Seized (Hostage Rescue Team Series, #7) (9 page)

“Because of my brother?” She didn’t sound impressed.

He gave a half-nod of acknowledgement. “For starters, yeah. And my job. I’m gone a lot and can’t always tell people where I am or where I’m going, not even someone I’m involved with.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, my brother’s job is pretty similar that way,” she said wryly. “And yet somehow I’ve managed to handle it so far, even after what happened with the op in Miami.” She raised both eyebrows at him.

“It’s different when it’s someone you’re involved with.” Although, yeah, he knew Carmela could handle that part without a problem. She knew how much his job, the team, meant to him and wouldn’t make him choose between her and his career. Just another thing that made it so tough to refuse a relationship with her.

Carmela didn’t lose her cool or hurl insults at him, as he’d feared. But he definitely saw the hurt that now shadowed her eyes and it made him feel like shit. “What else?”

He should probably shut up now. She’d just shoot holes in whatever argument he put forward and he was running out of plausible excuses to use. “It...wasn’t a good idea. You and me. And I’m not ready to be in another relationship anyway.” He’d kept telling himself that over the past year, but lately he wasn’t so sure about that anymore. Carmela tempted him like crazy.

“So maybe this is about your past and has nothing to do with me at all,” she suggested.

The blunt statement was so dead on he sat there staring at her for a long moment, unblinking.

The tension around her mouth and the anger in her gaze told him how pissed she was. “Because you should know me well enough by now to realize I’m nothing like her.”

Trina, she meant.

Yes you are, you’re too much like her.
Her circumstance. Not Carmela as a person. She and Trina were total opposites in most ways, and that was an excellent thing.

He bit the retort back before it could slip out, because she’d interpret the words in a way he didn’t mean. She didn’t know what he’d gone through. Not really. Even Ethan only knew the basic details about him and Trina, and his buddy had never pried for more. Nope, Sawyer would never again go willingly down that road for any woman. He’d never open himself back up to that kind of betrayal a second time.

Danny’s face on the day he’d confronted Sawyer was still crystal clear in his mind. Sawyer had gone over to his friend’s place to explain himself, talk it out. He’d never forget the rage and disgust on Danny’s face. His friend hadn’t been interested in anything he’d had to say.

Get the fuck outta here. You’re dead to me. To all of us. Don’t ever show your face here again.

And he hadn’t just said it out of anger; he’d meant it. Every word. That’s what had shocked and hurt him the most. Even though he must have seen things hadn’t been right between Sawyer and Trina. It didn’t matter.

Sawyer cleared his throat, still smarting inside from that unexpected blow from a man he’d considered his brother. “You’re totally different people, yes,” he allowed when Carmela kept watching him.

She snorted softly, clearly insulted, and there she went with her hands. He almost smiled. He’d missed watching her wave her hands around when she talked. “It’s a hell of a lot more than that, thank you.” Then she narrowed her eyes and leaned forward once more, dropping her voice to just above a murmur. “Unless you actually don’t like me as a person and you’ve been faking it this whole time just because you’re my brother’s best friend?”

“
No
.” God, no, and he never wanted her to think that. That he would play her that way just for kicks or something. “Not at all.”

“So what, then? You wish you could undo the kiss, I get it. But the way I see it, we can’t go back to the way things were. Where does that leave us?”

In hell.

He blew out a breath and glanced around. This was hard enough to talk about without an audience and a few people were definitely looking at them now.

He grabbed his cup. Schroder had given him some anti-inflammatories to take with him. His shoulder hurt enough that he popped two of them and washed them down with a gulp of coffee hot enough to scald his esophagus. His eyes watered at the burn and he didn’t even care that he’d just blistered his upper GI tract. “Let’s walk for a bit,” he said, climbing to his feet.

“Yeah, all right,” Carmela muttered, then followed him outside.

The night air was crisp and had a chilly bite to it now that it was full dark. He’d seen a park a couple blocks back and led them that way.

The sidewalk was quiet, a handful of people going about their business in the residential neighborhood, getting groceries or running errands. Sawyer ditched his almost empty coffee cup in the nearest trashcan and put his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. It now sported a big hole in the left shoulder but it was his favorite jacket and he’d be damned if he’d throw it out just because some meth-head asshole had sliced a hole in it.

An uncomfortable heaviness settled in his chest as he strode along the sidewalk beside her. He tried to tell himself the distance between them was a good thing, but he wasn’t buying it. If things had been different and she wasn’t off limits, he would have been free to lace his fingers through hers or wrap an arm around her waist as they walked.

Carmela was sweet. Passionate. And she loved the people closest to her dearly. He used to be one of them. He didn’t want to go through life being trapped outside that circle of warmth she created. He was already sacrificing more than he wanted to by keeping his distance, because if they got together he risked losing all the people he cared most about.

“Just tell me one thing, and be straight with me,” she finally said at the entrance to the park. A three-quarter moon was rising above the tops of the evergreen trees surrounding the park and a fine layer of mist covered the grass, damp with dew. “Was it all me? I mean, did I just imagine that you were attracted to me up until then?”

Ah, hell. “No,” he admitted grudgingly, though it wasn’t easy for him. None of this was.

She stopped walking, looked up at him. Her breath fogged ever so slightly in the cool air. “So you
were
into me up until that kiss?”

Shit, he
knew
he shouldn’t have said anything. “Carm—”

“No, seriously, I want to know. Were you?”

Dammit, he couldn’t lie to her face about that. He shook his head, determined to stand firm on this. “It doesn’t matter whether I was or not.”

“It does to me.” Her voice had a slight tremor to it.

For the first time he noticed the traces of vulnerability in her, and it floored him. Carmela was one of the strongest women he’d ever met. She always had it together, always came across as composed and confident. It had never occurred to him that she might not feel that way inside.

No. End this now, don’t give her any false hope. You’ve done enough damage already.

Man, when his conscience decided to pull a guilt trip, it didn’t pull punches. “I don’t want to hurt you more than I already have.”

Again he saw a hint of that vulnerability she’d hidden up until now, and maybe a trace of insecurity, too. “Then put me out of my misery and just tell me the truth. I need to know I’m not crazy, that it wasn’t one-sided on my part.”

He started to reach up a hand to scrub it across his hair but flinched when his stitches pulled tight. Lowering his arm, he met her gaze.

Her face was illuminated by light from a wrought iron lamppost set in the corner of the park, making her bronzed skin glow. It looked so smooth, he ached to lift a hand and cup her cheek, run his thumb across it.

No. He’d confused her enough with his mixed signals and he had to think of her now. He tried to think of how to explain it to her so she’d understand. He wasn’t rejecting her, he was rejecting the disaster that would follow if they got together.

“You know my mom took off when I was real young,” he began after a moment.

She nodded, watched him closely but didn’t say anything. She’d always been a good listener. A great friend. He needed to have that much of her again, at least. Maybe over time the attraction would fade.

And maybe you should get your head checked.

“My dad was real strict but he was a good father to me. Taught me right from wrong, did everything he could to raise me right after she took off. He was never the same after she left. And he’s never dated anyone since.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, well, her leaving...changed both of us. It seemed like everyone else in our town had the perfect family. All my friends had both parents, a mother waiting for them when they came home from school. All my dad and I had was each other.”

It made him feel vulnerable as hell to say all this out loud, but he couldn’t think of any other way to make her understand. “I guess some part of me always dreamed of having a real family one day. A whole family. Or at least for me to be a part of one.”

He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes. “And Trina’s family represented that to you.”

He nodded. “They seemed like the perfect family. At least to me, looking from the outside in. At first, anyway.”

“But then eventually you realized they weren’t. Or at least,
she
wasn’t what you thought.”

“Right.” It had taken him far too long to admit that to himself, and longer still to do something about it. To do what was necessary, no matter how it hurt.

Carmela shifted to cup her elbows with her hands. “Why did you break up with her, anyway? You never told me.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Things weren’t right between us. I knew it in my gut early on but I wasn’t ready to let go of her and the people that came with her. There were always problems, signs I can see now when I look back that we weren’t right for each other. I ignored them, until I suddenly couldn’t anymore.”

They’d fought constantly. He wasn’t much of an arguer, he preferred peace in his personal relationships, but toward the end even he hadn’t been able to stay cool. The constant bickering and her endless criticisms had soured everything, had even made him begin to doubt himself.

“That’s when I knew it was over. She wouldn’t ever walk away, no matter if things clearly weren’t right, not with my ring on her finger and the wedding less than a year away. But I knew it wasn’t right. I knew I had to end it.”

“And what happened when you broke it off?” she asked softly.

He sighed. “She didn’t take it well. Even worse than I expected, actually.” She’d vacillated between bouts of rage and bouts of depression where her family had feared she might take her own life. He’d almost gone back to her out of guilt several times.

“I’d only been with the team for a year at that point but she made it clear how much she hated my job and the hours it demanded. She wanted me to quit, wanted me to choose between her and the team. Basically, after I broke up with her, her whole family turned on me. Shut me out, boom. Her parents, extended relatives. Everyone.” He swallowed. “Even her brother, Danny.”

She sucked in a breath as recognition flared in her eyes. “Your best friend growing up.”

“Until the day I broke things off with his sister, yeah.” It still hurt, even now. He didn’t think the ache would ever completely go away. “We went to school together, became real tight around third grade and did everything together. We lived at each other’s places on the weekends and during summer. After graduation we joined the Army and went on to serve together in SF for five years.” He’d never imagined anything could ever sever that bond.

He’d thought wrong.

He’d started dating Trina the last year he’d been enlisted, right before he applied to the FBI. “He was more than a friend, he was my brother.” It killed him that Danny had turned his back on him, literally cut him out of his life.

She shook her head slowly, her eyes impossibly sad. “Like Ethan is to you now.”

He nodded and looked away, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and a knot in his throat.

Carmela let out a hard breath, still watching him. “God, Sawyer, my brother would never turn his back on you like that. Not ever.”

He’d never thought Danny would, either. Under any circumstance. They’d gone through hell together, fought for their lives and bled together and it still hadn’t been enough to make the friendship last after the breakup. “Not even if I hooked up with his sister and then we broke up one day?” he muttered bitterly. “Then what?”

She was silent a long moment, then reached out to place a hand on his forearm. The leather jacket prevented him from feeling the warmth of her hand and the softness of her palm, but the light pressure was unmistakable and it warmed him inside.

“Not even then,” she assured him in a quiet, firm tone. “I mean, if you were just screwing around with me and then dumped me, yeah, you’d have a problem. But hypothetically if we got together and things didn’t work out later on so we broke up, he’d get over it. He knows I’m a big girl and that I make my own decisions. He wouldn’t judge you based on whatever happened with us.”

He faced her now, not believing a word of it. He’d learned that lesson the hard way already. He didn’t need to learn it again. “Wouldn’t he? And what about you and your mom if we broke up?”

“I...we’d figure it out, make it work somehow.” She waved her hands around again. “Are you kidding me? My mother adores you, and you know it. Honestly, Sawyer, we’re all grownups. Unless you used me and dumped me or did something totally underhanded, you’d never lose my family because of what happened with me.”

He’d like to believe that. But he couldn’t. Not anymore. And it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

He held her gaze, so earnest, so sincere. But talk was cheap and he knew in his gut that when push came to shove, hurt feelings and a broken heart could make people turn on someone they’d once loved. “You don’t know what your family means to me,” he said finally, his voice rough. “I couldn’t go through that again. Not with you guys.” He was way closer to the Cruzes than he had been with Trina’s family. That terrified him as much as it honored him.

And deep down he knew things would never be the same between him and Carmela from now on. He hated that too.