Chapter Thirteen #2
“Let me put it this way. I set out a career plan from the moment I enlisted, because I planned to retire from the army. I was going to do my twenty years and walk into the sunset like every cowboy dreams of.”
“Did you make it to twenty?”
He didn’t answer right away. Even after all these years, the loss of his career still weighed on him.
“No,” he huffed, trying to loosen some of the tension building up in his chest. “I didn’t. I spent about half that inside.”
“Why? What made you change your mind?”
He stopped, glancing down as he took in the pretty and seductive picture of her.
She wore a strapless summer dress that lovingly fell against her deep curves and stopping just below the mid level of her thighs.
It was short, cute, flirty, and sexy as hell, and if he hadn’t gorged himself on Aja’s food, he’d be doing everything he could to peel it off her.
“You sure you want to get into all this?” He took a moment to prop himself up against a nearby tree, leaning against it, and he crossed his ankles and his arms. “It’s your birthday, Seneca. This isn’t a pretty tale.”
She stepped closer to him, cupping his cheek. The soft skin of her palm against his rough stubble made his cock twitch with need. And even though he could see the same interest in her eyes, he also saw restraint.
“I want to know.”
“Why?”
She pressed herself against him, pulling his arms until they surrounded her. “Because I don’t like the fact that someone else knows more about you than me.”
She leaned her head against his chest and pulled his arms around her.
“Seneca—”
“Colton, I know something haunts you. I see it when you think I’m not looking.
It’s there, somewhere hidden in the depths of those eyes.
Whatever it is, Holden tried to use it as a weapon to get me to break my promise to you.
It’s obviously important. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have mentioned it at all. ”
That fucking Holden Eames. As soon as he saw him next, he was definitely going to give him a piece of his mind. Whatever games he was playing with Seneca, Colton refused to let Holden use his past to lure her in.
“I was stationed in Afghanistan. About six months after I arrived, I met a woman. Her name was McKenna.” He heard the crack in his voice, the same one that was always present whenever he spoke her name.
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as he tried to soothe the decade-old ache still sitting in the middle of his chest.
“She was a U.S. government contractor, hired as an interpreter for the foreign army in theater. She was smart, compassionate, and could drink any soldier under the table.” He chuckled, remembering one of the many shots contests she’d kicked his ass in whenever he was stupid enough to take her on.
“When she was on liberty, she’d sometimes travel to the local villages and engage with the civilian populations as sort of an unofficial ambassador. Because of these connections she’d make, she’d also get all sorts of intel about things going on that sometimes we could use to help our campaign.”
His muscles tightened, preparing for the rest of the torturous tale to unfold in his head. It wasn’t like he hadn’t relived it over and over again in his head since the day it happened. But sharing it, speaking the words out loud, made the pain fresh and sharp.
“Intel came in about one of the nearby villages she patronized. We tried to tell my commanding officer he was off base, that there were no enemy cells hiding inside this little village. But he wouldn’t listen. He believed the intel was credible, so he sent in another team to investigate.”
He set his eyes on the stream, trying to let the soothing sound of water passing over rocks calm the anger and hurt that still burned beneath his skin. But even the picturesque surroundings of Restoration Ranch didn’t seem to do much to stem the pain.
“I begged him to let my team go instead, but he said no. When I insisted, he told me if I didn’t stand down, he would have me taken into custody for possible sanctioning.
McKenna told me it would be fine and not to worry.
I should’ve known then she was up to something. She never backed down that easily.”
His head began to spin as his memories skipped at high speed like an old film being fast-forwarded.
The muscles in his legs trembled, so he let himself slide down until he was sitting in the soft grass.
With his legs stretched out and his back against the tree trunk, he lifted his eyes to see Seneca standing in front of him.
Her hair was pinned up into a pineapple of messy curls with loose tendrils sweeping her shoulders and cheeks.
The strapless sundress made her look both ethereal and sexy as hell, and God help him, the only thing he wanted to do was bury himself in her easy natural joy so the only thing he would ever remember was her, not this pain and not someone he’d failed.
She watched him carefully. It wasn’t pity he saw swimming in her deep brown eyes. That he recognized from his friends and family. Whatever it was, it was intense, and it peeled back his barriers until he was raw and exposed beneath her gaze.
She kneeled down, straddling him, placing firm hands on his shoulders as she settled on his lap. Then she cradled his face in her hands, the simple gesture making him feel cared for and settled in a way that set all of his alarms off.
From the start, he’d been the one pursuing her, asking for entry into her life. But the way she looked down at him, her simple concern flaying him open and leaving him unprotected, it made him question if he hadn’t bitten off more than he could chew where she was concerned.
“You’re safe here,” she whispered. “Whatever you choose to tell me will never go further than the two of us.”
He stared at her, taking in the terse set of her jaw. Even under the worst circumstances, Seneca also found a way to laugh, to find the levity in any situation. But here, huddled together with him in the woods, the only thing he saw in her eyes, on her face, was truth.
He took one of her hands, kissing her palm before lacing his fingers through hers. Even ten years later, he still needed an anchor to get through this next part. And as selfish as it might be, he wasn’t above letting Seneca be that for him so he could get through it.
“McKenna left for the village, trying to get ahead of the strike team to warn the villagers to evacuate. When I realized what she was planning, I knew I had to stop her. I begged my commanding officer to call it off. He refused. I knew any action I took after that would probably get me thrown out of the army or worse. And I won’t even pretend I didn’t take the time to consider that fact while I was skating damn close to insubordination with the way I was talking to my C.O. ”
He held their hands against his chest, the need to touch her and have her touch him was the only thing grounding him in the present, keeping him from slipping completely away into his tragic past.
“I finally realized arguing with him wasn’t going to help.
There was no scenario in which I could save my career and save her too.
So, I stormed out of his office. I got my gear together and headed out.
My men saw me. They wanted to come with even when I told them I was probably going to end up in the brig for what I was about to do. They didn’t care. They came anyway.
“When we arrived, people were running from the village, but I couldn’t find McKenna anywhere.
A young girl I recognized told me where she’d seen her last. My men helped the rest of the villagers evacuate while I looked for her.
I found her; she was trying to get a toddler who’d been separated from its parents in all of the chaos.
I grabbed the kid, and we took off running, but we didn’t get out before the village took fire.
Dust was everywhere and I lost sight of her.
I made it out with the kid, found its parents, but just as I was going back in to find her, the gunfire became heavier. ”
Bright flashes of terror slashed across his mind. The grit on his skin, in his lungs, making each breath more difficult than the last. He was slipping. He knew it and couldn’t stop it.
“Tried to get back inside.” His words were clipped. “Two of my men grabbed me and pulled me back. Saved my life.”
She unlinked their hands, pulling him into her embrace, pressing his head against the soft cushion of her bosom. “McKenna didn’t make it, did she?”
“No.” That word sat on his tongue like a boulder on a toothpick. “If I hadn’t wasted so much time trying to convince my asshole C.O. to do the right thing because I was worried about losing my career and my freedom, I could’ve saved her.”
Her arms tightened around him and her embrace acting like braided rope holding all of his broken pieces together. “I’m so sorry, Colton.” She placed a brief kiss on his brow. “What happened when you returned to base?”
“I was arrested. I would’ve ended up court-martialed and imprisoned, except the day after my arrest, news came in that the supposed credible intel had been an enemy setup all along to increase tensions between the locals and the U.S.
military and to destroy us in the court of public opinion.
But the army doesn’t like soldiers who don’t follow the rules, so to protect my men from getting sanctioned, I accepted a dishonorable discharge.
The culmination of all the years I’d put into the service and all I had to show for it were the clothes on my back and a dead girlfriend who died so someone could get the political upper hand.
And the worst part of it all? I let it happen. ”
She pulled back slightly, raising his face to hers, staring directly into his eyes. “Colton.” The subtle force she used to speak his name didn’t go unnoticed. It captivated him and kept his focus locked onto the dark chestnut of her eyes.
“You did nothing wrong. You tried to follow orders. And when it became obvious those orders were faulty, you went to great personal risk to save the woman you loved.” She took a breath but never pulled her gaze from his.
“And I know you’re not going to want to hear this, and you might get mad with me, but I’mma say it anyway.
McKenna was a grown-ass woman. She made a choice.
I’m sure she fully understood the possible consequences.
You can’t blame yourself because you survived, and she didn’t. ”
He tried to close his eyes. An overwhelming need to hide from the fierce support and compassion he saw shading her face burgeoned inside him. He didn’t deserve it. Not after what his inaction cost McKenna.
She must’ve sensed the internal berating sounding off in his head because the soft lines of her face sharpened as she stared down at him. She tightened her grip on his chin and made him meet her gaze.
“It wasn’t your fault. And although I am so sorry for your loss, I won’t pretend I’m not glad you survived.”
Those words. Like a jackhammer to glass it shattered him, fragmented him into inconceivable tiny pieces he’d never be able to find and return to their former hardened state.
“Sen, I—”
She placed a finger over his lips refusing to let him speak.
“Sssshhh,” she whispered so softly he barely heard her. “No explanations. It was not your fault. That’s the only thing I want to hear you say.”
“But—”
“Say it,” she demanded. The not-so-subtle command abraded against the belief he’d held for so long. “It wasn’t your fault.”
His throat and skin were tight and the quiet control he always kept in place was threadbare. “You can’t possibly know that. You weren’t there.”
She released his chin, sliding her fingers into his hair, gripping them tight enough to cause a hint of pain that did more to arouse him than hurt him.
His cock twitched to life, and because she was straddling his lap, there was no way she wasn’t aware of it.
You’re a sick bastard. She’s trying to comfort you and you’re getting off on it.
His guilt lasted all of two seconds when she tugged earnestly on his locks, daring him to turn away from her burning scrutiny.
“Say it,” she repeated. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Caught between the pain of his past and the refuge of his present, the last of his restraint began to crumble. How could he do otherwise in the face of the strong woman who held his redemption in her touch?
And as the words “It wasn’t my fault” dripped from his mouth like the slow, thick sap of a tree, for the first time in a decade, he realized he wanted to be redeemed.
“Like you said, I know you better than most. And the man I know would’ve done everything humanly possible to save someone he cared about.”
“Even though I lied to you?”
She loosened her grip in his hair, but her fiery gaze stayed fastened on his.
“I’m not saying I’m not still mad.” She pulled her fingers from her hair and let them slide against his jaw.
“But I remember when I woke up in the hospital with you next to me, and the sheer look of relief on your face that I was alive… you can’t fake that kind of concern. ”
She adjusted her perch on his lap, the swivel of her hips making his cock thicken behind his zipper. “I don’t know how to fake anything with you, Sen. Please know that.”
Silence passed between them. The sounds of the wooded area swelling made each second stretch into excruciatingly long moments, but he waited, refusing to rush her.
“I know,” she said, finally putting him out of his misery.
His heartbeat sped up. It wasn’t the ringing endorsement he’d hoped for, but it was definitely a start, something he could hold on to while he continued to find a place in her life.
And after the way she’d confronted him about his guilt, the way she refused to take anything but his total cooperation, there was no way he could pretend he didn’t want to be inside of her life, inside of her body, and most importantly, inside of her heart.