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“Steph kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, even if I had contributed. The thing is, I knew the truth even if no one else wanted to admit it. I got my shit together, finished school and headed for boot.
“The next couple of years, I was a model soldier, or at least as model as I could be. I had an issue with authority, but they kicked the shit out of me. I met Voodoo and Bones while I was in training. They came up with me. Alphabet and Lunchbox came along later.
“I discovered that, as long as I kept my mind out there, I wasn’t focused on here. Only I still thought about Milo, and visited him when I had the chance. Took him to see that show of yours once when you were eight.”
The poster at the clinic.
“But the thing is, no matter whether I was here or I was there, I was still running away. Running to not face what I had done. I could tell myself you were great. Look at you—superstar at eight, with a wealthy family. Milo, he was the kid with the plan. He was gonna be running this city before you knew it…I could keep running.”
The tension winding up through me kept me on edge. I half-forgot my beer until the cold bottle touched my thigh and then I put it aside.
“Then came the ambush. I had convinced myself I had it together, and more than half my unit got wiped out in a series of bombings. Nearly got my fire team too. The last thing I remembered was the sound and the burning…pretty sure I screamed too, but that could have been someone else.”
I couldn’t have looked away if I had tried.
“When I woke up in the hospital, I had nothing, just pain. Burns can kill the nerves if they’re bad enough. Except the thing about burns is you can’t dress them, not at first, and you have to keep cleaning them so they don’t get infected…no amount of pain medication will take that edge off.”
I’d seen the burns on him, the scars decorated with tattoos as if to hide the reddened and mottled flesh. It was easy to forget that his scars were as much on the inside as the outside.
“I forgot what life was like without pain. Couple of times, I thought about killing myself. Eating a bullet would be easier, you know.” He shrugged. “Never could do it though, and one day, it hit me…I was finally paying those consequences. I burned down your lives…”
“Mickey, no,” I started to say, but he gave me a gentle smile.
“It’s okay, Little Bit. Really. I wanted to pay that cost. I wanted to pay for the stupidity of my youth. Somewhere between the showers to clean off the dead skin and the treatments to help me keep my limbs, I discovered that I wanted to live. Iwantedto be better.”
Straightening, he stripped off his shirt. I’d seen the scars and the tattoos before.
“That’s what these are,” he said, motioning to his arm then to his side. The tattoos went all the way down his leg. “They are my commitment to the future, to helping people—to med school, to being a doctor, to stop running, and when I was ready, I came back here.”
To Braxton Harbor.
Tossing the shirt aside, he crossed the room to where I sat. “I put away Vandal when I went to boot. I did my best to forget the streets here, to put it away, to bury it all.” Once in front of me, he reached down and picked me right up out of the chair.
Sliding my hands around his neck, I leaned into him. The roughness of half his chest was a contrast to the seeming smoothness of the other. The heat spilling off of him wrapped around me, and I shivered as one of my nipples brushed against the rough ridges of the scar tissue.
“I came back here and was going to be Doctor James. No more streets. No more fights. No more crime…nothing. But even running toward something didn’t mean I’d stopped running.”
I frowned as he brushed his lips to my forehead.
“Then those stupid boys brought this wounded bird to my clinic. Bruised, battered, and so fragile. For the first time in years, Vandal woke up again, and I was ready to take on what hurt you. He wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“And you offered to help me even when they weren’t interested in letting me go.” I stroked my hand through his hair. “Then I got out.”
“Yeah, and then you decided to come back, all on your own. I couldn’t fathom it. Nevertheless, I saw you changing them, or at least them fighting to put themselves back together. I wanted to be near you…then Milo got out, and you know the stupid shit I pulled.”
“I remember,” I said slowly, marveling at how he stood there, gaze locked on mine.
“I’m sorry again,” he murmured, kissing the corner of my mouth. “Because when you left…when you went back to protect everyone, I had no idea how bad it would be for you. When they brought you back…”
I glanced at my arms, and Mickey let out a low sound.
“When they brought you back, and you’d been brutalized and hurt all over again, there was no putting Vandal back in the past. No more running away from him. No more running from any of you—but especially no more running fromyou.”
Tears burned in my eyes all over again.
“Little Bit, I’m still a doctor, but I’m also Vandal. I still want to give back, but I refuse to let anyone hurt youorthem again. I’m in this fight—allof it. The guys are here because I needed backup. We needed it. They are going to do what we need them to do…”
Licking my lips slowly, I pressed a hand to his cheek. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
