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“Fuck me…stop driving like an old man, motherfucker, and get us home.”
I laugh and let them watch me slip the head into my core once again.
“Hurry boys, don’t let me finish again without you.” I hit the end button thanking the heavens I don’t feel sick to my stomach anymore. But I don’t feel nearly as brave as I need to be either.
Sixteen
Rush
Idon’t know how we are supposed to walk away from a treasure like Belle. The very idea of tonight being our last night as a unit has me white-knuckling the steering wheel. Admittedly, I’m way more attached to the feel of her warm body in my arms than I care to admit.
I grunt. Fuck that. “I don’t want to let her go,” I say flatly. “She’s not going anywhere. You two dickheads can have your whole no relationships rule, but she’s it for me.”
Looking a little worse for wear, Gage finds my gaze in the rearview and says, “What do you think tonight is about, brother?” The hour-long flight back to Chicago was a silent one with all of us locked away in our thoughts. I can’t be the only one who sees we can’t go on living like all we can be are killing machines for the military.
“I know our plan. But asking her to visit us when we are in town is not what I want. I’m tired and I want more.” It’s the first time I’ve admitted what I’ve been feeling for a while now.
Gage is in the back seat wearing a cloak of silence like body armor again. He has a hard time with change. We all do after over a decade in the service.
“I’m letting my contract expire. I’m out.” The lead weight pressing on the center of my chest lifts.
“Aziel?”
He’s beside me nodding. “Agreed.”
“I know we haven’t talked about it, but I don’t want any more blood on my hands, brothers. We do this, we do it as a unit. If she’ll have us.” There’s always the chance she’ll walk away after one final goodbye, but I’ll put money on her feeling the way we do. Or at least how I do.
“We have talked. You were otherwise occupied at the time,” Gage says. Before I can ask when the hell they had that conversation, Gage pushes on. “That first morning with Belle. I couldn’t sleep. Aziel and I talked.”
“I told him I wanted out, too.”
That explains why they’ve been at odds lately. “And I’m just now hearing about this shit.”
“Sorry. We’ve been a little tied up.”
“In Belle, yeah I know.” The impossibly tight grip wrapped around my insides releases some of the tension. We’ve been through hell and back a few times together. Leaving without them feels like quitting on the men I depend on for life. I’m glad I’m not faced with the decision to pick between her and my brothers. I would have died before I gave up either.
I lock eyes with Gage. “And what about you? What is your decision?”
He’s silent a little longer, his eyes tracking the passing buildings as we head farther outside city limits.
“I don’t know. What do we do after?”
Aziel throws down his sun visor and nails our brother with a hard look. “You have less than ten miles to come up with an answer.”
I lay on the horn and swerve through Chicago’s evening traffic.
I rub at my chest and hope today is not the day I find out I have the same heart defect as my father. This girl has put us through hell these past few weeks.
Aziel clutches my shoulder when we take a seriously steep bend in the road at top speed. “What’s the matter? You forget we are on civilian roads, bro? Take it easy. We kill someone getting to her and we might as well sign up to be shower bitch buddies in prison.”
“Fuck you. If anyone is a bitch buddy, it’s you.”
The pain in my chest doesn’t ease. Nah, this feeling of not being able to breathe is something else.
“Something’s wrong.” Spears drive through my heart with every mile we cover. I didn’t feel like this when we were air-dropped in the middle of the South American jungle last year or having a shootout with that fucking Mexican cartel.
“You’re in love, dipshit.”
