Only Her (A K2 Team Novel) (18 page)

Dinner had been delicious, and now Cody sat on his porch with Riley, who was bundled up in a blanket, only her nose and eyes visible. She’d wanted him to play for her, and she’d wanted to sit on his porch while he did, even though the Florida weather had finally turned cold. She reminded him of a moth, snug in its little cocoon, and he swallowed a smile, thinking how he’d like to peel her out of all her coverings until the beautiful butterfly that was her was exposed.

He drank a few swallows of coffee, laced with Kahlúa—what he considered a girly drink. Wasn’t bad, though, and that was another thing. Since he’d been hanging with her, he hadn’t touched a drop of scotch, his only alcohol the one or two beers they’d drink in the evenings. He was learning to like the stuff, limes and all.

Dinner had been great, and they’d kept their conversation light. Now it was time to talk about important things. For the first time in days, he wished he had a scotch. He strummed a few chords, trying to think how to start. At the beginning. Wasn’t that the best place?

“I came home from my last deployment fairly unscathed, or so I thought.” He kept playing, the soft notes somehow keeping him grounded. “About a week later, I’d close my eyes to go to sleep, and things I’d done and seen started playing through my head like I was watching a movie. Every kill, every time I didn’t pull the trigger even though the man I’d sighted through the scope of my rifle was an insurgent . . .”

He glanced at her and shrugged. “Don’t even get me started about the Rules of Engagement.”

“I understand a little of that from watching
American Sniper
.” She slid her hand out of the blanket and picked up her coffee cup. “You knew he was a bad guy, but your hands were tied without irrefutable proof.”

“Yeah, that’s how it was, and how many of our guys were hurt or killed because of those rules? I leave him alive knowing what I know, and he comes back the next day and kills one of us. If anything, that’s what I thought would haunt me, and it does when I let myself think about it. But that’s not my nightmare.”

“I’m listening,” she said when he paused.

He smiled. “I know.” He drank the last of his coffee. “So there I was, the only one left from my SEAL team, the guys you met at K2 having opted out by then, and I get assigned to a marine platoon. I was six days from returning home when I went out on one last operation. I’d already scoped out where I’d position myself on a rooftop building. The last thing I remember was heading there with my spotter before waking up back at camp in a bed with a doctor peering down at me. Apparently, I’d been hit on the head, and my teammates found me out cold on the street.”

She set down her empty cup. “You don’t remember anything?”

“Not a thing. Not then or now. So there I am, back home, having trouble sleeping, but not sure why. Then I had the first nightmare. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it. Just leftover shit from a shit war. But it came again the next night and the next. Always the same, always waking up at the exact moment someone comes up behind me.” He stood the guitar next to the wall behind him.

“When you told us about the nightmare when we were at K2, I thought then that it was real, that it really happened.”

He’d fought against it being real for so long now, but he could no longer. “Yeah, I think it is. Tom, he’s my head doc, thinks that it isn’t just the concussion that keeps me from remembering, but that I saw something I don’t know how to deal with. Something bad.”

“Cody,” she whispered, getting up and crawling onto his lap, blanket and all. “You don’t even know what happened, but I’m guessing you think you’re somehow to blame.”

“That would be a good reason for not remembering, wouldn’t it?” Because deep in his bones, that was his greatest fear, that he’d done something to cause an innocent girl to be hurt or worse.

“Bad things happen to the best of us or to someone we care about, and sometimes we might unintentionally do something to bring that about. That doesn’t mean we’re bad people or don’t deserve happiness.”

He’d have to work on that one, but there was something in her voice that caught his attention. “What was your bad?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

S
urprised by Cody’s question, Riley shook her head. She never talked about that. Ever. “It’s getting late. We should go in.”

“So I bare my soul to you, but you don’t trust me with your secrets?”

When he picked her up and put her on her feet, she knew she’d hurt him. “It has nothing to do with trust.”

He stared at her, his eyes no longer holding warmth. “No? What then?”

Pulling the blanket tight around her, she walked to the railing. It was a clear, cold night, and billions of stars glittered against the black velvet of the sky. She and Reed had made wishes on those stars, had dreamed of making a life together. Their dreams had been made of dust, though.

Now a man she thought she could love—something she hadn’t been sure would happen again—wanted to know her secrets. She had tried to bury them somewhere deep enough that they couldn’t be found again, even with a bulldozer. To dredge up Reed and her role in his death would be like scraping a razorblade over her heart. It would be agonizing.

If she didn’t, though, Cody would be lost to her. That she knew for a fact. He was a man who had trusted her with his hurts, and one who, if he ever fell in love with her, would settle for nothing less than all of her. Since Reed was a part of her, that meant telling Cody about her shameful past. God, she didn’t want to.

A pair of strong arms circled her waist, and she leaned her head back on his muscle hard chest. “So, you want to know my secrets?”

He let out a long sigh, his breath ruffling her hair. “I want to know everything about you, Riley. Why is that, do you think?”

She turned, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. “Because you like me?”

His chuckle vibrated against her face. “Like is a mild word, darlin’, and not at all what I think I’m feeling for you.”

“Do you call all the women you’ve been with darlin’?”

“No. I’ve called them by their name. You’re my first darlin’.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “That’s the truth. It popped into my head when my sexy, nameless neighbor gave me the finger.”

No wonder she was falling for this man. “In that case, go sit and I’ll tell you about a time in my life that I swore I’d never talk about again.”

When he dropped his hands, she felt a moment of panic. “No, don’t go away. Just hold me.” His arms came back around her, and she turned, putting her back against him. “I think I can tell you better this way.” She couldn’t look at him while telling her story, but having him behind her, strong and steady, made it possible to talk about things from a past that she’d done her best to forget.

“You know I was in foster care. My parents were killed in an accident when I was three, and I was sent to live with my grandmother. She never got over the death of her son, my father. Having me in her house was a reminder of him, and she hated me for that.”

“Oh, baby.”

“Yeah, sad, right? She died when I’d just turned six, and since there was no other family, I became a foster care kid. Not a life I’d wish on any child. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about my experiences, but that’s not what you’re wanting to know tonight. What I’ve never talked about to anyone except Arthur and my last foster mother before now is the boy I fell in love with when I was sixteen.”

“So Arthur is the keeper of your secrets?”

She nodded. “He is.”

He rubbed his chin over the top of her head. “Give me Arthur status, Riley. Tell me your secrets.”

“Damn you, Cody Roberts. How did you sneak into my heart?” His arms tightened around her. “Okay, here’s my biggest secret. When I was fifteen, I was sent to a foster home where there were three other children. Two were foster kids like me, although younger, and there was a biological son a year older than me. His name was Reed, and he was the first person to be nice to me. It was a novel experience, let me tell you.”

She pulled away from Cody. She couldn’t talk about Reed while being held by another man after all. “Eventually we fell in love, which turned out to be his doom.” Giving Cody a sideways glance to see his reaction to that, she saw nothing but a strong man patiently waiting to hear her story.

“Go on,” he said.

She lifted her gaze to the sky. “We used to sneak out at night, put a blanket on the ground, and stare up at those very same stars up there and dream of a life together.” Tears stung her eyes, thinking of Reed. If she could have one wish, it would be that he’d never met her, because then he’d still be alive.

“By that time, I was pretty wild. He’d always been a good boy—great grades, got along with his parents, loved by everyone . . . you know the type. One thing you need to understand. His parents were dirt poor and they took in foster kids for the extra money. I can’t blame them for that, but the children they brought into their home were never valued for more than the income.”

Telling her story was hard, and she paused to compose herself. The last thing she wanted was Cody’s pity, but he needed to understand that she’d been the one to corrupt a beautiful boy. Cody put his hands on the porch rail and lifted up, sitting on it. He gave the appearance that he had all the time in the world to listen to her sad story. His calm patience steadied her.

“Their son was everything to them, their hope for a better life. He played baseball, was an all-star pitcher, and had offers of full scholarships to some of the best colleges. The world was his oyster until I . . .” She cleared her throat, and then pushed out the words naming her sin. “Until I turned him onto drugs.” What would Cody say to that, this man who was a hero to his country? He’d probably never touched drugs in his life. She risked a peek at him, warmed by the compassion in his eyes.

“He could have said no. You get that, right?”

No, she hadn’t gotten that. She was to blame. Reed had only smoked that first joint to please her. “He could have, I suppose,” she said softly.

“Riley, there’s no could have about it. I don’t care how damn hot you are, which you are, by the way, but there’s not a thing you could do or say to make me do something I didn’t want to. He could have said no.”

It was strangely appealing to hear him say that she couldn’t make him do something if he didn’t want to. If only Reed had been that strong in character. But where she had been able to take or leave the pot, thank God, Reed had taken to the stuff like a man on a mission. And Cody was right: Reed could have said no to that first joint she’d offered. That didn’t make her blameless, but it eased her guilt a little.

“Thank you for saying that. I never really thought of it that way.” She moved closer to Cody and rested an elbow on the railing. “At first it was fun, having someone to get high with. But where I thought of pot as a weekend recreational thing, Reed was smoking it before school, in between classes, and as soon as school got out for the day. It wasn’t long before he added coke to the mix. I tried it once at his insistence, but didn’t like how it made me feel. Reed started messing up at school and fighting with his parents. They blamed me, and rightly so.”

“You’re not responsible for his choices, Riley.”

“I get what you’re saying, but if not for me, he would have never started. Anyway, his parents called Child Protective Services to come get me out of the house. We panicked at the thought of being separated, and we ran away to Atlanta, figuring it was a big enough city to get lost in. With no money and no jobs, we lived on the streets.”

“How long did that last?”

“Three months. Thankfully it was summer, so we weren’t freezing. I was finally able to get work at a fast-food place, but Reed was too strung out to even think of holding down a job. I begged him to stop using, but I might as well have been talking to a fence post.”

Cody reached out and brushed a wayward strand of hair from her face, and she leaned her face into his palm, soaking up his warmth. He was strong and honorable, and she wondered if she deserved such a man. She was almost to the end of her story, but she’d come to the hardest part to speak of.

“What happened to him?”

“He overdosed. We were living in an abandoned building with some other kids, most of them druggies, and Reed started going with them during the day, stealing purses, picking pockets, that kind of thing.”

She’d sworn she wouldn’t cry, but hot tears rolled down her cheeks. “I didn’t even recognize him anymore. The beautiful boy I’d fallen in love with was gone. He didn’t try to stay clean, he hardly ate enough to stay alive, and he had dead eyes. All that mattered to him was scoring.” His lifeless eyes had haunted her for a long time, still did sometimes in the darkest hours of the night.

“I came back to the building one evening after I got off work and found him. He was barely alive, and all the kids had split, afraid of sticking around for the cops to come. Not one of them, the ones he considered his friends, cared enough to get help. Since I didn’t have a phone, I ran down the street until I found a cop, but it was too late. When we got back to the building, Reed was taking his last breaths and I held him while he died.” She swiped at the tears. Hadn’t she already cried an ocean of tears for the boy she’d loved and lost? How did she even have any left to shed for him?

“What happened to you?”

“I got sent back to Florida, back into the hands of Protective Services. Honestly, I didn’t care anymore what they did with me. But a funny thing happened. They finally got something right when they put me in Pat and John Haywood’s home. I wasn’t a fun kid to be around, but they turned out to be more stubborn than me. They were my salvation.”

Cody caught Riley’s hand and pulled her between his legs. She lifted the edges of the blanket and wrapped it around them, resting her face against his chest. Her story had just about ripped out his heart, and he was in awe of what she had made of herself considering what and where she’d come from. If she could recover from a life gone wrong, how could he do any less? From her, he took the determination to deal with what he faced.

“I’m sorry he died, darlin’.” He kissed the top of her head. “But I’ll say it again, he made the choice to take the road he did.”

“I can’t argue with that, but I’ll always live with knowing that if he’d never met me, he would be alive today and happy.”

“You can’t know that either. Maybe he would be, or maybe he would have found his way to drugs some other way.” When she shivered, he slid off the railing. “Don’t move.” He grabbed his guitar, putting it inside before locking his front door. “I think we’ve bared our souls enough for one night, don’t you?”

She nodded, and the tears glistening on her cheeks tore at his heart. No sixteen-year-old should have experienced what she had. Hell, no child should have to live a life like hers—in and out of foster homes, an abandoned, unwanted little girl. He didn’t think she had any idea just how strong and determined her character was. How beautiful she was.

Although he’d never understood his parents, or they him, he’d appreciated that they’d loved him, even if it was in their own way. They would never be different from who they were, would never understand the man he was, but that no longer mattered. He was blessed to have them.

Riley pulled the bottom of the blanket up around her waist, and they walked to her house, hand in hand. Not a man who had ever wanted a long-term relationship before, he now wanted one with her. Considering they’d yet to make love, his coming at this relationship with Riley from a friends-first angle was novel.

When they stepped inside her house, she dropped the blanket. Taking his hand, she led him to her bedroom. He kicked the door closed behind them to keep out nosy critters.

By unspoken agreement, they didn’t speak. Maybe they’d talked themselves out. He didn’t know, only knew that words weren’t needed between them to understand what this night meant.

He was all for a little rough sex when his partner was of a like mind, but this brave, beautiful woman standing in front of him with warmth in her eyes meant just for him had not had an easy life. On this night of confessions, he wanted to worship her, wanted her to know that the world was sometimes soft and tender, even though she’d never known such a thing. Maybe she had with her Reed in the beginning, but he’d ended up abusing the love she had for him.

Cody cradled her face with his hands, leaned down, and brushed his lips over hers. Her eyes slid closed, and he smiled against her mouth. Although they’d kissed before, tonight felt like a new beginning, a chance to touch something magical. He moved behind her and flattened his palms on her shoulders, then with the barest of touches, slid his hands down her arms, lacing their fingers together when he’d reached her hands. As he did that, he nibbled on her earlobe. Goosebumps rose on her skin, and he felt a shudder travel through her.

Letting go of her hands, he gathered her long hair and moved it over her shoulder to trail down the front of her. Her neck exposed, he swept his tongue over her skin, eliciting more shudders from her. She was responsive to his every touch, and he wanted to bury himself in her heat right then, but tonight was for her. To show her that she was special, because he didn’t think she knew that.