Chapter 25 #2
Forgetting the boundaries he put between us, I padded across the floor and wrapped my arms around him from behind.
He groaned like I was hurting him.
I hugged tighter.
“So innocent,” he whispered. “My reason.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was afraid to ask because I wanted to stay where I was.
“From the minute I saw you running from those deadbeats on the street, I wanted you. I couldn’t admit it to myself then, but I did. I followed you around for weeks, stepping up to anything that tried to get into your path. Leaving a silent trail of carnage in your clueless wake.”
He’d stopped people from hurting me? How many times? I’d always known he was there, but this, I never suspected.
“I always say sometimes it’s good to remember why I do what I do because people like you are few and far between. But I couldn’t keep my eyes or hands off you. I was supposed to be protecting you, not dragging you closer to corruption.”
I leaned my head into his shoulder. “You didn’t drag me anywhere, Hiro. I came looking.”
It was why I didn’t move away like I’d planned. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I hoped someday I’d see him again.
“They set us up,” he confessed. “The government. They told us top-secret intel, shit no one was allowed to know, after turning us into killing machines. Then one night, they dropped us in the middle of a desert to take out who they deemed the enemy.”
“What happened?”
“We walked right into an ambush. The very people who swore we could trust them sent us to die.”
I sucked in a breath, and he kept talking. “I guess they decided we knew too much. That they were scared of what they created. The people we were meant to take out probably got tipped off and bargained for their freedom, and our government traded it for ours.”
“They tried to kill you?”
“They didn’t try. They did. Killed all of us and left me for dead too.
But I moved out when they weren’t looking.
Shoved my fingers in the hole they blew into my gut and crawled into a closet in some shack.
I knew I’d never make it out of there, but I figured if I was going to go out, I’d do it my way, not theirs. ”
I squeezed my eyes shut, hugging him harder while trying not to imagine what it must have been like that night.
“I planned to draw a bunch of them to me and then blow the entire shack. Take as many of them with me as I could.”
“But you’re still here,” I whispered, silently thanking the universe.
He hummed. “Kieran found me before they did. Should have seen the look on his face when he saw me lying there still breathing.”
It probably looked a lot like his did when he saw Kieran instead of a gun.
“I was shocked he wasn’t dead. I thought I was the last one alive. But there he was on two feet and looking fucking pissed.” The last two words were spoken with a hint of fondness and not just pain.
In that moment, I decided I liked Kieran Vaughnn. It didn’t matter how intimidating or grumpy he was or even if he kinda scared me sometimes. I was grateful to him and wouldn’t ever complain about him again.
“I told him to leave me and handed him the last of my grenades.”
“He didn’t.” Obviously.
“He was bleeding and injured too, but he threw me over his shoulder and ran like his ass was on fire. I tried to tell him I was never gonna make it, but he told me, if I died, he would follow me into hell and fight the devil to bring me back.”
“You think the devil would be scared of Kieran?” I whispered.
“My guy, he should be.”
I think the devil is scared of you too.
“We made it out of there. Some couple found us and took us in, hid us for the night. They knew enough to keep me from bleeding out and stitched me up. We hopped a train the next day and went across the border to a country I still don’t know the name of and found a doctor who opened me back up, dug out the bullet, and then pumped me full of antibiotics. ”
“After that, we moved around a lot. Always looking over our shoulders. Festering with hatred and bloodlust. I might have lived that day, Pip, but after that, I was a shadow of my former self.”
“A ghost,” I reiterated.
His arms lay over mine, finally accepting the embrace.
“We got wind the government was on to us, closer than we liked, so we separated to make it harder. I spent the next few years in every hellhole I never knew existed.”
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“They eventually caught up to Kieran. I always was the best at being invisible. When I heard he was locked up, I walked right into the field office and asked to see him.”
“You gave yourself up!” I pulled back to stare incredulously.
“I remained loyal to the only man who’d ever remained loyal to me,” he deadpanned. “If he was going down, then I’d go down with him. I owed him my life, and I wouldn’t let him sacrifice his so I could keep running.”
Swallowing, I nodded. The intensity that rolled off him was silencing. The absolute resolve he felt still radiated from him to this day.
“But they didn’t kill Kieran,” I observed, too pained by even the suggestion of his death to even include Hiro.
An empty laugh vaulted from the deepest part of him, an echo of his deepest torment. “They decided we’d be more useful alive.”
By turning them into private killers. They pointed, Hiro and Kieran shot.
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“Eight years.”
Shock knocked the breath out of my lungs. Eight years. Even after eight years, loyalty still burned inside him.
“You stayed in a prison we both know you could disappear from just because Kieran is locked up too.” I was more than a little awed.
This was loyalty that bled into an ironclad bond, becoming its own kind of power. The dangerous kind that even the people who made them were afraid of, which was exactly why they leashed them. Leashes that Hiro and Kieran turned into jewelry.
I felt his eyes and looked up, heart stalling in my chest.
“That’s nothing compared to what I would do for you.”
Disbelief clouded my head, and I shook it. There was no way he could feel this fiercely for me. We barely knew each other. We weren’t bonded by trauma. “I didn’t do anything to deserve such loyalty.”
He rushed me, grabbing me by the waist, and plowed me into the wall.
With a thud, the oxygen punched out of me, but I stood there, unbreathing, completely enamored with the way he owned me with his enigmatic stare.
“Kieran might have kept me from dying. But you? You, my love, you brought me back to life.”
Our lips fused, forming an unbreakable bond that defied everything I ever believed and rewired my brain, my heart… my DNA, until everything inside me pointed to him.
When he pulled back, I grabbed for him again, but he caught my hands, pressing kisses to the middle of my palms.
“I walked willingly into this life, but I will never be able to walk out.”
“I don’t care,” I told him.
“Even when I disappear for months and come home exhausted and angry?” he asked.
“Even then.”
“And if one day work follows me home?”
“I’ll still be here after we send it packing.”
His forehead dropped to mine. “We?”
“Ride or die,” I whispered. “You walked into this life for Kieran. But I’m walking into it for you.”
The muscles in his jaw flexed, and his inhale caught in his chest. Grabbing my face, he cradled it like I was the most precious thing he’d ever touched. “No dying,” he whispered back.
I held my pinky between us. “Pinky promise.”
“Pinky promises are legal and binding,” he warned.
“Good.”
His pinky hooked around mine.