Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Dare
D amn, that fucking hurt.
“There he is.” The low drone of Rhys’s hurdy-gurdy seeped into my ears.
I slowly opened my eyes. “I must be in hell.”
Rhys grinned. “Think he’s going to pull through, Doc.”
Rorik grunted and extended his hand, two massive pills in his palm. “Morphine will probably wear off soon, and you’ll want these.”
The best I could do was lift a few fingers as I croaked, “No.”
“Bullet was a clean shot. Straight through. Nicked a rib. Half an inch more to your right, though, and you wouldn’t have made it back here alive.” Rorik shook his head. “You should’ve called someone.”
“I couldn’t risk it—wouldn’t,” I said, letting out a hiss as the effort brought a hint of pain to the shores of my consciousness.
Rorik looked at me, his pale blue eyes narrow before they swung back to Rhys and then my brother. Like a wordless secret passed between them…but it wasn’t a secret.
“Someone tried to kill her. Again,” I croaked. “I had to protect her.” And it was nothing more than that. “Where is she?”
“She’s resting.” Harm moved from where he’d propped his shoulder on the wall. “Rob made her.”
My throat burned when I tried to swallow. “How long?”
“Thirty-six hours.”
A day and a half I’d been out.
“Athena was here the whole time,” Rhys thought it was fitting to add. Like I needed any more guilt added to my plate. She should hate me. Now that she knows everything, she should hate me.
“What do you remember?” Ty asked, tapping on his iPad.
My brother stepped forward, a stern frown resting over his features. “You should rest.”
“No.” I used my good arm to push myself higher against the headboard, ignoring the stab of pain that pierced the bubble of morphine around my brain.
“Darius…”
I tensed. Harm only used that tone and my full name when he stepped into older brother mode. It was a rare mode, usually reserved for our sisters. When you’d gone to war with a sibling…almost died together…it altered the kind of protectiveness he felt he needed for me. Lessened it. Which was why it was strange it came out now.
“I’m fine.”
It wasn’t like I hadn’t been wounded before—like he hadn’t seen me injured. I didn’t know why this time had set him off.
“If you won’t take the pain meds, then you should try and remember now before the morphine wears off. Then, it’ll only be pain on your mind.”
I grunted at the warning. “Not going to change my mind.” I didn’t want drugs. I didn’t want anything else in my system except reality.
“So, what do you remember?” Rhys got us back on track. “Athena said she didn’t see anything until she was on the ground and you were chasing the car.”
I let out a slow exhale and closed my eyes, but my brain didn’t take me to the moment of the shooting. It went further back to when I’dfelt her enter the kitchen. Felt her stand there watching me.
And I warred with myself.
Every second was a battle that some part of me was going to lose. She deserved the truth—to know all of it. And she also deserved a man who wouldn’t hurt her. The problem was, she wanted me. So, I separated myself from the boy who’d broken her heart; I’d torn myself in two like I’d ripped the very muscles from my bones to give her the kind of man she deserved. And I’d selfishly and greedily relished it—pretending I could be her everything.
But the moment I turned around and saw her, I knew. The look in her eyes had changed. When she couldn’t see, her stare had always been searching. For light. For shadow. For objects. For something familiar. Yesterday morning, when she looked at me, she wasn’t searching. She’d found me. And the truth.
The hurt and betrayal on her face was worse than the bullet. I’d take a thousand bullets if it could take me back in time and give me the strength to walk away from her rather than stay the night.
I shuddered, and time skipped to us standing on the front lawn.The morning sunlight had tangled in her hair, like it drew its glow from the brightness of the strands. The gentle breeze tugged the fabric of my shirt over her chest, teasing me with her hard nipples and the memory of the feel of them against my tongue. But it was the shadows in her eyes that drew me in—that drowned me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. I didn’t know how to tell her that none of my answers were good enough.
“We were in her front yard, and a glare caught my eye. Off a car window across the street, I thought, until I looked…”
“You saw the shooter from there?”
“He was lowering the window, that was what caught the light.” I swallowed, hindsight painting a better picture of what had happened. “I thought I saw the gun, but it was the car…I recognized the car and knew something was wrong. It was the only reason I got her down in time.”
If I’d just seen the gun, it would’ve been too late.
“The car?”
“Black Mercedes sedan.” My voice cracked, and Rorik handed me an open water bottle. I sighed when the cold water soothed my throat and allowed me to continue. “It was parked outside Ivans’s house.”
“What?” Ty sat forward. “There wasn’t a car there when I finished at the scene.”
“It was there when I left. It pulled away when I came outside…” I paused for another breath, wondering if this damn hole in my chest was leaking air from my lungs. “Didn’t think much of it because Ivans…” I ended on a groan, the pain Rorik warned about was starting to reach me in waves.
But I deserved that pain—every goddamn ounce of it—for how I’d hurt her.
“Because Ivans was dead.”
And I took the explanation at face value because I wanted to get her home—wanted to get her temptation away from me. Needed to. Instead, desire got the better of me, and it almost got her killed .
Again.
Again, someone almost died because I hadn’t seen the truth.
“Dare.” My brother’s hard tone jolted me, his stare even more steely. “This isn’t your fault.”
“She was still in danger, and I…”
“Not you. Us. All of us thought Ivans’s death meant she was safe.” He moved to the bottom of the bed, looming over the edge like he was God himself.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have the strength to argue or the grace to forgive myself.
“Who else? Who else would want to kill her?” It didn’t make any fucking sense. She was in danger because of Ivans. Without him, she shouldn’t be in danger anymore.
I closed my eyes, searching the memory again like it was a box of puzzle pieces, the one I needed—the one with answers—buried somewhere in its depths.
“It has to do with Ivans.” Harm folded his arms as he spoke. “There’s no way it doesn’t, we just don’t know what the connection is yet, but we’ll find it. I promise.”
“How?” I didn’t want promises. I wanted practicalities.
“We go back through everything. There’s obviously some part of this we’re missing—some other person.”
“The house belonged to a shell company—a series of them with no link to Ivans or Iverson. Maybe someone else is involved,” Ty suggested. “Someone who owns the house and let Ivans stay there.”
“Who?”
“Another enemy of GrowTech? Disgruntled employee?” Rhys chimed in. “I’m sure Ivans wasn’t the first person Belmont threw under the bus.”
“I’ll keep digging.” Ty nodded.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t fast enough. “The license plate…it was C, zero, G…” I trailed off, the details fragmenting like an exploded firework.
“I’ll check the nearest traffic cams to both Athena and Ivans’s houses and see if I come up with any matching plates,” Ty said and excused himself from the cabin.
“You need to rest,” Harm said when he was gone and looked to Rorik for confirmation.
“You’re going to need to have that arm in a sling for two weeks, so you don’t tear anything,” Rorik said.
One week, and then what he couldn’t see couldn’t hurt him.
“I’ll leave these if you change your mind.” He set the pill bottle on the nightstand, the sight giving me déjà vu for when it had been Athena in this spot and her meds on the table.
“Thanks,” I muttered, but I wasn’t going to change my mind.
And then there was only Harm and Rhys left.
“You saved her life, Dare.”
I grimaced. “I know that.”
My brother sighed, the sound of sadness riding out on his breath. “Do you?”
My bitter response dissolved on my tongue. I did know, but it didn’t change anything.
“I’m going to help Ty,” Harm grumbled. “I’ll check on you later.”
And then there was one.
“I’m fine, Rhys,” I said hoarsely. “You don’t need to babysit.”
“Damn, and here I thought I was getting in some practice.”
Practice…my forehead creased and then understanding dawned. “Merritt…” She was pregnant.
My friend’s face lit up like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm. “Yeah. ”
“Congratulations.” I offered a smile even as the ache in my chest worsened, but the pain wasn’t from the wound. At least not the gunshot wound. The wound that ached was deeper. Invisible and scarred over with time. A wound that had once been a wish—a wish for a family with Athena. A wish that had died when I betrayed her. “You don’t need to stay, though.”
Rhys hummed, his fingers tapping the wooden edge of his instrument where it hung around his neck. “What are you going to do about her?”
My jaw locked. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, you do.”
I exhaled forcefully. “I’m going to figure out who’s behind the attack and stop them, and then leave her alone.”
“Is that what she wants?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation, the recollection of pained betrayal on her face vivid in my mind.
“Then why did she sit with you this whole time? Hold your hand?” he wondered with feigned innocence. “Doesn’t seem like the actions of someone who doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“She wants to thank me for saving her life, that’s all. Guilt and gratitude, nothing more.”
“Bullshit.” He turned the crank on the hurdy-gurdy and let the instrument’s drone ooze into the room. “She wants to see you.”
“Don’t let her,” I warned. I didn’t want her here. I didn’t want to face having failed her—hurt her again.
“Dare—”
“Don’t, Rhys. I fucked up. I keep fucking up when it comes to her—when it comes to this. I keep hurting—” I broke off when he grabbed my shoulder.
I glared at him, watching the easy smile on his face disappear into a hard expression .
“I’m going to say this one time,” he began with a low voice. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, and honestly, this shouldn’t have to be said, but…enough. Enough.” His grip tightened as he crouched so we were eye level. “Ryan’s death wasn’t your fault. Amira wasn’t your fault?—”
“Stop—”
“No one blames you.” He talked right over me. “We all dealt with Ryan’s loss differently, but had I known your…avoidance wasn’t your way of healing but only your way to self-harm, I would’ve said something sooner. I would’ve told you…”
I stilled. “Told me what?”
Rhys inhaled deep. “Ryan, he was the one who believed you.”
“What?” Suddenly the room felt like it had lost its mooring, everything tilting and swaying.
“Harm and Ty doubted the intel—worried about moving so quickly.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed through the tightness in my throat. “And then I convinced them it was legit. I convinced Harm we needed to go or we’d lose our chance. I?—”
“You didn’t,” he interrupted me. “Ryan did.”
“I don’t…” Understand? Believe you?
“You were heated when you made your case.”
“Yeah…”
“And when you finished, I suggested we go outside for some fresh air.” He ticked through the frames of the memory.
I’d been so worked up—so insulted that they dared to question the woman I cared about—that I’d needed a minute to calm down. “And then I told you I didn’t want to talk, I just needed to walk.”
Rhys nodded. “When I went back inside, Ryan had taken up your fight,” he said slowly. “He insisted we trust your intel—that we act on it. He was the one who convinced Harm and Ty it was the right move.”
“And look where it got him,” I croaked, but without the bitterness I’d felt before.
I hadn’t known that Ryan had argued for me—that he’d argued for the mission that had taken his life. Did it change anything? Did it change the guilt I felt? I wasn’t sure, but something felt different. Like a sliver of sunlight through years of cloud-covered storms.
“We all made the decision, including Ryan, because we are a fucking team. We all risked, and we all lost. You need to stop shouldering all of the blame. If it weren’t for Ryan, maybe Harm wouldn’t have given the plan a go.”
My chest tightened as I thought about what he was saying.
“The point is, we all shoulder some responsibility for his death, including himself. But we all also have to shoulder the responsibility for his memory. His legacy.”He straightened and stepped back, the drone of the hurdy-gurdy stretching its melodic fingers through the cabin once more. “And what kind of legacy are you giving him by punishing yourself like this?”
“Like what?”
He arched a brow like I was really daring him to say it. “By staying away from Athena. By denying what you feel.”
“That doesn’t have to do with Ryan.”
“No?” The music grew louder. “It’s hard to let someone else forgive you when you can’t even forgive yourself.”
There was nothing I could do to protect myself from the sharp cut of his words. It went right through the steel of my self-loathing and the chains of my guilt and straight to my heart—to the organ I’d sacrificed on a pyre for my redemption—and resurrected it with a surge of hope and a balm of forgiveness.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” I rumbled low .
“Nope.” He smiled. “And if I leave, she’ll know you’re awake. So, just relax and enjoy the music.”
My nostrils flared, but I didn’t say anything more, letting my eyes shut as I focused on breathing through the pain. Somehow, the long push and pull of the instrument’s notes timed with the steady in and out of my breaths.
Maybe I’d remember when the morphine wore off. Maybe the pain would be sharp enough to cut through the fog.
Soon, the random notes pulled together into a familiar tune like moths collecting around a flame. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” played through the room, but it wasn’t the slow ballad or Rhys’s rich voice that drew me to rest; it was the steadiness of a friend by my side when the storm raged inside me.
The music had stopped, but I wasn’t alone. Conscious or not, dead or alive, I’d know the sweet honey scent of her anywhere. Athena.
I breathed deep, drawing her in like it was my very last breath, and of her, it might be. It should be. When this was all over, she deserved a real fresh start. From Brandon. From Ivans. From me.
She deserved more than someone who’d hurt her—betrayed her—twice, even if I’d happily spend the rest of my life giving her everything. She deserved a better man.
Yeah, I pretended for one night like some fucking fairy tale after the trauma I’d survived; I’d pretended like I could be that better man. I’d pretended because she couldn’t see me, and if she couldn’t see me, maybe I didn’t have to face myself. But I was fooling myself to think that could last. She deserved better. Someone who’d give her the truth from the start, for one. Someone to love her.
Pain burned in my side like a match struck right in the wound. I didn’t want anyone else to love her—it should’ve only ever been me. But it was too late for that now. Too late to do anything but lay the truth at her feet and hoped she walked far, far away.
One more deep breath of her filled my lungs as I opened my eyes. This time, the pain in my chest came from the squeeze of my heart.
Goddamn, she was so beautiful.
The soft light in the room cast an ethereal glow over her golden hair, which was swept up in a pile on top of her head. She was only in a tee and leggings, but the way the shadows clung to the swells of her breasts and the long lines of her legs—legs that had fit so perfectly around my waist—it was no wonder it pained my heart to beat; I wanted her beyond reason. Beyond rationality.
“Athena.”
She looked like an angel, sitting cross-legged on a chair she’d pulled beside the bed. She was an angel, and I’d fucking told Rhys to keep her away.
Her gaze lifted to mine from where she’d been concentrating over the paper in her lap. “Dare.” She lowered her pencil. “Are you okay? How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” I was in pain, but it was less because of her. Because she was here.
“Here.” She came over, took the water bottle from the nightstand, and handed it to me. “Dr. Nilsen—Rorik said you lost a lot of blood.”
“I’ll be fine,” I mumbled and downed several large gulps. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She shouldn’t be anywhere near me. Not after what I’d done.
“So, you can take care of me, but I can’t take care of you? The man who saved my life?”
Angry air hissed through my lips. “I lied to you.” There was no point in skirting the truth—no point in trying to delay the return of her anger. Her hatred.
“You did.” Her chin lowered.
I drained the rest of the water, wishing it were something a hundred times stronger.“You shouldn’t want to take care of me.”
Pain pulled along her beautiful face, and I hated how even wanting her to hate me caused her pain.
I stilled as she sank onto the edge of the bed, her focus on my torso—on the bandaged wound. And then it strayed elsewhere—to the scars dotting and streaking over my skin.
“So many scars,” she murmured, and I breathed out unsteadily when her finger touched down on a scar shaped like a comet on my right shoulder where shrapnel from a blast had caught me.
“I’ve lived a violent life.”
Again, she nodded and then turned, reaching for the paper she’d set on her chair when she’d gotten up to bring me water.
“You’re peaceful when you sleep.” She set the paper on my lap; it was a portrait of me.
“You drew me.” I stared in awe at the soft lines stretching over the paper, coming together to create the image of a man I simultaneously knew but didn’t recognize. My features. My body. My scars. It was all me. But the peace on my face…it had to be remnants of the drugs in my system. I hadn’t slept good since, well, before the night I’d spent with her…in a long time.
“You sat perfectly still. An excellent subject.” A small smile spread across her face .
“This is incredible. You’re incredible,” I rasped and handed her back the drawing, afraid to look too long at a peace I might never find again.
“Well, it’s much better than the last time I tried to draw you.”
“Last…” I trailed off when another paper landed in my lap. This one was much less refined. It was chaotic. Messy. The whole thing was created from one wild line. “You drew this?”
“When I couldn’t see,” she confirmed, letting her tongue slide over her lips. “It took me so many tries to figure out how to…make it work. Not that I could see how badly I was failing, but as soon as I lifted the pencil from the paper, that was it. I was lost.”
I let my finger trace along the line. For some reason, this drawing meant more to me than the one she’d just done. Maybe because this one was of the man who saved her. The man who cared for her. The man she wanted.
This one came before she realized I was the first man to break her heart.
“You should go.” I pushed the paper back to her and looked away.
“Go where?” She surprised me by asking.
My mouth opened and shut before I worked out the words, “The guest cabin.” I assumed that was where Rob had taken her.
“As opposed to this one…which is yours?”
I breathed deep. Of course, she’d realized—or been told. “Yeah.”
“But you brought me here before.”
“I—yes.” It would only make it hurt worse to romanticize my reasons. “It was easier—better for you.”
“Like it was better for you to lie to me?”
Another bullet—a thousand bullets—would be less painful than hearing the devastation in her voice .
“I thought it would be,” I answered with humble honesty. “After what you went through, knowing who I was…am…it wouldn’t have helped anything, only hurt.”
“So you wanted to protect me…” She paused and tipped forward. “Or were you trying to punish yourself?”
“Athena,”I began too forcefully, wincing when my wound reminded me there was nothing I could do forcefully right now.
Her hand splayed across the center of my chest, heat spreading from the firm contact as she moved her touch lower to the edge of my ribs. “Was I one more way for you to let your past eat you alive?”
Her hand was over my liver, connecting her question back to the time when she’d deemed me a modern Prometheus.
“Why do you want to keep me from you?”
I tipped my head back and sighed. “Because you deserve better,” I said, sadness eating my tone. “Because if I don’t keep you from me, I’m afraid I’ll pull you to me and never let you go. And that’s not right…not okay.”
“Isn’t it?”
Heat burned through my veins. Temptation. Desire. Possession. Her words weakened me beyond anything I’d ever felt before, my current gunshot wound included.
“You know it’s not,” I said brokenly.
“I don’t, actually.”She met my gaze, hurt and hope shining bright. And then she pulled back and stood. “You should rest.”
“Wait.” I reached for her, but she wasn’t close enough. “I have to tell you…”
She came over then, standing above me like the goddess who’d determine my fate. My breath hitched when she bent forward, time stopping as she came lower—closer to my face. Closer to…I groaned when the warmth of her lips pressed to my forehead, the touch so fucking tender it destroyed me.
“I don’t want the truth, Darius,” she murmured, the warmth of her breath caressing my skin. “Not without your trust.”
I didn’t move—I didn’t say a single word as she straightened and walked out of the room. Out of my cabin.
She didn’t want my explanation out of guilt; she wanted me to trust her with the last of my secrets. And if it were just my secrets, I could—would trust her easily. But I was afraid it was more than that now. I was afraid that to give her the truth, I’d also have to hand her my heart.