Chapter 28 #3
She closed her eyes and let herself lean into the hand at the back of her neck until the worst of the tears passed, then opened them again to find Tyrone watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher.
His gaze flicked toward the door, and it was such a small movement she might have missed it a few weeks ago, but she knew him better now.
“You have to go,” she said.
“Grizzly’s gonna want the debrief.”
Of course he was. Seven men had gone into the mountains tonight, people had died, and somewhere outside Genoa Midas’s Carabinieri contacts were walking onto a property filled with bodies and evidence.
Gunnar had an operation to close out, and Tyrone couldn’t simply climb beneath the covers and sleep because the part of the mission that mattered most to Glenna was over.
She understood that, even if the selfish part of her wanted to grab hold of him and refuse to let anyone take him out of this room.
“How long will it take?”
“Don’t know, but I’ll keep it as short as I can.”
Glenna nodded, and something about her answer must have surprised him because his eyebrows pulled together slightly.
“What?”
“I’m waiting for the part where you tell me not to go,” he told her.
The fact he thought she might almost made her smile. “What am I supposed to do, Tyrone? Chain you to the bed?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Normally, I’d be willing to discuss the possibilities.”
She stared at him until the smile became a little wider. “You have spectacularly shitty timing.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The laugh that escaped her was quiet and wet with the remnants of her tears, but it was real, and for a few seconds they simply looked at each other across the sleeping child between them.
Glenna couldn’t pretend she wanted him to leave, because right now she wanted Kelsey under one arm and Tyrone under the other while somebody barricaded the freaking door, but she also understood that Zorro wasn’t something he could hang beside his plate carrier when he came through it.
The Operator was part of the man who had carried her daughter home, and if she wanted Tyrone in her life, she couldn’t only want the pieces of him that were easy.
Somewhere between thinking about wanting him in her life and looking at the exhausted man sitting on the edge of his bed, her brain supplied a word she hadn’t invited anywhere near this conversation.
Love.
Well, shit. Apparently that was another emotional disaster she could add to the list of things she wasn’t dealing with before coffee and several uninterrupted hours of sleep.
Tyrone’s fingers tightened slightly against the back of her neck, drawing her attention back to him. “I’m coming back.”
“I know.”
She did, and maybe that was the strangest part.
She’d spent years learning that people died, people left, and sometimes the systems that were supposed to protect you were the ones that ripped everything away, yet when Tyrone told her he was coming back, she believed him without needing him to swear it.
Her gaze dropped to Kelsey before she asked the question that had been circling the edges of her mind since Tyrone got out of the truck with her daughter in his arms.
“What happens now?”
Tyrone was quiet long enough that she knew he was actually considering his answer rather than reaching for whatever he thought she needed to hear.
“Right now, I give Grizzly his debrief while you stay here with Kels. After that, I’m coming back, getting out of these fucking clothes, and sleeping until somebody threatens me with bodily harm.”
Despite herself, Glenna smiled. “I meant after that.”
“I know.” His expression softened as he looked down at Kelsey. “We figure it out, Glens. I don’t have every answer at five o’clock in the fucking morning, and I’m not gonna feed you a bunch of bullshit because it sounds good right now, but I know I’m not walking away from this.”
The words settled somewhere deep inside her, frightening and comforting in equal measure, because this could mean so many things and yet Glenna knew exactly what he meant.
She’s ours. I’ll always go for her if she needs me.
He’d already said it in the courtyard, and at the time Glenna had been too overwhelmed by having Kelsey back in her arms to really think about what those words meant.
Now she looked at her daughter asleep beneath Tyrone’s blankets and realized there hadn’t been a moment’s hesitation when he claimed her as theirs.
“What about Sullivan?” she whispered.
The change in him was subtle, but Glenna felt it immediately. The tenderness didn’t disappear completely because she wasn’t sure it could while he was looking at Kelsey, but something colder settled beneath it, and she caught a glimpse of the man who had gone into the mountains to get Kelsey back.
Tyrone leaned over and pressed a gentle kiss to Kelsey’s hair before straightening, his gaze returning to Glenna. “First, I give Grizzly his debrief and come back here to my girls.”
Her heart gave one hard thump at the casual certainty of my girls, but before she could decide what the hell she was supposed to do with that, his expression hardened.
“Then I plant the son of a bitch who took our daughter.”