Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE_
DECAF
The air around us is thick, and it’s not from the Nevada desert. It’s a blanket of impending doom and the uncertainty of how we’re going to make it out of here alive.
How am I going to keep Haz safe if we don’t even know for sure who or what we’re up against?
When I can’t be sure my injuries won’t fuck me over if it goes belly-up?
And then what? I lie dying in a street for Haz to watch?
I know what that kind of thing does to a person, and I don’t want to put him through that.
It’s impossible to sleep in this stifling motel room.
The AC isn’t working, and with three large bodies in a tiny room, it’s hot as balls in here.
I don’t know how Haz is doing it. He’s on top of the comforter, fully clothed, and lying on the bathroom towels because, in his words, “They look slightly cleaner than the sheets.”
I’ve slept in worse. Even if the bed is covered in germs and possible bed bugs or other creepy-crawlies, it’s still more comfortable than in a war zone.
Then again, the feeling here is the same as being deployed. Life-or-death situation. Will I make it home? Will I even have a home to come back to once it’s all said and done?
As much as I’d like to think those coming after us would give up eventually or any new government cabinet taking over would forget we exist, but I have to face reality: this move is most likely going to be permanent.
We won’t be able to return to our lives.
Our belongings. Maybe, possibly in the future, we’ll be able to hire someone to ship us important things, maybe sell the properties, but for now, I have to see it as everything I’ve ever owned is gone.
I’ve been looking at it that way ever since that car bomb blew up in my literal face, but the thought of saying goodbye to the place I’ve called home my entire life … it’s too … real.
So was overhearing Haz earlier. Before we left. That when I shut down like this, I become someone he doesn’t even know if he likes.
I have no idea what he’s talking about, considering I’m nearing mid-forties and have never had a relationship because I’ve never opened up to anyone before.
It’s all too big. Too much. Especially when I think of what’s to come next.
For me.
For Haz.
For us.
I can’t focus on us and being the man he needs me to be if I’m too busy thinking about where we’ll be living in a month, two months, a year. Never knowing if we’ll ever truly be safe or what we’ll do for money.
Trav has always paid us well, but everything is tied up in real estate or shares.
He gave all of us an emergency fund in a safe, offshore account when we signed on with Mike Bravo, but they’re really only enough to start anew.
It’s not sustainable to live off. What are we supposed to do?
Get a real job? Work in an office or restaurant or some entry-level customer service position where they won’t allow me ten coffee breaks a day?
And what happens when I snap and murder a customer?
Ergh, why is all of this running through my head now when I should be sleeping and resting for what’s to come? We have to actually get away before thinking about the next dilemma.
“Could you be thinking any louder?” Haz grumbles beside me. He has his back to me, but then he rolls over and then freaks out when the towel slips from under his head and an inch of his hair is against the duvet for less than a second.
He shakes his head and rubs his hair like that’ll get out whatever he thinks is now crawling on him.
“You good?” I ask.
“No, I’m not,” he hisses.
In unison, we glance over at Scout to see if the noise startles him. It doesn’t. Scout has always been a bit of a heavy sleeper.
“You’re not going to die from putting your head on a motel room pillow. I didn’t realize you were so … spoiled. No, that’s not the right word. High-maintenance?”
“Good luck with all the flesh-eating bacteria you’re currently lying in. Probably. I’d rather be high-maintenance than skinless.”
“I’ll take my chances. Didn’t you stay in a roadside motel like this when you were on your Vegas mission?”
“Yes. But I was new and trying to pretend I was cool with everything, so I kinda snuck the towels into my bed that night.”
I laugh now because for someone who served in the military, where being dirty and grimy was part of your life, it’s amusing to me that Haz can deal with that but not a bed in a motel room.
“Shut up.” He shoves me, but I don’t even budge it’s that weak a push.
“I think it’s cute.” I try to lift my arm to get him to move closer to my side, but he swats it away.
“No, you said I could sleep on top of you so I didn’t have to touch the bed, but then refused to actually follow through.”
“Because I was joking.”
We both laugh quietly to ourselves, but not quietly enough.
“Stop giggling,” Scout says.
“Would you rather laughing or sex noises?” I ask.
“Eww, no way are we adding our DNA profiles to this hole.”
Of course Haz thinks like that.
Scout doesn’t answer us, though, and his breathing has evened back out.
“Maybe he’s sleep talking,” Haz says.
“I wish I was sleep talking instead of talking-talking because that would mean I’m actually asleep. It’s impossible to do that here,” I say.
“Because of the flesh-eating bacteria. I get it.”
“No.”
“Is it because you rarely sleep?”
“No. I’m … overthinking.” I turn to face him. The crack in the curtain allows the parking lot lights to keep the room from being completely dark.
“What is it?” His eyes seem bigger somehow, like he’s pleading with me for something. Something I don’t know how to give.
“It’s hard for me … to do this.”
Haz’s lips turn up into that smartass smile he does as he reaches over and palms my cock over my boxers. “Liar. You’re not hard at all.”
He’s trying to lighten the mood, which doesn’t make opening up to him any easier because it’s so, so tempting to joke back and hold everything in like I usually do.
“I’m scared,” I manage to say.
Haz’s face drops as he realizes I’m being serious. “We’re all scared shitless. It comes with the package of being a motherfucking badass.” He still can’t say that without a hint of condescension over Mike Bravo’s name.
“It’s not that part I’m scared of. This isn’t just any mission, and there are other things at play. Other things we need to … figure out.”
“About us, you mean?” he whispers in the same defeated tone as earlier when he said he can’t be sure he even likes me.
“If this goes sideways, and I can’t keep up because of my injuries, you go on without me. The number one thing I want is for you to be safe.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
I grunt. “And I knew you’d say that. I need you to promise me that if I’m taken, gunned down, poisoned, set on fire, or anything else, you will get out. Don’t sacrifice yourself for me if I’m a lost cause.”
“So you want me to do what you did to Dad? Even though you’ve regretted it for twenty years? Even though that one action shaped your entire life afterward?”
I pause. Hesitate in my train of thought. Because something finally clicks for me.
No matter how many times I’ve told myself that leaving Jesse was all that I could do, telling myself I was following orders but hating myself for it, I’ve always been haunted by grief and regret. But being here with Haz, worrying for him, for us, I realize something I’ve never considered before.
Jesse genuinely would not have wanted me to run out there and die alongside him.
No fucking way. We were too special to each other.
Bonded for life. It doesn’t matter if I’ve heard it before or tried to convince myself, knowing I’d never believe it, it is finally sinking in now.
Because I wouldn’t want Haz to die alongside me.
I don’t want him to have this pit of permanent guilt in his gut. I want him to be happy, no matter what.
“I’m telling you right here and now that you don’t have to regret it. I want it. If I was going to die, I would want to know that you got away and have an entire life ahead of you. One full of love and laughter and no more heartache. No more grief.”
“Why are you saying all of this?”
I hate, hate, hate how his voice is so small. “Because I care about you so fucking much, I need you to be safe, and I will do anything in my power to make sure you are.”
“It sounds like you’re planning to jump in front of flying bullets for me. Like you want to die. Is this more pushing me away because shit is getting too serious?”
“It’s not,” I say, raising my voice an octave.
I glance over my shoulder to see Scout has slept through it, though, so I keep talking.
“This is the opposite of that. Or me trying to give you the opposite, anyway. I told you. I suck at this. If we get through it all, if we arrive in Montenegro together, I want us to stay together. Travel. Move wherever we want. Make a future. But if this doesn’t go the right way, I don’t want you to feel like I have for the last twenty years.
Like I’m not man enough for love. Not man enough for you. ”
He’s silent, neither of us sure what to say.
I’ve done something I’ve never done before. I’ve opened up. I’ve communicated how I feel. And yet, it hasn’t given us any answers. I have more clarity, maybe, but that only helps me move on from my past. That doesn’t help here, in this moment.
“I’m not leaving you behind, no matter what,” he finally says. “So if you’re going to die, you better do it when we’re somewhere convenient so I don’t have to carry your dead-ass weight around with me. Because I’m not leaving you. End of story. I’m done talking about it.”
“Complete and utter stubborn fuckery,” I grumble.
“Maybe this is proof we’re meant for each other because I could say the same about you.”
“Why would the universe or fate or whatever it is we say we don’t believe in put two stubborn people together? It makes no sense. One needs to be selfless, and in this case, it’s you.”
“Opposites attract is boring. Stubborn lovers trying to out stubborn each other is much more our style.”
That’s true, but if we’re going to make it out of this thing alive, we’re both going to need to be stubborn enough to not let anything kill us. Bullets, explosions, whatever …
Is pure will enough to keep us from bleeding out?