I gripped the doorframe and threw myself down the stairs. My feet almost slipped beneath me, I went down them so fast. I rounded the corner of the barn, resting my hands on my knees, panting.
What the hell just happened? Touch her? She wanted me totouchher? Wanted to be what? Fuck buddies? Absolutely fucking not.
I’d barely managed to put myself back together when gravel crunched beneath footsteps. I peered around the corner and saw Delilah walking to her Jeep, her hips swaying in a way that made my dick throb.
I was screwed. Absolutely screwed.
2
Ch 1 - Emmett
Gunfire split the night open like deadly rainfall. My ears were ringing, my heart pounding with adrenaline, but it was all drowned out by Mercer’s breathing, wet and thick, like he was drowning in my arms.
“Stay with me, Merc,” I demanded, pressing my hand harder on the holes in his chest. My fingers slipped, his blood slick like oil. My gaze darted around, everything in a night vision green. “Where the fuck is the medic?!” I roared over the crack of bullets flying into the walls.
Mercer choked, blood spilling out of his mouth. I ripped the night vision goggles off and propped his head on my lap. “No, no, no,” I chanted through gritted teeth. But the blood just kept coming. “You stay with me, Danny. You hear me?”
His eyes found mine. Wide. Scared. It turned my blood to ice.
“Hayes!” Remington came running, dodging bullets between blown-open concrete. He fell to his knees next to us, rummaging through the med kit. “Walker’s dead. I came as fast as I could.”
I just started grabbing gauze, my hands shaking so bad that it fell on the rubble beside us. “Look, Merc, Rem’s here,” I forced out, my voice unrecognizable in its panic. “We’re gonna patch you up, and you’re gonna walk out of here. Chels is gonna think the scars are hot.”
I nearly choked on the lie.
“Yeah, girls are into that kinda shit,” Rem said with a forced smirk. But the look in his eyes when they met mine was one of knowing; Merc wouldn’t even live another five minutes.
A bullet hissed past my face so close the heat of it warmed my cheek. I ducked, throwing my body over Danny’s. He smelled like sweat and iron and my failure. Rem fired in bursts into the dark, covering us. “We gotta move!”
But I couldn’t. My knees wouldn’t work. My best friend was bleeding out beneath me. He had a wife at home. A baby on the way. And me, the idiot who made the call that put him here.
“Don’t you fucking dare leave me, Danny,” I begged in his ear, voice breaking. “I can’t do this without you.”
It was like a gas valve being slowly opened. His last breath. It came out slow, broken, barely there. And then he was still. Cold.
Gone.
“Emmett! Now!” Rem’s hand clamped around my vest, yanking me up and dragging me. My throat burned as I screamed into the smoke, emptying my magazine at enemies closing in.
The last thing I saw before we rounded the corner was Danny’s body lying in the rubble. Blood pooling around him. Soaking the ground, and staining me forever.
I shot upright,choking on smoke that wasn’t here. My legs were twisted in the sheets, sweat clinging to my skin. My heartpounded in my chest like a jackhammer, as if I were still there. Like Danny was still bleeding out beneath my hands with Jack yelling at me to move.
But I wasn’t. I was in my room thousands of miles away in dark silence.
I ran a shaking hand over my face, tired of this routine. I didn’t know how much longer I could take it.
I swung my legs over to the side of the bed, curling my toes in the carpet to let it ground me, my breathing slowly steadying. The clock read 3:45. I sighed. There was no going back to sleep for me. I slipped on some shorts and headed to the gym in the stables. Well, they weren’t stables anymore, but lodging for the ranch’s veteran outreach program—Freedom Reins. A program I wanted nothing to do with. Not after the clusterfuck of my sessions with Delilah, anyway.
God, Delilah. What was I gonna do about that?
My feet faltered, and I gripped the railing on the porch. Just the memory of her face, the look in her eyes when she offered to sleep with me last week, had me pausing. My eyes drifted shut. I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head. If I thought hard enough, I could still smell her perfume, could hear the want in her voice, could feel the heat of her body.
Shaking my head, I forced myself forward because that was the only option. The only one I’d been allowing myself since everything fell to shit.
By the time I reached the indoor gym, my body ached with the need to move, to get rid of all this restless energy tearing through me. I threw myself into it. Bench presses, pull-ups, burpees until my arms shook and I couldn’t hold myself up any longer, anything to escape the shit in my head. Between memories of deployments and Delilah ripping the rug beneath my feet, there was a lot to run from.
I was mid-sit-up when I froze, hearing something. Then it came again, the subtle creak of a floorboard from the second story. For a second, old instincts took over, and I nearly reached for a gun that hadn’t been there for two years. I got to my feet slowly, making sure I was silent as I climbed the stairs and crept towards the light coming under Delilah’s office door.
