The Long Way Home (Corps Security #6)(40)

“Reckless.”

“She makes me feel alive, brother,” I add, tone still hard and spitting nails, but of all the things I can tell him to make him understand what Olivia makes me feel, that’s it. That’s all he’ll ever understand. Because we’ve all been living and breathing as ghosts, not feeling a fucking thing since the day we became the men we are right now. “Not only does she make me feel alive, but that little girl gives me a sense of purpose that is more than just killing motherfuckers that make the world better when they are leaving this earth. I’ve lived feeling, seeing, tasting, nothing. Not a fucking thing. Look around you, Saint. I live in a box with no feeling. I’ve been existing, waiting for my real death. I’ve lost everything and never allowed myself to think that I could have more in this life. I was reckless and brought this to myself back then, but I’ll never make the mistake of being that way again. I left to protect those that I love. Do you not think that, by finding someone who made all of that seem like it was worth even more, that I shouldn’t hold the fuck on?”

Evan clears his throat and I move my eyes to him. He gets it. He’s always been the one preaching that we didn’t just leave our lives to protect those we love. He always swore there was a bigger picture to the sacrifices we made. He fucking gets it.

My eyes travel over to Hunt, seeing the normally unruffled man staring at me with so much written on his face, I don’t know how I missed it before. He holds himself with an air of detachment, but not because he’s unaffected … but because he wants this. He wants what I’m feeling with Olivia. He wants to feel alive again.

“No shit?” he asks while my attention is on him.

“Heart started beating again the night I asked her to call me Coop in bed.”

“You dumb fuck.”

I snap my eyes back to Saint, leveling him with the coldest of glares.

“You’re going to get us and everyone we left behind killed.”

“No, I’m not.”

“What do you think will happen the second she slips and calls you that when you aren’t in private? You know just as well as the rest of us, if the right person hears and sees your ugly mug, there will be no going back. And the second they start digging into you, they start looking into us. The only reason we’ve been successful in staying fucking dead is because we keep ourselves in the shadows without attachments!”

“You think I would be that reckless with you three? Let alone the people who I loved and left? LET ALONE with Olivia and Riley!” I roar the last part, feeling all of the rage and pent-up frustration I’ve felt since we started this conversation rushes to the surface.

“I think you got a taste of sweet pussy and can’t think straight.”

I’m around the island with his neck in my hand, his back against the wall, and my face breathing down on his. He matches me almost inch for inch, but I have him on build. He won’t get the best of me until I want him to move. So I hold his gaze, both of us with anger and frustration riding the surface of our skin like a cloak.

“I got a taste of fucking life again,” I level out in a deadly calm. “I got a taste of a future that made my heart come back online for it. I held that woman in my arms while she drooled on my chest, her girl on my other side with her little feet digging their way into my gut, and I felt like I had finally found the reason that I gave up everything. It, for the first time in my life, didn’t feel like I had sacrificed everything the day I left my home. It felt like I had been given a second chance, one that meant I did the right thing all those years ago when I let the people who meant the world to me believe I had died. It wasn’t for just them, it was because she was waiting for me. You tell me how that isn’t thinking straight?”

The heat in his eyes simmers and he just looks at me.

“That woman wouldn’t so much as blink if I asked her to do that in private only. You know damn well she’s a good woman. And if you would think about why you’re really acting like this, you know you would do the same thing if you found someone who gave you the gift of life after being a dead man for so long.”

I let him go and turn back to face the others. Both of them showing nothing but understanding in what I just shared.

“You ready to hear what I know about Ray now?”

“Dick,” Saint mumbles, fixing his sweatshirt. “You have to push me against the hard-ass wall?”

“You have to be a fucking asshole about something that you didn’t even take the time to ask about?”

He holds up his hands.

“Look, I’m sorry, but you can’t blame me for questioning this. You’ve shown no interest in any woman since we started this unit.”

“She isn’t just any woman. Not sure what else I can give you to make you realize that.”

“Man, you know we were told this was okay when they set us up here. Encouraged even,” Evan states to Saint.

“Said we would hide better with a family,” Hunt adds with a scoff.

“Yet none of you mother fuckers have a family and we’re hiding just fine.”

“Doesn’t mean we haven’t wanted one, brother,” Evan continues. “Just because you’re scared of finding more doesn’t mean we haven’t been waiting for the moment when we find someone worth living again for.”