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I smiled at him will all the evil charm I’d used when we first met, from before he’d pushed past the façade and broken me wide open.
How much did his friends know about us? Did they know what we’d meant to meet other. I doubted it. It would hurt Carter’s pride too much to let them know how hard he’d fallen for me, but Carter knew. He remembered.
I was going to have to use that to get myself out of this mess. I’d hoped to just fucking run from him, but I owed him a chance to take out his revenge on me. And I supposed I owed him the truth more than anyone else, but the part of it that might make him change his mind was the one thing I intended to keep to myself, at least until I could learn more about who’d fucked over both of us.
Carter pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pressed the fob to unlock a black SUV. “Get in.”
“Are you going to be the bossy one today?”
“Fuck you. Get in the car.”
“Yes, sir.” When I gave him a fake salute, his eyes narrowed, and he clenched his fists. I thought he might punch me again, but he stomped to the other side of the vehicle, yanked open his door with nearly enough force to rip it off, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
He really did trust me to obey him. What would he do if took off? Would he chase me? Would he shoot me? Part of me wanted to find out.
I opened the door and sat down in the SUV.
Carter scrubbed his hands over his face. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me instead of me having to find out from Leo?”
The pain in his voice gave me hope I shouldn’t allow myself. Would he ever admit how much he’d cared for me? Had he seen how much I cared, or had he truly thought I was incapable of such feelings? Fuck. He’d probably thought I didn’t have a heart, even before I ruined everything.
“I couldn’t. I’d already ruined my mission, but I needed to determine my next step.”
“And that’s what you cared about? The mission?”
I didn’t answer.
“Why did you do it? Why did you join the fucking CIA?”
So he didn’t know everything. I blew out a harsh breath. Did it really matter what I said? There were no good answers, and the reason I hadn’t told him…I doubted he’d believe me. And if he did, it would just sound like I was trying to manipulate him. Again. If I told him the CIA had forbidden me to tell anyone, that would also sound like bullshit. Since when did I play by the rules?
Which was exactly why they’d targeted me—that and my connection to Carter.
The CIA asshole who’d recruited me had convinced me I wouldn’t last long in the SEALs. I was too defiant, to unwilling to do as I was told. It was one thing to go off script when things went sideways, but I had been writing entirely new scripts of my own. They’d fucking worked, but command hadn’t really cared about that.
“It’s classified.” That was the easiest answer I could give.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Carter yelled. He cranked the engine, slammed the vehicle into gear and took off.
I held on tight as he floored it through a turn. “I see your driving hasn’t improved.”
“Are you trying to get me to shoot you?”
“Maybe that’s part of my mission.”
“I fucking hate you.”
“Then kick me out. Dump me on the side of the road, and you’ll never see me again.” That wasn’t true. Now that I’d seen him, I wouldn’t be able to stay away. I’d end up stalking him.
“I’m not done with you yet.”
He wanted to scare me with that statement, but he couldn’t. At this point there was very little he could do to me that I wouldn’t welcome, and he was too much of a hero to actually push past my limits.
He didn’t speak as he drove us out of the city. When the silence got to me, I said, “If you want to kill me and dump the body, we don’t really have to drive this far. There are plenty of places in the city no one would ever look.”
Carter didn’t respond. He turned on the radio and raised the volume until it was rattling the windows.
“You can’t shut me out. It doesn’t matter what you do.”
