Skin Deep (10 page)

“You loved Nebraska. Do you love me?” Hotch asked bluntly.

“I don’t know. Right now, I want to smack you for being a self-indulgent jackass. Get over yourself and your pity party. Accept that for whatever reason, Troy gave his life up for you to have one, that he had a great life and maybe, just maybe, his death is a way for you to experience a little of the joy he brought others.”

Hotch got up. Erin scared the shit out of him. He turned and jogged down the beach. Erin called after him, but he quickened to a run. He could’ve accepted scorn, disgust, hatred. He expected it. Acceptance? He didn’t know what to do with it. It made the ground feel like ice beneath his feet. She turned those bright green eyes on him full of understanding and harsh frankness, and he lost his footing.

The ice became a sucking black hole in his mind and no matter how fast he ran, how loud he yelled into the wind, he couldn’t escape it. Couldn’t escape her. In a wild panic he ran into the surf and swam as far as he could along the shoreline.

Erin paced the living room. She paused to listen when Toby fussed in his sleep down the hall, but resumed once he’d settled. She glanced at her watch. Hotch had been gone for hours. Eleven o’clock crept closer. Erin ran a hand through her hair and looked at the phone, once again debating whether she should call the base and check on him. He might have signed in early, avoiding her completely until he came back—whenever the Navy decided to make that happen.

A car pulled up outside. Her pulse jumped and she raced to the door, swinging it open. Hotch got out of a base cruiser, waved the security detail off, and headed toward her. She waited until he got inside to tear into him. Except once he got there, she clung to him.

“I was so fucking worried,” she garbled into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“You have a son now. No matter how mad at me you get, you can’t just disappear on him.”

“I promise,” he soothed, stroking her back.

His arms tightened around her. She sighed. “Tomorrow you go back.”

“Early.”

“I know.” She needed him. Her body still shook with fear she didn’t know she had. “Take me to bed, Hotch.”

Hotch swept her legs out from under her and carried her to the bedroom. She kissed him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her lips. “I’m sorry. I won’t leave like that again.”

A sob caught in her throat. Erin tucked her head under his chin and held on, as he carried her. He lowered her gently to the bed, as though she was fragile, and tonight she felt like she was. She was used to being strong, in charge. She was used to caring for her small son and knowing the answers to everything, even if she didn’t know at all. She was used to the art of pretending, managing her life like she was in control, but in his arms, she let the burden go. Hotch carried it for her and for the first time more than a year, Erin sighed with relief.

He’d left her, worried her, argued with her, challenged her, but in the end she trusted him to be at her side when she or Toby actually needed him.

He’s a SEAL, she reminded herself. He’d go. He could die. He could resent her when he came back and remember Troy all over again and wonder if she was just the girl Troy left behind, taking advantage of a cushy deal he’d provided for her.

He could. But he wouldn’t. She didn’t question how she knew it, yet it fell in a collection of shared conversations, journal entries, the character of a Navy SEAL, and the character he’d flawlessly represented every moment they were together.

“Don’t promise me you won’t leave,” she told him. “Promise me that when you leave, you’ll come back to me.”

He studied her for several long seconds. “Then marry me.”

She shook her head no. “Neither one of us is ready for that. There’s too much we have to work through.”

Hotch brushed the hair back from her face. “I wish you’d say yes.”

“Why?”

“It makes sense.”

“How romantic,” she teased.

“What’s wrong with making sense?”

“It doesn’t challenge you to wonder why that’s your answer.”

“You’re talking in riddles. Must be a girl thing.”

“When you figure it out, I’ll be here to listen. Then you can ask me again,” she said softly. “Until then, big boy, there’s something else I’d rather be doing than talking.”

Hotch huffed with exasperation. “You’re so confusing.”

“I know. How about if I use simple words? Cock in pussy. Now.”

He laughed. “
That
I understood.”

“I was speaking
male
.”

“I like it,” he murmured his approval against her neck.

Chapter Seven

Hotch reported for duty with the rest of the team. He was going on almost no sleep after spending the night making love to Erin. He couldn’t get enough of her. God, just when he thought he had, it was as though his hunger for her resurfaced. He shook his head as he put his shoes in his locker and pulled on his government-issued pair. Today would be about briefing for the training session, possible missions, any news the CO had for them about their immediate plans, corrections, etcetera. It was a pencil pushing and weight lifting day. Unless Uncle Sam had something else in mind.

He joined the other guys on the team as their comfortable camaraderie filled the background noise in his thoughts.

“Skins all the way, man. I told my girl that, and you should’ve heard the way she bitched at me,” one of the younger team members laughed.

“She’ll figure it out. No one gets between the bros on the Skins team,” a sympathetic member said.

“Speaking of Skins brotherhood, we’re up against the Dune Devils at Hell’s Dune,” another guy informed.

“Darts. Man I suck at darts.”

It filtered though and Hotch chimed in from time to time about slaughtering the competition both in darts and in the water. SEAL pride swelled. They collectively entered the Skins’ dedicated conference room where Commander Hawking waited.

An hour later, the meeting concluded. Commander Hawking called Hotch to stay behind for a minute. Hotch prepared himself for another round with his CO.

“Sir?” Hotch asked when they were finally alone.

“What are you plans?”

“About?”

“My daughter.”

“With respect, Commander Hawking, I don’t let personal relationships bleed over into my professional life.”

“Neither did I.” Commander Hawking sighed heavily and paced to the window. He looked through it a long while. Hotch began to wonder if he’d been dismissed indirectly, when Hawking turned. “It didn’t work out so well for me,” he confessed.

“Sir?”

Hawking approached. He looked like he’d aged twenty years overnight. “Erin was right yesterday. I kept my lives so separated that I wound up making my job my priority instead of my family.”

Hotch didn’t know how to answer that, so he didn’t.

“When you go to the front line, Lieutenant, who are you fighting for?” Hawking asked suddenly.

“I don’t know, sir.” He’d never thought about it. Of course he fought for his country, but that was some intangible thing out there, a lofty ideal that didn’t have substance. Mostly he fought because he had to, needed to, beyond anything else, he felt the drive to make something more than what he had.

“The SEALs become your family. I know they did for me. Even though we spar in competitions with the other teams, we’re still a big family of men who look to each other for belonging.” Hawking laughed humorlessly. “It’s taken me over thirty years to realize that I had all that at home.”

“You’re decorated, sir. We’ve done a lot of good. You can’t regret it,” Hotch challenged carefully.

Hawking leaned his hip against the conference table. “I thought they’d always be there. I thought that what I was doing was so important that they’d understand why I wasn’t there, and they’d wait for me.” He met Hotch’s gaze. “That’s a lie, son. You have to nurture what you have, or the enemy wins that personal battle before you realize they’ve struck.”

“Shouldn’t this be something you share with Erin and Mrs. Hawking?”

“They won’t have me. I’ve lost them.
You
still have a chance. Don’t fuck up with your family the way I fucked up with mine. Do you want them?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve asked her to marry me.”

“Why?”

Hotch knew he looked as confused as he felt. “She asked me the same question.”

A twinkle of pride entered his CO’s eyes. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her it made sense.”

“She turned you down, didn’t she?”

“Yes, sir,” Hotch admitted.

“Good girl.”

“Sir? What should I have said?”

“She’s a woman, son. Tell her what you feel, and you have a shot. Load her with facts, and she’ll wash her hands of you.”

“Is that what you did with Mrs. Hawking?” Hotch asked.

Hawking looked up, surprised. He chuckled. “No, but I should have. Maybe I will yet.” Hawking strolled toward the door. He stopped before walking through it. “Go home, son. Find out what you need to do to keep them. Whatever it is, I’ll make it happen on base.”

* * * *

Hotch walked toward her, a lean confident figure in the distance. The gray ocean that touched the deepening blue sky was his backdrop. His bare feet kicked up white North Carolina sand. The ever-present breeze teased his hair, and Erin’s heart pulled.

She couldn’t tear her eyes from him.

As he drew closer, it became even more difficult. His blue eyes looked as turbulent as the storming sea. He smiled, and she smiled back, wishing she hadn’t taken Toby to her mother’s, so that she’d have him as a distraction.

But she didn’t have her child. She had only Hotch walking toward her purposefully. Warmth flickered in her chest as persistently as the eternal flame marking the monument of lost sailors. She sat on one curved whitewashed wall to think about Troy. She’d come to pay her respects and to demand that her heart hurt as freshly as it had when she’d lost her would-be fiancé. Yet tonight there was only one lost sailor she mourned with that kind of pain, and he was crossing the white expanse to reach her.

Hotch stopped in front of her. He tucked his chin as his gaze traveled over her. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she murmured back.

“I love you, Erin. I don’t have a family to give you. I don’t have some great military legacy. I don’t even have much of a savings plan, but it’s yours.”

“You love me?” she asked slipping off the wall. “How can you be sure it’s love and not the need to have all those things you don’t?”

“Because I never missed them the way I miss you, when you’re not in my arms. It tears me up inside that if I give you the wrong answer, I’ll lose you. Erin, I’m not good at the words. I’ve never needed them before now.”

She eased her arms around his waist. “Give it a try.”

“I don’t just want to come back to you. I want my life to revolve around you. Your dad asked me who I was fighting for when we go on deployment. I didn’t have an answer, but I wanted to have one.”

Her throat constricted. She waited, fearful. Hopeful.

“I want to say I’m fighting for you. That when I go on a mission it’s to protect your freedom, Toby’s rights. I want to be able to claim that you’re my purpose.”

“Whether or not I am, Toby is. He’s a part of you and that won’t change.”

Hotch shook his head with apparent frustration. “You’re not understanding me.”

“I’m understanding, I just want you to be sure you know what you’re asking.”

“Erin, how many times does a guy have to ask you to marry him before you believe he means it?”

She felt sorry for him. She wasn’t making it easy, but it meant everything to her if he got this right. If
they
got this right. “Are you asking the package deal, or me?”

“You.”

Erin rose up on her toes. She kissed him, enjoying the way their mouths slid together and his body supported hers. As she lowered herself, she looked in to his questioning aqua gaze. The shape and color of his eyes were so like her son’s and yet Hotch looked at her as a woman—with a different kind of need.

“Yes,” she agreed smiling. “I’ll marry you.”

Hotch whooped and lifted her into a spin. Erin hung on, laughing as they twirled.

“I have a condition though.”

“Uh oh.” He set her down again.

“You continue serving the way you want to serve the military. If that means active duty with the Skins and the rest of the Navy SEALs, then that’s what you do.”

“It’s okay. Your dad said he’d make arrangements,” Hotch told her.

Erin ducked her head, trying to find a way to say what she needed to without sounding like she was sending him off easily. She didn’t want to let him go, yet she had to. “You’re a SEAL, Hotch. I’m not going to ask you to change that. It’s who you are.”