Fractured Sky (Tattered & Torn #5)(103)

You would think that nothing bad could happen here, but you would be wrong.

“Holt?”

I jerked my focus back to my second-in-command, my brother in all the ways that mattered. “You know I didn’t leave because of Castille.” I could’ve lived with the guilt eating me alive. I was no stranger to that. “My family needs me.” And it was time for me to suck it up and be here.

“How’s the old man doing?” Jack asked.

“Nash said he’s grumpy as hell and driving my mom up the wall.”

Jack chuckled. “Doesn’t surprise me. He doesn’t strike me as the type to sit still for long.”

My dad had come to train my security team in search and rescue a few years ago and had left an impression on just about everyone. “No, sitting still is not his forte.”

The sound of a chair squeaking came across the line, and I pictured Jack in his office in Portland, staring out over the Hawthorne Bridge. “Have you seen her yet?”

A phantom fist gave my heart a vicious squeeze. “Who?”

Jack sighed. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe the girl you won’t shut up about every time you drink a little too much whiskey.”

I let a slew of silent curses fly. Overindulging didn’t happen often, but it was unavoidable at times. Anniversaries—the good and the bad. Birthdays—hers and mine. The time Grae had thought she was helping by telling me all about the amazing guy Wren was dating.

Just thinking her name lit a fire in my gut. The burn was a mixture of good and bad. Desire and destruction. Love and a soul-shredding guilt.

Jack kept pushing, not sensing the war playing out in my head. “Let me know when you have your run-in. I have a feeling it will be interesting.”

“We aren’t teenaged girls. I’m not feeding you gossip.”

“I’ll call Nash then. He’ll keep me in the loop.”

A curse slipped free, and Jack chuckled. I’d regret introducing my walking trouble of a younger brother to Jack for the rest of my days. “Piss off. And don’t sink my company while I’m gone.”

“Will do, Sarge. Let me know how long you’re thinking once you’re settled.”

“You got it.” I hadn’t given the team a timeframe for my absence. Simply told them I needed indefinite leave. I had to get the lay of the land here. See how my family was.

If I were honest, the call about Dad’s heart attack three months ago had scared the hell out of me. I’d met them at the hospital in Seattle where they’d airlifted him. My mom’s pale face, flashed in my mind, so ashen it was almost translucent.

It had been a hell of a wake-up call. I was missing out on my family’s lives, and I didn’t know how long I’d have them. And all because I’d let my demons rule my life for far too long. I knew better than anyone that second chances rarely came around.

I was about to end the call when Jack spoke again.

“If you get a shot, take it.”

My gaze bored into the road in front of me and the forest that leapt up around it with pines so tall I had to look through my sunroof to see their tops. “You telling me to take a hit out on someone while I’m here?”

I’d thought the quip would make my ex-sniper friend laugh, but only silence greeted me.

“Don’t leave things left unsaid. Even if you’re scared as hell to say them.”

The muscles in the back of my neck tightened, knitting themselves into intricate knots. “It isn’t words she needs from me.” It was atonement. But I couldn’t give Wren anything that would heal the wounds I’d caused for not being there during the one moment she’d needed me the most.

“That’s bullshit. A damn cop-out if I’ve ever heard one.”

“You don’t know,” I growled. No one did—to hold the girl you loved more than anything as the life bled from her body.

“Maybe I don’t. At least not exactly what happened. But I do know what it’s like to have regrets. To live with ghosts. I don’t want that for you.”

A little of the pissed off seeped out of me at that. “I hear you.” It was all I could give Jack. I sure as hell couldn’t give him a promise to make things right because that was impossible.

“All right, man. You know I’m here if you need me. Call anytime. And if shit gets bad, I’ll take our chopper.”

That was friendship. The kind born of battle and bloodshed. Of being in hellish situations with only the other to get you out. We had each other’s backs. Always.

“Thanks. Tell the team not to blow anything up while I’m gone.”

Jack chuckled. “You never want us to have any fun.”

I shook my head and ended the call.

I’d made it to the center of town during the phone call. Just a couple of blocks left. But they were brutal ones. Wildfire Pizza, where I’d taken Wren on our first date. Cones, where she and Grae always begged me to stop on the way home from school.

But the damned dock was the worst. I swore I could still taste the hint of mint from the lip balm Wren always wore. Feel the hesitant press of her mouth to mine. See how she looked up at me with so much trust.

And I’d destroyed it all.





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WREN