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“As sweet as that sounds, it’s not the same. Is what you are doing now the same as what you did in the Army? Can you even compare them at this point?” She paused for a moment to let me consider her words. “What you’re doing now is different from what you did in the uniform. You were following orders. It’s structured. There were rules, and there was comradery. I have the same thing with the FBI, and that’s what I need. If I don’t have structure, I slide off the rails. It’s one of the reasons I joined the Navy in the first place. I like having rules and operating within them. This whole experience has been eye opening for me and made me realize just how much I like what I have going for me back home. Not to mention, Bob is grooming me to be the best undercover agent the FBI has for these operations, and that’s huge,” she said.
I could see the truth in her words. She really did feel that way, and they weren’t a bunch of excuses she was feeding me. She laid out for me exactly what it was that she needed, and she was right; it was much different from what we were doing.
I hoped that at some point she would change her mind, because the idea of letting the perfect girl slip through my fingers made me want to punch a wall. She had to change her mind, because I couldn’t imagine the alternative. I didn’t want to live a life where I didn’t see her every day. Where I didn’t get to share my fucked-up humor with her and she’d laugh, because she genuinely thought it was funny. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning wondering where she was or if she was alive, or which nasty pig had his dick in her. She deserved way more than that. We only met days ago, but I fell fast and hard—just like our sex.
I watched as she ate her salad, and it occurred to me, Abby had too much structure. She said if she didn’t follow rules she’d fly off the tracks. Maybe the rules helped her cope with what happened to her. If she stayed in her lane, ate her healthy foods, and kept to herself, nothing else bad could happen to her. The only exception was her job, where all kinds of bad stuff could happen to her, but she was prepared for it. It was like she lived two separate lives, the damaged girl that she hid from the world and the Alpha female who took shit from no one. Who used that fake personality to ignore her reality.
She finished her water and watched me as I ate wing after wing, cleaning every bit of meat off with my teeth.
“What?” I asked her.
“Nothing, just figuring you out,” she said with a small smile.
“Oh yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I was just doing the same to you,” I told her.
“What am I about, then?”
I couldn’t dive in deep with all my revelations. She’d toss her food and storm out of the room, so I had to come up with a watered-down version. Something she could handle. “You play your life completely safe, except for your job, where you give yourself the freedom to enjoy yourself.”
Her eyes widened for a moment before she smiled. “You figured all of that out from watching me eat my salad?”
“I figured it out in all the moments since I met you. You are reserved, keep to yourself so no one has the power to hurt you. But when you are on the job, everything changes. You become someone else.”
“I’m not going to admit if any of that is true, but good guess.” She tried not to make it obvious that I hit the nail on the head, but she failed. Her tone was too calm, too stiff.
“What did you figure out about me?” I challenged.
“While you are generally a large guy, you put a lot of time and effort into your jacked man image. Partially because it’s the complete opposite of who you are inside, and somehow you think disguising that will protect you. You seem to be a hopeless romantic at heart but have never gotten the opportunity to show it, so you secretly pine away for what your friends have,” she said. She was one hundred percent right, but it didn’t bother me. I wanted her to understand me, I wanted her to fall for me like I had her, and as far as I knew, women liked hopeless romantics.
“Are you going to deny it?” she asked with a smug expression. She expected the truth to wound me, but it didn’t. I’d own it and hope she could own her truth. It was the only way to change it.
I leaned back in my chair after wiping my hands with a wet wipe. “Absolutely not. I am who I am, and I’m fine with you seeing that.”
She sat back in her chair. She didn’t expect that answer. She waited for me to push back like many other guys would, but I wasn’t most guys. I’d seen shit most men couldn’t even dream of in their nightmares, and while it haunted me, I was a better man because of it. I knew how short life was—there wasn’t time to fuck around. Games were meant to pass time, but I knew just how little of it I had. When you wanted something, you needed to make it known and go after it.
As if sensing my thoughts, she cleared her throat and picked up her empty plate. She left it in the bin for dirty ones, and I followed. “I think I need a nap before the mission tonight.”
Clearly our conversation had taken a turn that she wasn’t comfortable with, so she put distance between us. That was okay, though; I laid down the groundwork. I planted the seeds in her mind. Deep down she knew I saw her for who she really was, and I still liked her. Now she just needed to accept that about herself and then let me the fuck in.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
abby
Adam’s words stuck with me. I tried to close my eyes, and the words bounced around in my head, keeping me from finding sleep. He was right. I played my life safe except for my job. I was once a wild child—in case my tattoos didn’t give it away. I knew I wanted to go into the Navy from the time I was in middle school. I wanted to serve my country, and I spent years preparing for that. I got some of my tattoos before I even enlisted. I worked my body hard and thrived on learning. I wanted to be the best sailor I could, yet that was my downfall. It was what attracted my assailant.
After a whole deployment filled with sexual assault, I changed completely. I was just the pretty shell on the surface, but the rest of me turned black and rotten. The one thing I wanted to do with my life was completely ruined. All because that punk-bitch saw something in me that stood out, something that he wanted, so he took it and broke me in the process. I promised myself I wouldn’t let anyone else do that to me again. If I was going to go all psychologist on myself—that could be why I didn’t want a relationship. It was like making the key to a glass house from a hammer. I couldn’t give someone that kind of power.
Instead I needed to feel in power, to destroy the lives of those sick and twisted perverts who took what they wanted from others without consequence. My job, working as an undercover agent to bring down sex trafficking operations, that allowed me to take my life back, and the power and life that was stolen from me. Every time I put a sick bastard behind bars, I got my revenge on a dead man who escaped justice. He’d never know the pain of his wife or children knowing of his actions. They only saw him as a hero. What he did never got back to them, and I wasn’t heartless enough to contact them and share my story. I let a dead man who didn’t deserve peace find it, only so that his family would have it too. I took that pain and held onto it, for the sake of his family. Putting away others was a hobby, my therapy, and my job, all rolled up into one honorable career.
Life was all sorts of complicated and fucked up. So was I.
My alarm rang. I didn’t get a minute of sleep, but my sheets were still tangled around my legs. I pulled them off and got dressed in all black. I concealed my gun at my side and pulled my hair back into a long side braid so that it was out of my face. After I brushed my teeth and put on a boatload of deodorant—to counteract the long clothing I was wearing in this tropical heat—I was ready.
I met the crew in the hallway, and together we snuck out the back entrance of the resort and drove to Potter’s Cay. We loaded the two boats and then quietly left the dock. It was eleven at night, so we still had three hours before we expected the Reapers to arrive. Which gave us time to blend in and become part of the darkness.
