Luscious (Topped #1)(47)

Sarah. Her name was Sarah.

She stepped back, her face pale. Her eyes wouldn’t quite meet his. “You wouldn’t answer me. After Ronnie died, my foster mom went a little crazy. She didn’t believe the reports on his death. She said Ronnie would never have taken off his helmet or his body armor. He wouldn’t have not been wearing it.”

No. They were right about that. Ronnie had religiously worn his body armor and his helmet when they were in the field. He’d been wearing it when the Humvee had exploded and the world had gone to shit. It was only after the firefight that they’d been left alone with the sun. Ronnie hadn’t been the only one who struggled to survive the intense heat. He could almost feel it now.

He could definitely feel the same hollowness he’d felt that day. He’d looked down and realized he couldn’t save himself. He’d been pinned down by the Humvee, his right leg caught. He’d known even if he’d managed to lift the heavy piece off of him, he’d bleed out. The medic had taken one look at him and put his hands up in defeat. The only thing stopping the bleed was the damn metal deep in his thigh.

The whole day was chaos. A few moments after proclaiming Macon would have to wait, the medic—an older man named Johnson—had been shot right through the forehead.

Macon had lain near Johnson’s dead body for nearly three days.

He looked at Allyson with new eyes. She’d done a lot for the truth. “I should have answered your calls.”

“Macon, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

He calmed. There would be time for anger later, but right now all he could manage was a cold resignation. She’d likely thought he’d left her no other recourse. “I wasn’t sure what to tell you.”

“I know you weren’t involved,” she said quickly. “At the time, we didn’t understand the reports and my mom was so sick. She was my foster mom, but I called her Mom. She and Ronnie were my family.”

And she was loyal to them. It was a good thing to be. He couldn’t compete with her family. “You’re wrong, unfortunately. I’m the reason he’s dead.”

“You are not, Macon,” his brother said fiercely.

Macon kind of wished his brother wasn’t here to witness this new humiliation, but he deserved it. He’d been a shit to his brother most of his life. He’d chosen the wrong people to believe in. He still did since he’d really believed he had a chance with Ally. Elise had only cared about his father’s money. No woman had ever loved him for who he was.

Who was he, anyway? The serious soldier or the pastry chef? The man who’d thrown his brother under the bus because his wife wanted him to or the man who would stand by his brother no matter what?

He wanted to be the man Ally had fallen for. The trouble was Ally didn’t exist. The very least he could give her was the truth. She would know what kind of man he was then and she could be satisfied.

“We were out on an assignment. I don’t even know everything we were supposed to do. We were going to be told when we got where we were going. We were soldiers. We followed orders. Even as an officer, I was trained to follow the orders of my superiors. They wanted it quiet, I would be quiet. We were meeting someone in a small village outside the desert but to get there we had to go through Taliban territory, hence the quiet. We were a small team. They thought smaller was better. I suspect we were picking up a CIA operative, but I can’t be sure.”

“Macon, you don’t have to,” Ally said.

He felt his eyes harden. She was still playing games with him. “Oh, I think I do. I don’t want you to have wasted your time.”

She shook her head, tears streaming. “Please, Macon.”

“Let him get it out, Ally.” Adam was quiet, as though he knew how close to the edge Macon was. “He needs to tell this story. You haven’t told it to anyone, right?”

“Not even Kai.”

“Then don’t,” Ally said through her tears.

He turned to her. “You came here for this story. You f*cked me to get this story. Oh, sweetheart, you’re going to get the truth.”

“Macon, maybe we should call Kai. We could go to his place and talk about this as a family.” Adam seemed awfully reasonable now.

“She’s not my family.” And she never would be. “I’m going to give her the information she needs and then we can be done.”

“I don’t want that,” Ally said, pleading.

“I don’t want to have been lied to for weeks. I guess we can’t always get what we want. You want to know what happened to your brother? Shit happened. It happened to all of us. We were deep in the desert when we realized we had a low tire. Rowe and I got out and patched it. The driver liked to play pranks. Asshole kid. He pulled away when we tried to get back in. It was a joke. I believe I threatened to kill the little f*cker if he did it again. Which he did. That was when he hit an IED. Blew the f*ck out of us. I got caught under a heavy piece of the vehicle. I was pinned down. A couple of us were. That’s when they showed up. Taliban. They started to pick us off. The stupid piece that took my leg provided cover for me. Same for Rowe. He was pinned down next to me, but it was both his legs. At some point they decided to come and do some up-close fighting. There were only three of them. Two of them were kids. I killed a kid. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. I shot him in the back before he could take out Kellison. Didn’t matter. The other kid got him. Rowe and I took out the other two despite the fact that we couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. We could still shoot.”