34. Declan
34
DECLAN
I sat at the table in the tiny kitchen of our apartment, working on some of the spreadsheets Walker and Foster asked me to help them with. I’d been taking on more of an administrative role lately. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but Walker talked me into it because Hayden would be deployed for long periods of time. If I split my time between fieldwork and admin duties, I could be here when Hayden was and working security details when he wasn’t. I’d been hesitant until Walker explained how deployments worked.
Apparently, we were on a clock—a never-ending clock that could snatch Hayden up and ship him out to battle whenever.
According to the deployment schedule, rotation, or whatever the Navy and Marine Corps call the thing, Hayden would be deploying in a week or so. To say I’d lost my shit a few months ago when I realized it was putting it mildly. Luckily, Walker was the one to see my freak out, not my husband. He had enough to worry about without stressing out about how I was handling being a Marine spouse.
Unlike the last trip, which about killed me, this one was slated for six freaking months. What pissed me off about it was the wishy-washy time frame. They’d deploy somewhere in this time frame and be gone six months, but it could be nine months. I wanted to grab hold of the brass and be like, just give me the date and time when you are planning on snatching my husband from our lives, and oh hey, could you throw in a freaking itinerary so I knew where you’d stashed my husband for god knew how long. And could you maybe tighten up the return window from ninety days to, oh, I don’t know, a few weeks? Please? Thanks.
I wouldn’t do it. I wanted to. I considered it every time I spoke with Uncle Matthew or whenever Hayden and I were out on base, and he paused to salute someone who outranked him. A couple of times, I bit a hole in my tongue to hold it all in because I knew Hayden would pay the price for my outburst, and not a damn thing would change.
It freaking sucked, and I wasn’t a fan. Walker was right when he said I’d fucked up falling for a Marine. I had. In more ways than one, but I wouldn’t change it. Would I prefer not to have the DOD, the Navy, and the Marines up my ass, telling us what to do, when to do it, where to go, and how to get there? Absolutely. But I fell in love with a Marine, and I’d deal with anything to be with Hayden.
I glanced at the clock. Hayden would be home in a couple of hours, so I decided to give my head a rest from the numbers and figure out what to do about dinner. Some days, I felt like Suzy Homemaker, or was that Stevie Homemaker.
Whatever. It didn’t matter.
I loved to cook, and feeding Hayden somehow cleared the chaos of my mind that being a switch sometimes caused. And I was all for that. It wasn’t that I was confused. I wasn’t. I was a switch. That’s who and what I was. But if cooking for my husband helped me accept the more submissive side of myself, I was all for it. Plus, Hayden was so damn appreciative. He’d told me so many times I didn’t need to cook for him that we could afford to eat out sometimes, and we did. But fuck me, the man could put away food like a ranch hand working roundup. And I wanted my cooking to be what caused him to make the sounds he did when he enjoyed his food. Kinda like I didn’t want another man’s dick making him come.
I glanced in the cabinets, then moved to the fridge, but paused when my phone rang. Turning back to grab it from the table, I slid my thumb across the screen as I went back to deciding what to make for dinner.
“Yeah.”
“That’s gotta be the rudest way to answer the damn phone.”
I rolled my eyes. Heidi hated talking on the phone, so she rarely called me, but when she did, she bitched me out every damn time about how rude I was when I answered the phone.
“What do you need, Hide?”
“There’s an issue.”
“What issue?”
“What was it you called her? Oh! Right, Little Miss Sparkle Tits got herself in trouble and is blaming Holt. It’s all hands on deck, and I was forced to call your rude ass.”
“Blunt. Not rude. There’s no reason to say a bunch of words I don’t need to when I can get the job accomplished with one.”
“Asshole.”
I refused to be baited into her meltdown. This is what Heidi did. She turned into a raging smart ass when pissed.
“What do I need to do?”
“Kiss that sexy ass Papi goodbye for a couple of days because somehow all of Holt is being dragged through the mud in D.C. because Daddy Sparkle Tits says we failed to do the job he hired us to do. I called bullshit, but no one fucking listened to me.”
“Hide.”
“Why would they listen to me? I’m just the pissant Daddy Dickweed hired to take care of Cuntface. As if anyone but the dregs of society she hangs out with would want to get as close to her as the moon. But oh no, Daddy Cuntface thinks someone’s going to snatch her up off the street. No one wants anything to do with her. Hell, if she were abducted, they’d bring her ass back and hand themselves over to the police for being so massively stupid as to abduct the raging bitch.”
“Hide.”
“Oh God! What if she gets knocked up? Could you imagine her as a mother? Talk about neglect. Can you be charged with neglect in California?”
“HEIDI!”
“What? Why’re you yelling at me?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose because if I didn’t keep my cool, I was going to lose my shit on her.
“Heidi, can you tell me why I need to come over there? I’m not working details at the minute unless they are short one-offs.”
“Gimme the phone.” Walker’s voice came through from a distance before he came on the line.
“Get your ass over here. That fucking douche is chewing every ear who’ll listen in Washington about how we fucked up protecting his useless waste of space child and how Holt can’t be trusted. The Admiral is about to flip his shit.”
“Why’s Uncle Matthew flipping shit? All people do in Washington is talk. Just because someone listens…” I didn’t follow. Cagot hadn’t even gotten elected yet. The election was still weeks away.
“Because the House Arms Committee is voting an appropriations bill, and Cagot, whose granddaddy was once the head of that committee, is actively working to get funding pulled for one of our PMC projects.”
“Fuck. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Walker had been harping on me since the float to own up to my shit with Hayden, but now he was going further and calling me out. Instead of commenting, I jumped to save what I was working on and shut down my computer. I packed everything up, grabbed my keys, and headed out the door, my phone still pressed to my ear.
In the background, Walker continued to chatter on. I didn’t pay much attention because while he was still talking, it wasn’t to me.
“You living on base is fucking stupid you realize that, right?”
Instead of ignoring him, I let the smart ass out. I was a Holt, after all. We all had the trait in varying degrees.
“Oh! Were you talking to me? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Just get your ass over here and fucking tell your husband he married a billionaire.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I’m not a billionaire. Uncle Matthew may be, but not me.”
“Declan, the financial disclosure statements for the family trust list you as one of the beneficiaries. Whether you choose to use the assets at your disposal or not is up to you. It doesn’t change the number in the bank accounts with your name as the owner.”
“And I told you years ago to take my name off that shit.”
“Not up to me, dude. By the way, the lawyers are chomping at the bit about adding Hayden to the paperwork. You know how they get.”
“You tell Uncle Lucas if he shows up at my house, or talks to Hayden without my permission, that I’ll stomp a mudhole in the bastard’s ass. If that doesn’t deter him, you tell him I’ll cut out his fucking tongue with a rusty knife before dressing him up as a rodeo clown and dropping him in the lot with Daddy’s prize Brahman bull. And I’ll make sure he’s hogtied so he can’t get away.”
Walker sighed, then groaned before saying, “I’ll let him know. But it’s a stay of execution, not a pardon, kid. You’ve gotta fucking tell him.”
I rolled my eyes as I stopped in line at the base gate. “You just make sure he gets the message because he doesn’t want it to come from me. Oh! And if Lucas sends someone in his place, I’ll start with whatever unlucky bastard he sent before driving to Texas and doing the same to him.” I sighed and wiped a hand over my face to settle myself. “I’ll see you soon. I’m at the gate.”
I didn’t wait for him to say anything. I hung up, tossed the phone onto the dash, and punched the steering wheel. I knew I should’ve told Hayden by now. I wasn’t a fucking idiot. Well, I wasn’t an idiot for that reason, but I was an idiot because I hadn’t told Hayden he was now technically a billionaire. Without a prenup in place, anyone who legally married a member of the trust was added to the trust. Same with biological children and adopted ones once the court order went into effect.
I didn’t understand any of it. Something about capital gains and distributions. Lucas loved to yammer on about the shit, but I let it go in one ear and out the other. I lived on what I earned. I had since I left the rodeo circuit. I had to admit that being on the circuit had been much easier for me because I didn’t worry about eating and having a place to sleep if I wasn’t winning. I’d gotten a lot of flak for it from some of the guys on the circuit when they figured it out. They’d treated me differently, and I hated it. I was Declan. That was it, plain and simple.
I just couldn’t figure out how to let Hayden know. I spent the time since he came home trying to work out what to say to him, but every time I tried bringing it up, I chickened out. Things were going so well between us that I didn’t want to ruin it. I was petrified. Scared to death he’d leave me, and I didn’t think I could handle it. He wove himself into me so intrinsically he’d become part of me. He was the other half of my soul. Which seemed stupid since we’d only known each other for a few months, but there it was.
He was my Papi. The guiding light for the submissive side he awakened in me. I’d fought it, still did some days, but I was growing more comfortable in that role, and I didn’t know what it would do to me to lose it just as I was embracing it.
I handed over my military ID—the one that marked me as a spouse of an active duty Marine—when it was my turn at the gate. As I sat there, I stared at the fence surrounding the base. It was a clear line in the sand.
On one side, I was Declan Holt, husband of Sergeant Hayden Marin, USMC.
On the other, I was Declan Holt, a member of The Holt Family, third in charge at Holt Securities and, at last glance, slowly closing in on billionaire status in my own right.
“Here you go, sir,” the guard said, handing my military ID back to me.
I nodded at the lance corporal, pulled away from the guard house, drove through the gate, and turned toward the beach house.
This double-life shit was getting old.