Hard Way (32 page)

At least he was facing her.

She wanted to draw the sheet up over herself, or maybe get dressed, but she wasn’t ready to move. She might crack into a thousand shards of glass. Five minutes ago she’d been filled with the incontrovertible happiness that came with hope. To have crushed that herself was too much to grasp.

“You can’t say something like that and not say the rest of it.” Dash’s head was lowered. He glowered at her from under his brows.

She held her knees tighter to her chest. “I thought I said it already. I want to stay with you and work on us.”

He stood abruptly, hands fisted at his hips. She flinched. Couldn’t help it. She knew without a doubt that he would never hurt her, but that wasn’t the same thing as facing down his leashed fury.

“Sunny, you’re not stupid. Never have been. I want to know what the fuck has been going on with Jake.” He spat the man’s name.

“He’s been in town. That’s all.”

“How is that
all
? Have you been seeing him?”

“At work.”

“And, what, that’s nothing?” He sank his fingers in his hair and pulled. “Jesus, I kept thinking about your hours at work as free time. At least I didn’t have to worry then. But you’ve been spending more time with him than me.”

Disgust made her shake her head as she finally shoved off the bed. She picked up her crumpled dress and shook the pale blue silk. “
Work
.”

“You’ve been consorting with the enemy for ten hours a day.”

“Jesus Christ, Dash. Life is not a war zone.”

“You should see it from where I’m standing.”

She pulled the dress on over her head and scooped her hair free. Tangled and snarled. She should’ve expected that. Now she’d spend an hour detangling it, only to be reminded the entire time of how it had gotten that way. “I’ve been consulting appellate decisions and protecting Representative Rueland’s liability. This is not cause for a meltdown.”

He finally zipped his pants, as if prompted by her getting dressed. She was thankful to see those inches of temptation disappear, otherwise she might lose her mind sooner than was inevitable. “You’re the one who didn’t tell me he’d come back, that he was here. Hell, that you were sharing a flight out. That leads me to believe it was important.”

“I haven’t seen him outside of work. Coffee once. That was it.”

He managed to put a sarcastic spin on his nod. “Coffee. Totally different than fucking in a supply closet the way I can’t help picturing.”

Fear and sadness had hit her hard when a shining moment of happiness and hope was yanked away. That was done. Fury made her bones hurt. “You know what, Dash? Go to hell. I told you nothing’s happened. It’s still true. You’re the only one I fuck in bathrooms and car trunks.”

He stalked toward her. “Don’t pretend you didn’t want that.”

“I never have.” At least on this topic she could hold her head up high and keep her shoulders back. “That’s the truth. What can you tell me with that much honesty?”

“I’m your husband,” he snapped.

Pure emotion was poison in her veins. “For how much longer?”

“You tell me, Sunny. You started this. Now I find out I’ve been trying to keep us together, only to be broadsided.”

“I’ve been trying too! Do you think I’d have gone through all of this if I didn’t still care about you?”

“Who the hell knows?” He shook his head and turned away.

Dizzy, she forced her legs to keep her steady. She was close to the bed but she didn’t want to touch it—not the place where they’d fucked with such raw honesty. She squeezed her thighs together against the rush of leftover wetness that slipped between her lower lips.

She wanted to weep. Dropping her face into her hands was no escape, but it was all she had. “Didn’t you hear me? I love you.”

He stood in front of her with his arms crossed over his chest and his feet spread to shoulder width. He’d never needed physical intimidation with her. They did enough damage emotionally.

“What I hear is a
but
at the end of that sentence.”

“But…I don’t know you.”

“That’s such bullshit.”

“It’s not. Dash and Liam. Two sides of you that are never the same person. One laughs and jokes and never takes anything seriously, even when I practically beg for his attention. The other zip ties me and rapes me until I scream.” Exhausted, she looked up at him. “Tell me how your pieces fit together. How they form a real person. Tell me, because that’s the man I’ll never leave.”

“I’m standing right in front of you. Being real. I don’t know how to be anything else. You’re the one who has to
accept
both parts of me. But no. Anything gets a bit complicated, a little scary—you bolt.”

She zipped the dress at her ribs. “You’re full of it.”

“Am I?” He sneered. “You’re the one who threw a fit when I actually enjoyed teaching karate to little kids. After all that crap about how I have to find what I want to do, what I want to be—you get pissed about it.”

“I wasn’t pissed that you liked teaching. I was pissed that you used it as some sort of bullshit manipulation, hoping I’d see you and say, ‘Gee, it’s time to hand my life over to a baby.’”

“A baby wouldn’t mean handing your life over.”

She scrubbed at her eyes, which felt like she’d been blinking with sandpaper. She was astonished she wasn’t crying. “Babies take hours and hours of attention. It’s the way they work.” She jerked her hands away from her face. “Wait. Is that the point? To make me stay home?”

“Fuck no,” he spat. “I’d stay home with a kid before you.”

“You?” She couldn’t help her scoff of laughter. “The fighter pilot as a stay-at-home dad? Now I know you’re full of it.”

“I’m not, Sunny.” He shook his head slowly, looking as stunned as she felt. “I’m dead serious.”

Some tiny part of her wanted to believe, but damn it was difficult. Everything she’d known about him said it couldn’t be true. She’d used that knowledge to assure herself when he was flying in foreign war zones. He was the best. He lived for what he did. She’d held tight to the belief that he’d become a lesser version of himself if she asked him to give it up.

That foundation depended on the premise that he lived to fly and flew to live.

If that wasn’t true, why had they spent months apart, when he left her alone and scared? They’d have been tormenting each other for no reason.

“You’re a fighter pilot, not a stay-at-home dad.”

“I can’t be a stay-at-home dad if we don’t have a baby. You’ve taken that off the table so totally that you don’t even want me teaching little kids.” He inhaled, mouth tight. “As for being a pilot, that could change. I have fourteen months left on my contract. I don’t need to renew my commitment.”

“Stop it!” Sunny held her fists up to her temples, trying to hold her brains in before they spun out into a ruined mess. “Stop fucking with my head.”

“I’m not. I mean every word.” He shook his head, eyes narrowing. “I can hardly believe it myself, but I do.”

She found her shoes and shoved her feet into them. “No. You’re afraid someone else is carting your toy away to a different playground. You’ll say anything you can think of to keep me.”

“Five minutes ago you said you loved me. Sunny, I love you so much it ruins me. Why are we even doing this?”

“Because we don’t make sense. It’s taken this much time, but
that’s
the real truth.” She started toward the door, but he got there first and slapped one hand across the surface. The brass handle was probably cool to the touch, but she couldn’t tell. Her hands were already frozen. “Don’t do this, Liam.”

His expression was desperate—haggard and etched with pain that echoed the pain inside her. “I could say the same to you.”

“Let me go.”

“I won’t.”

They stared at each other for a long, long minute that spooled out, as jagged and sharp as a reel of barbed wire. Sunny was trapped by Liam’s gaze, by the pale blue power. She half-expected him to grab her, force her, maybe press his mouth to hers—taking more than kissing.

He stepped to the side. “Don’t go. Don’t leave again.”

She shook her head as she opened the door. “I’ve wanted to ask that of you more times than I can count. Every deployment. Every assignment. But I never did. And now…now you want me to be happy that your head’s out of the game. No more Dash and no more flying. So it’s all been for nothing, and that means us too. I can’t do this anymore.” She swallowed. “Goodbye, Liam.”

She wasn’t sure how she walked down the carpeted hallway. The wall sconces glowed in a watery haze. She didn’t realize until she’d pressed the elevator button that tears obscured her vision. She stepped into the small, earthen-toned elevator and turned around.

Dash stood in the doorway of their hotel suite, watching, with his arms crossed and his head down.

He was through forcing her.

He was letting her go.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, she sobbed.

Chapter Thirty-One

“Strap, you awake?”

Mike’s sleep-gravelly voice came through the other end of the line. “I am now. What the hell?”

Dash looked around the remains of the hotel room. No, that wasn’t right. The hotel room remained. It was his marriage that had been trashed. He saw everything in the hypersensitive detail of flying over a desert, knowing his target, taking it out. All senses on full alert. He would’ve liked a return of the confusion that had accompanied his flat-out anger, but that seductive numbness was long gone. The anger remained, as did confusion and heartbreak. He’d lost friends in combat and hadn’t felt this ruined.

He’d watched her walk away.

Why hadn’t she stopped?

Why hadn’t he stopped her?

“Sunny left me,” he managed to say. “I need… Shit, I can’t think.”

“Be careful when you’re driving. I’ll see you in thirty.”

Mike was right. Even checking out of the hotel was a fight to keep his control. A red haze had layered over his vision, and he didn’t think it was going away anytime soon. The lights of Vegas at night blended with that red until he needed to blink and blink again to keep the Evo steady. Maybe he should’ve taken a cab.

A guillotine had cut him away from Sunny, and he didn’t know who’d released the blade.

When Dash pulled into the driveway, Mike was sitting on the front porch. He was dressed in worn-the-day-before jeans and a T-shirt. A beer bottle dangled from his fingers.

Dash slammed the car door with too much force. Grinding pain was eating holes in his mind, in his gut, as if some animal were trying to break free. Perhaps it had been there for years, because the agony it caused wasn’t small. It was growing by the second.

“So.” Mike set aside the beer and stood up. He ambled off the porch. “What’d you do, dumbass?”

The animal broke free.

Dash slid into Zen stance without thought and shot two short jabs right at Mike’s face. Both landed square and true. Dash was trained and he was taller, but Mike could get plain
mean
. He seemed to suck up the pain like fuel. Two seconds later, Dash’s knee collapsed under the weight of Mike’s well-aimed sweep. Although Dash was able to recover and keep his balance, Mike delivered two answering jabs.

Pain rocketed through Dash’s brain. His nose might be broken. Good.
Good.
Bring it on. His mind was clearer. Freer. He could let it all go.

That meant waling on his best friend.

Mike couldn’t regain the offensive. He took every kick, uppercut, jab to the ribs, but never said a word in protest. He grunted under each blow and kept coming back for more. Blood streamed from his nose and from a sharp cut where his brow had split. He kept his hands up in a defensive stance, but nothing could stop Dash. Nothing could stop the animal. He wanted to break something as thoroughly as he’d been broken—as thoroughly as he’d broken Sunny’s heart.

Suddenly Mike ducked, swung his fist and caught the back of Dash’s thigh with the toe of his boot. Dash landed flat on his back. His head hit the desert dirt. The wind flew out of his lungs so that he couldn’t cough. Mike straddled Dash, but not to lay into him. Dash expected it. Dash
wanted
it.

He managed to say as much. “Do it.”

“Piss off.” Mike landed a sharp blow to Dash’s temple, then took to his feet. “Get the fuck up. I’m not playing this no-mercy bullshit.”

So blinded by rage and anguish, Dash’s technique had been shot to hell. Sloppy.
To fight in anger is to lose in anger.
Every
sensei
on the planet said some variant. It stole judgment and apparently allowed a guy to mangle his best friend.

Mike extended his hand and helped Dash stand.

Only then did he come to a realization. “You could’ve fought back the whole time,” Dash said. “You let me.”

A shrug answered his question. That didn’t make the state of Mike’s face any easier to stomach. Oh Christ…his
stomach
. Mike would have bruises for days, and after Dash’s roundhouse to the torso, he’d be damn lucky to come away with his ribs whole.

“Mike—”

“Shut up.” He pulled off his T-shirt and pressed it to his bloody nose. “You’re a dick and we know it.”