Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(90)

“You needed it,” she said. “You deserved it.”

“Mmm,” he hummed again, then reached over to touch her wrist.

She turned her hand palm-up to lace her fingers through his. His skin was so amazingly warm, roughened by calluses, and deeply tan compared to her own pale flesh. This is probably the last time I’ll ever touch him, she realized. And, closing her eyes, she tried to burn the memory into her brain.

Then after a few more rare, wonderful moments, she told herself, It’s time to stop being a coward.

“C-Carlos,” she began, swallowing because his name was barely a whisper, inaudible above the loud throb of the jet engines as they throttled back for landing. But he was turned sideways in his seat, his temple pressed against the headrest, staring at her. So he saw her lips move.

Lifting his head, his mouth quirked. “What is it, Abby?”

Come on. Come on. Don’t chicken out! “There’s s-something I want to t-tell you,” she managed with a little more volume.

His smile softened. His expression becoming sympathetic, almost…understanding. “I think I know what it is.”

Her heart went from fluttering wildly to a dead stop. All the blood drained from her head. “You do?”

“Sí.” He winked. “You want to tell me you love me, too.” He reached over to push a crunchy, mud-caked lock of hair behind her ear.

So she hadn’t misheard him back in the jungle. He had said he loved her. Carlos Soto…the doctor, the soldier, the hero loved…her…

And just like that, all the horror, all the pain, all the lies and heartbreak could no longer be held at bay. They rushed through her as surely and unstoppably as a stream filled to overflowing by spring rain. She burst into tears in an instant, her sobs wracking her body until she thought it was a wonder she didn’t snap in two. Oh, if only that was what she needed to tell him. If only it could be that simple.

“Shh, mi vida,” he crooned. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You’re turning all the dirt on your face back into mud.”

She couldn’t help herself. She reached across the aisle and threw her arms around his neck, pulling him close until they were both leaning over their armrests. “Oh, Carlos,” she whispered, choking. “Can you ever forgive me?” Her brain buzzed. Her skin crawled. And her chest felt like she’d sliced it open with a rusty shovel. And even though he was filthy, he still smelled good. Like healthy sweat, like clean jungle earth and big, wonderful man. She breathed deep through her tormented tears, knowing this was the last time she’d be this close to him.

“There’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t mean to get yourself kidnapped,” he said, completely misunderstanding her.

“No.” She pushed back. She wished her tears weren’t blurring her vision. She wanted to look at his handsome face and see him clearly one more time, one more time while he still loved her. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?” he asked, a little vertical line appearing between his brows.

She opened her mouth, but, try as she might, she couldn’t force the words out.

His scowl deepened. “Whatever it is,” he said, pushing back a few strands of muddy hair that’d fallen over her forehead, “you can tell me. You can tell me anything. I love you, ne?a.”

She closed her eyes against the burn of tears. “You shouldn’t,” she whispered over the whine of the engines, over the soft thunking sound of the wheels lowering in preparation for landing.

“What?” He raised his voice to be heard above the noise. “Why?”

She opened her eyes as the plane touched down with a hard bump. The jet’s engines screamed in reverse, the flaps straining against the atmosphere outside. And for a couple of seconds as the aircraft fought against its own momentum, she simply held his confused gaze, a hand braced against the seat in front of her. Then they slowed and turned off the tarmac, taxiing toward the hanger. And she finally spoke the truth she’d kept secret for eight long years. “Because I killed your sister…”





Chapter Twenty-four


Black Knights Inc. Headquarters

Chicago, Illinois

2 days later…

“Where’s this firecracker of a wife I’ve been hearin’ so much about, Boss?” Leo Anderson asked, stopping to rub a hand over the leather seat of one of the custom motorcycles parked against the shop’s soaring, brightly painted, three-story brick wall. He hummed his approval of its soft texture.

Lt. Leo Anderson and his team were on their way to their next assignment: something to do with a mounting brouhaha at an American embassy in Pakistan. But as Michael “Mad Dog” Wainwright had said upon their arrival outside the big wrought-iron gates that surrounded the old menthol cigarette factory and various outbuildings that made up BKI’s headquarters, “We had to come see with our own beady eyes what all this super-secret, private government defense firm fuss is about first.”

And so Steady, Dan, and Boss had been showing Leo and his Alpha platoon boys around the warehouse space for the last twenty minutes. After Boss—BKI’s founder, head honcho, and a former SEAL teammate to Leo and the guys—had set them back on their feet following a manly round of back-slapping bear hugs and obligatory jokes told at each other’s expense, that is. Both of the latter being pretty much par for the course between any group of men who had lived and fought together for years.