AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My own hell is just as bad but I have the strange peace of knowing it’s final.
My family is gone. I’ll never have to wonder if my daughter is eating right. If my son is happy with his new toy. If my wife is cheating on me.
They’re all gone. My heart cracks open and the pain hits me, almost driving me to my knees. The air whooshes out of me and it’s like she knows.
“Petrol, what’s wrong?” She turns and her clear blue eyes narrow and then she runs to me, her arms going around me and I’m in another kind of hell entirely. The flames lick at my skin and spread outward, whipped up like a fire in the wind. My dick gets hard instantly, throbbing and pushing at my zipper like a wild thing desperate to get to her sweet, lush curves.
I close my eyes, sinking into her for just a second, a tiny fragment of time standing still. A perfect piece of my life that I wish I didn’t have to change.
But after that brief second where I breathe in the soft, sweet cherry scent of her, like a piece of candy I’m dying to unwrap and sink my teeth into, I push her away roughly. She stumbles and her pouty lips fall open in a gasp.
“I’m really sorry, sweetheart. I-I shouldn’t have done that.” I stalk away, my back rigid as I hold onto the fragile remnants of my control that she seems to manage to trash without even trying.
I hurt her. I saw it in her eyes. Not like I haven’t seen it before. But this time she doesn’t turn away like she has before. She patters after me and snags my arm trying to pull me to a stop.
“No! I want to know what’s wrong, Petrol.”
“None of your business,” I growl under my breath. She snarls at me and then her soft hands reach up and grab my cheeks, pulling my face down to hers.
“I want to know why you look so sad sometimes, Petrol. You have been nothing but nice to me, helping me at every turn and I need to help you.”
“So tell me what you’re running from, baby girl. Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I can’t do that. It’s my problem. Hopefully it’s gone away but even if it hasn’t…I don’t want anyone to get in trouble trying to help me.”
I snort. “Baby, I doubt if your trouble could possibly be worse than being in combat. I think I can handle whatever issue you have. Hell, I have a whole army of men just like me that would run to your defense if necessary. Would help me destroy any danger that you might find yourself in. Teach and Zero have already offered.”
Her lips fall open, aghast. “No! Absolutely not. I’m going to move on as soon as I’ve got some money together. There’s no reason for anyone to get involved with this.”
Ignoring the pain in my heart at her words, I glare down at her hands. “There is every reason, princess. You deserve a safe place to land and anyone that would terrorize a woman….any woman, deserves to have hell rain down on them. I am that hell.”
“Why is this so damn important?!” She wails, her crystal eyes awash in a film of tears.
“Because I couldn’t do a damn thing to save my own wife and kids!”I scream at her, my body shuddering at the words.
“Oh my god,” she whispers, stepping back, her fingers falling away from me. I miss them. Miss their warmth as the familiar icy-cold fingers sap my strength.
My head hangs and I struggle to breathe past the pain, the sheer torture of the words. I’ve never said them out loud.
I’ve heard them. But I’ve never said them. Never even breathed them. My chest hurts and I reach my hand up, pushing at my chest like my heart’s still there when in fact it was ripped out ages ago in a far-off place full of fear, anger and sand. So much sand.
“I was deployed overseas. It doesn’t matter where. One of those places where we have constant men trying to kill us just because.” I rub at my chest absently, feeling my heartbeat under my fingers, surprised that it’s still fluttering in my chest. By rights, it should be still. I should be dead.
“I came back from a mission and for once, we were all in high spirits. Nobody got killed.” My lips twist. Or so we thought. “My CO called me into his office and asked me to sit down. I did, thinking he just wanted to congratulate us on a successful mission. Wondering why the other guys weren’t there. Until he opened his mouth and told me that my family was gone. My wife was killed when our car exploded. A bomb. What the fuck was a bomb doing on a car back home? I couldn’t believe it. But she worked for a senator and he had been having some security issues with this group and they lost it, I guess. Put a bomb on the wrong car at a holiday party at his house and killed my entire family. My five-year old son, my two-year old daughter and my wife. All gone with one stupid, senseless mistake. And I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.”
I hear her soft whimpers and look up to see the tears streaming down her pretty face and it almost breaks me. She should never look so sad. Her face was made for smiles and laughter. Not this. Not me. I don’t deserve so much sweetness and light.
I don’t deserve any of it.
I stand up straight and push my shoulders back. “So that’s why I will never just stand by while a woman is threatened, princess. Because I already lost once and a woman paid the price because I didn’t help her. I won’t let that happen again.”
And before I lose it and drop to my knees, I shamble out of there, wrecked, lost and barely hanging on.
Barely breathing. Barely alive. Completely broken.
CHAPTER7
Adeline
