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Miles looked ready to protest again, but Worth laid a hand on his arm. “Trust Carter. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Fine,” Miles said, anger still sizzling the air around him.
Worth turned his attention to Matteo. “Whatever he might do to you, what we’ll do will be ten times worse.”
Damn. I’d never seen Worth so serious.
“He’s not kidding,” I said.
Matteo grinned, the fucking bastard. “I never thought he was.”
11
MATTEO
The second the door closed behind Carter and his friends, I went looking for Carter’s go bag. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t have one—or possibly more—stashed here or that the bag wouldn’t include a burner phone and a weapon. I didn’t know what he’d done with the phone I’d had on me when he drugged me, but I doubted I was going to get it back. That was fine. The last thing I needed was anyone trying to trace me with it.
It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. Carter was predictable, because we thought the same way, like the SEALs we were trained to be. When I was there in the jungle with Carter and the others from our team and we’d had a mission we were working toward together, life was so much easier. I would never have thought I’d long for those days again, but sometimes I did. When the CIA stepped in, they convoluted and corrupted it all. Fuckers. They were nearly as bad as the damn cartel; they just had a different agenda.
But asshole or not, I needed to check in with my current handler. He was far from the worst of the bunch. I set up the phone and texted him using an agreed upon code to let him know it was me. Then I stuck the gun I’d taken in my waistband and wandered around Carter’s cabin while I waited for a response.
There wasn’t much in the cabin to indicate who it belonged to. I knew Carter had an apartment in Manhattan. Was it just as sparse? I wanted to believe it wasn’t. I hated thinking of Carter only having something temporary. He deserved a full, happy life, but I doubted he was going to have that until he could work through the shit with his family and come to terms with what happened in the jungle.
I knew his friends had helped him. I might resent putting up with Miles and his bullshit, but he was an amazing friend to Carter. Giving him a job had been exactly the right thing to do. It didn’t matter if Carter didn’t need money. He needed a purpose.
I’d never been as focused as Carter. I’d joined the navy to get out of a shitty home life and pay for college. I’d intended to spend a few years in the SEALs, then get out and find a cushy security job. I’d wanted time to relax and have fun.
I’d sure fucked that up. I didn’t deserve better, but Carter did.
Tell him the truth.
I couldn’t. I didn’t know what it would do to him.
Something worse than you leaving him for dead?
I left him as well off as I could.
He doesn’t see it that way.
I’d done what I had to do. I knew that was objectively true, but I also hated myself for shooting him and letting him think I was a traitor.
I wasn’t kidding about being forbidden to tell him, but I was lying to him and myself that I didn’t care about that. Telling him wasn’t going to compromise the mission. I’d already done that by running and not contacting the cartel leaders.
I couldn’t go back there. Even if I didn’t know they’d be suspicious of me, I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. Seeing Carter had fucked me up even more than I’d expected. I couldn’t pretend to be the scum of the earth now. I was already afraid the months I’d been undercover had made me into the monster Carter believed me to be.
I wouldn’t go back, and I wasn’t going on another CIA assignment. I didn’t give a fuck what kind of contract I’d signed. I could deal with this head on and hope Carter’s powerful friends could get me out of this, or I could run.
You promised Carter you wouldn’t.
He already knows I’m a liar.
He doesn’t know what you are.
If I ran, I’d be hiding from the cartel and the CIA. That should scare the hell out of me. But staying, fighting for Carter, having him so close but knowing he’d likely never forgive me no matter how noble my gesture had been, scared me way more.
To win him back, I’d have to confess how I felt about him, that I’d started falling for him the moment we’d met. I’d tried to shut down all my emotions while I was with the cartel. Feeling dead inside was the only way to live with the horrible things I watched happen around me but couldn’t stop.
If I ran now, I could pretend none of this happened—Carter hadn’t fucked all the feeling back into me. I hadn’t cried in his arms. I hadn’t seen the questions in his eyes or the intensity that had always been there.
