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With arms folded over his chest, Ian threw a mutinous look at his friend. “And this is the exact same shit you’re doing with Snow and Lucas?”
Rowe didn’t appear fazed by his question at all. “Nope. They know this shit already. We’ll run some of it as a refresher on occasion, but they know it. What I run with Snow and Lucas is to simply keep their reflexes sharp.”
Dropping his hands back down to his sides, Ian paced a short distance away, shaking his head. This wasn’t what he wanted. Not at all. The whole thing with the trip to Covington with Noah following Mick had left a bad taste in his mouth. He didn’t want to go through that again. He couldn’t stomach the idea of his friends not believing he could handle a situation, not when they most needed him.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” Ian ground out between his teeth.
“Then talk to me, Ian.”
He stopped pacing and stared at his friend across the empty expanse of the basement. Opening and closing his fists at his sides, he could feel the words getting caught in his throat. He felt so damn pathetic when he knew he shouldn’t. Not with Rowe. “When Noah and I were tailing Mick, you didn’t want us to go.”
“Of course I didn’t. I don’t want anything to happen to you or Noah.”
“If it had been Snow in that seat beside Noah, or Lucas, or Andrei…”
“I would have been just as worried.”
“But you wouldn’t have put up a fight. You would have known they could handle it.”
Rowe released a sudden sigh and his face softened. He walked over to an old, sagging worktable made of plywood and a few two-by-fours. He leaned against it, crossing one leg over the other. “Snow and Lucas spent four years in the Army. We worked in some god-awful areas. There was more than one instance where I was sure we weren’t going to get out alive, but we did. Noah has spent more than a decade as a Ranger in some even more fucked up parts of the world. Andrei has more than a decade studying martial arts and various fighting styles. He’s got belts in shit that I’ve never even heard of. And then he’s survived underground fights, where those motherfuckers fight dirty. Hollis has been a cop for several years. He’s worked undercover. I don’t mean to be a bastard, Ian, but they all have something that you don’t.”
Ian couldn’t look at Rowe. He’d never felt so small and useless in his life. What the fuck was he even thinking, trying to get Rowe to train him? He didn’t belong in the middle of this chaos. He couldn’t protect Noah if something had gone wrong and Rowe was probably insanely grateful that nothing had blown up around them. Ian had insisted they take a risk against Noah’s better judgment and they were damn lucky that Noah hadn’t been killed.
A heavy hand landed on Ian’s tense shoulder and he jumped. He hadn’t even heard Rowe move from his spot across the room so he was now standing directly in front of Ian. His large hand tightened on Ian’s shoulder as if he was trying to massage away the tension vibrating through every inch of his aching body.
“Look at me,” Rowe said sharply, jerking Ian’s eyes up to Rowe’s worried face. “You’re not less of a man because you don’t know thirty ways to knock the shit out of a person. I know that you have never turned from a fight. I know that if Noah had been in trouble, you would have been right there to protect him, even if it meant your own life. I trust you with Noah’s life.” Rowe paused and swallowed against the heavy weight of those words. He’d already lost so much, he couldn’t…Ian’s mind shied away from the thought completely as Rowe continued speaking. “The difference between you and Snow and Lucas and the others is experience, plain and simple. Years and years of experience.”
Ian blinked back tears that blurred his vision as Rowe’s words eased the pain inside his chest. “But—”
“There is no but. If you’d spent four years in the Army or a decade in the ring, I still would have bitched about you going after Mick. I’m always going to be scared about you heading into a dangerous situation because I love you.”
Ian leaned his head forward, letting it fall against Rowe’s shoulder. “I love you too, but I don’t want to sit on the sidelines. I am going to be involved in this.”
“You want to give up being a chef and come work for me? I’ll train you to be a bodyguard. Ten hours a day on the mat, on the gun range.”
“Not even funny,” Ian muttered, even though he was fighting a laugh at the thought. Rowe knew there was no way in hell he was going to give up being a chef. It was like Rowe saying that he was going to give up getting into trouble. Never gonna happen. “I…if I’m in a situation where I’m with someone like Noah and he gets hurt, I want to know more than how to escape. I want to have his back. To be able to protect him.”
