Epilogue
BANNER
I trail my fingers down her back, grinning when she shivers under my touch
She turns her head from where it rests on my chest and looks up at me. “I’m happy.” She sounds so surprised, like she never expected that to be something she could look forward to. It makes me both proud that I had a hand in that and sad that she learned never to expect it in the first place.
“Good. You deserve all the happiness in the world.”
“It feels wrong somehow. Not like I don’t trust it,” she hurries to say. “More like…I feel guilty that there are so many others having such a crappy time at the moment that—”
I cover her lips with my thumb. “I seem to remember you spending a bunch of time behind bars after going through a horrific ordeal. And while that happened, nobody here stopped living. Nobody stopped laughing or falling in love. We all carried on with our lives. I’m not going to say you owe these people nothing.
That’s not who you are. I’m saying that their sadness isn’t enough of a reason to stop you from being happy.
If you were only happy when life was going well, I’d never see you smile because shit happens.
You never know what’s around the corner, and I for one am done living my life worried about what others think. ”
She presses a kiss to my chest. “I either lock myself down and feel numb, or I open myself up and feel too much. I need to figure out how to handle things a little better.”
“I think you handle things far better than you realize. But if ever they get to be too much, just lean on me. That’s what I’m here for.”
“You’re too good to me, Banner.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Sorrow.”
Her eyes flutter closed, a smile on her face as she lays her head back on my chest. I keep trailing my fingers down her arm as her breathing evens out and she drops off to sleep.
I feel my eyes getting heavy, but I fight it for as long as I can.
These moments when everything is quiet, and I have my whole world lying on my chest, are the moments I treasure the most.
“Wait, Tate—Tate as in Tate Foster? The SWAT guy who helped us out with Callie? He’s going to join Price Security?” I ask, thinking I heard Blake wrong. I look around the large table in the back room of our offices and see the others look as surprised as I am.
“One and the same. Seems he had some trouble. I don’t have all the details, but shit went down with the Kings of Carnage and it spilled over onto Tate.
Though from what Tate was saying, the bad guys in this were supposed to be the good guys, and as we’re all familiar with what that feels like, I thought he’d fit right in here. ”
“So he’s leaving SWAT?”
Blake nods. “Already left, from what I understand. I think his other brothers are considering it too, though Tate is the only one who’s considering relocating. Perhaps they’ll set up something similar up there to what we have going on here.”
“Would he not want to work with his brothers? Don’t get me wrong, I like Tate, but I don’t want to bring a guy in only for him to leave a few months later.”
“Tate loves his family, but he said, and I quote, ‘I’d kill them if I had to work with them day in day out.’”
Arlo snorts. “I know that feeling. I’m all for him joining us. He has a special skill set that we could definitely use.”
“Talking of family, you mentioned Kings of Carnage. That’s his sister Reign’s club, right? Is she okay?” Marcus asks, leaning forward.
“Yeah, Reign’s okay,” Blake tells him with a small smile.
“How likely is the trouble he found himself in to follow him here to Tempest?” Aiden questions.
“It was never about Tate or his brothers. They were used as a means of blackmail. Tate’s pissed that his brothers in arms turned on them after he bled blue for them for years.
To the best of my knowledge, the threat has been neutralized.
This isn’t about Tate getting away from trouble, it’s about him losing his faith in those who were supposed to have his back. ”
“And in the volatile situations he finds himself in, he can’t afford not to have faith in the guy that’s meant to watch his six. Shit, what a mess.” Kellen shakes his head. “I’m happy for him to come aboard, too. I think he’ll fit right in.”
“He gets my vote,” Felix agrees.
The rest of us all agree, talking animatedly until Blake holds up his hand.
“I’ll let him know he’s in. Not that I need your permission,” he replies sardonically. “Aside from Tate, we have two more guys starting. Dash and Banks. They’ll be starting at the end of the month.”
“Dash and Banks? We getting any more than that?” Arlo rolls his eyes.
“Dash has worked in security for the last ten years, doing pretty much exactly what we do here. The last two years, he spent acting as head of security for a traveling circus.”
“Okay, even I didn’t see that one coming,” I mutter.
“Devlin Banks is a little different. He comes to us on a recommendation from King. He couldn’t give me the guy’s particulars as it’s way above my clearance.
Let’s just say, this guy was part of a black ops team when everything went FUBAR.
He suffered a head injury that should have killed him, and he has no memory of who he was before he woke up from a coma.
King let it slide that there was talk of taking this guy out because there is shit locked in his head they don’t want the world knowing.
King was not down with that, so he’s sending him here for his sake as well as ours. ”
“That’s fucked-up.” And one of my sticking points when it comes to Uncle Sam.
They teach us how to take a life, but they don’t teach us how to live with the consequences afterward.
And God forbid you get injured and need help.
Services that are available to veterans do the best they can, but the lack of funding is shocking.
Probably why so many people take the guns that they were taught to use and turn them on themselves.
“Not trying to sound like a dick here, but can he still do his job? PTSD is a fucked reality a lot of us have to live with. I’m not judging him for it.
I just need to know in a hostile situation he’s capable of protecting the client, not curling up in a ball on the ground while bullets fly,” Felix asks.
“It’s a valid question. I can’t say nothing will trip his triggers.
I can’t say that about any of us. But as his memory is faulty, he doesn’t remember the shit that would haunt him.
What he does remember, though, is every bit of training ever instilled in him.
I took these guys out to the playground. ”
The playground, as we call it, is a piece of land we collectively bought five years ago that we use for training. It has assault courses designed by the army and navy, shooting ranges, and even a section to learn evasive driving maneuvers.
People can pay to come and use it when we aren’t, which they do, and they pay well. Heck, even law enforcement agencies use it to train. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, away from innocent civilians and nosy reporters.
“How’d he do?”
“He might have forgotten who he is, but his muscle memory is insane. He finished the course in record time, didn’t miss a single shot on target, and could have taught us a thing or two about extreme driving.”
Marcus lets out an impressed whistle. “Alright then. I’m happy to see what he can do.”
“Sounds like the guy has had a shit run of bad luck and needs a break. What better place to take one than our sleepy little town of Tempest?”
Someone throws something at my head as everyone laughs. Tempest has been anything but sleepy lately. But for better or worse, it’s home.
“Alright, that’s it for now. As you all know, we have a storm front rolling in.
So for the next couple of days, I want you all to wrap up any open cases you can.
I want everyone chipping in to help the locals get their places locked down.
Callie, Matilda, Sorrow, and Olivia are helping the local community center get set up for evacuations.
So far, the news is saying we’ll catch the tail end of it, more rain than wind.
But that can and will lead to flooding, so we need to be ready,” Blake states.
“I have a guy bringing in some rescue supplies for here and the station,” Felix adds, leaning forward.
“Tate has sent down some supplies, too, which will help. Now all we can do is wait and hope for the best.”
“I’m going to head out and check on the outliers. You know they won’t come ask for help even if they need it.” Arlo sighs, and he’s not wrong. We have a dozen or so people who live on the outskirts of Tempest, deep in the woods that are hard to navigate if you don’t know where you’re going.
“I’ll come with you. Might as well do a supply drop while we’re out there, just in case. They might not want charity, but water is water.” Aiden taps his fists on the table.
“That leaves the hospital. They have backup generators if the power goes out, but people who panic tend to cause problems, so I want one of you on hand to help hospital security keep on top of things.” Blake looks at me, so I nod.
“I’ll do it. I’ll bring Sorrow with me. She can sit with Stephenson.”
“No sign of him being released yet?” Kellen frowns.
“I think they’re being extra cautious because he lives alone. We offered him the spare room, but he refused. Sorrow thinks he’s being stubborn, but I know he just doesn’t want to be a burden on us.”
“Hard to know some days if I’m supposed to hate the guy or feel sorry for him.” Kellen sighs.
“I know the feeling, but I defer to Sorrow. She’s the one who got hurt in this. If she can forgive him, who the fuck am I to hold a grudge?”
“Your girl is too sweet for her own good,” Felix complains.
I grunt in response, because he’s not wrong. It’s who she is, and I don’t want to change her.