health, what happened between Brooke and me had never found its way into words.
“I should have been more alert, should have spotted him sooner.”
“You jumped between a man with a gun and me,” she said, her face screwing up in confusion.
“It wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. If I hadn’t been…” I ran a hand through my hair, the pressure building behind my eyes. Tell her the truth. Tell someone for once instead of berating yourself again.
The words jammed in my throat, and I turned away.
Brooke’s voice softened slightly. “Rav, you saved my life.”
“Did I?” The bitter words were mine this time, but at least I turned to face her again. “Because I can’t remember what happened after I saw the gun. I dove for you and… I must have knocked over whatever splashed you.”
Her shoulders fell as understanding bloomed across her face. “You think what happened to me was your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” My voice cracked. “I was supposed to protect you.”
“You did protect me!” She stepped closer. “You took what, three bullets that would have killed me? Four?”
“And then I couldn’t move.” The memory flashed vivid and sharp—her smile, my team yelling about the gunman, launching myself at her to block his gunfire—and then nothing until the hospital in Germany. “I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t stop what happened.”
She stared at me, blinking slowly as though trying to process everything. “All this time… you’ve been blaming yourself?”
What could I say? It was my fault.
“When I called you,” she said quietly, “and I told you how much I missed you, did you honestly believe I blamed you?”
I closed my eyes, remembering her name on my phone screen. The way my hands had shaken. And how I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the message. I’d simply deleted it. “You deserved better.”
She deserved all the happiness in the world, and I couldn’t give it to her.
“Better than what?”
“Better than a broken man.” I opened my eyes, forcing myself to look at her. How many times had I stared at the few photos I had of her? I’d only printed one of them, so I’d have it at my grandmother’s old cottage when I ended the pain.
After Scarlett found me that night, I’d finally put the gun and the photo away.
Brooke shook her head slowly. “It wasn’t your decision to make.”
“What?”
“Whether I deserved better or not.” Her breath stuttered. “That was for me to decide, not you.”
I had no answer.
“Do you know what I thought when you never called back? I thought it was all a deployment thing for you. That what we had wasn’t real.”
My stomach churned at her words. “God, no. Brooke, it wasn’t like that at all.”
“How would I know?” She gestured sharply with one hand. “One minute we’re making plans for after we got home, the next you’re gone. No goodbye, no explanation. Just silence.”
I took a step toward her and stopped myself before I took more. “It was real. For me. All of it.”
She studied me, wariness and hurt battling across her face. “So why didn’t you call me back? For real. If there was another woman by then, fine. If you were on another mission, fine. But don’t give me that pathetic bullshit about not being able to face a little thing like me.”
I should have stayed home and avoided this mission at all costs. Or should have pressed Pendragon to have Brooke stay with them. Why, of all things holy, did I agree to her staying with us?
The words would never come. The only person who understood the toll Operation Clearwater had taken on me was Scarlett. I hadn’t told her anything, but somehow, she’d known, and she pulled me out of it. Not all of it, but enough.
Why tell her and no one else?
Because Scarlett had needed me. She gave me a position with Reynolds that let me repent.
But you can’t truly make up for your sins until you ask for forgiveness.
“I’d lost everything.” The military. My sense of duty. Brooke. “I didn’t want to go on living.”
“You tried…”
I’d planned. I’d been ready. I wouldn’t have had to see the disappointment on anyone’s face ever again. Or the pity. “No.”
“And now?” She didn’t move closer, but the distance between us didn’t seem so vast anymore. “Do you want to go on now?”
Two weeks ago, I’d wanted to continue my job with Reynolds, protect the woman who’d saved my life, and do good things. But now, all I could think about was Brooke. “Yes.”
The silence stretched between us, filled only by the distant sounds of the team working downstairs.
“I was so angry with you,” she finally said. “For a really long time.”
“You had every right to be.”
“I still am.” She crossed to the bed and sagged down onto it. “But I’m tired of being angry.”
“Where does this leave us?”
“I don’t know.” Her honesty broke my heart even more. “But I can’t keep doing this—whatever this is—while we’re in the middle of a mission.”
I nodded, understanding the professional necessity, although every part of me wanted to press for more. “For what it’s worth, I never stopped thinking about you. Not for a day.”
Something flickered in her eyes—pain, desire, I couldn’t be sure. “I tried to stop thinking about you.”
“Did it work?” I asked, risking a step closer.
“Every once in a while.” A small, sad smile touched her lips. “But not really.”
I kept moving, slowly, watching for any hint she wanted me to leave. I’d made my confession, and it had freed a part of the darkness that had settled over my soul. The light inside me wanted the light inside her. “I missed you, Brooke.”
Her breath caught slightly. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I mean it.” I stopped only a foot away from her and reached for her hand, half-expecting her to pull away.
She didn’t.
Hesitantly, she moved her fingers against my palm until they laced with mine. “I missed you too. Even when I hated you for what you did.”
I moved closer, drawn by the gravity I’d always felt around her. I raised my free hand to her face, my thumb gently tracing the curve of her cheek. She leaned into the touch, almost imperceptibly, her eyes never leaving mine.
“I’m not the same person I was,” I said softly.
“Neither am I.” Her voice was barely audible.
My heart rose into my throat as I leaned down, still expecting her to tell me to leave her alone again. But she stood, rising on her tiptoes to meet me. Our breath mingled in the small space between us. Years of regret, of longing, of what-ifs compressed into a single heartbeat.
And then there was no space at all.