The Long Way Home (Corps Security #6)(47)

It takes one hell of a herculean effort to walk away from where he is, but my feet carry me to the kitchen anyway. I don’t bother with the lights, knowing right where his trash bags are and wanting to remove this mess he made before I wake him. It doesn’t take me too long to clean up all the evidence of his pain. The trash bag is full before I even realize it. I keep moving around the room, tidying as I go. I’m quiet but not silent, so when I hear him mumble my name, I drop what I was wiping the coffee table off with and shuffle on my knees the few steps toward him.

“Hey,” I whisper, reaching out to brush my fingers over his forehead to get the hair out of his face.

“You’re really here?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re really here.” He lets out a long, painfully heavy breath. I notice immediately how clear his voice is. There’s no way he had recently drank everything I cleaned from the room. He doesn’t sound the least bit intoxicated.

He does, however, sound broken, and that rips through my heart like a knife.

“Honey, what’s going on?”

“Found me.”

“Who found you?”

“I was careful. How did he find me?”

“Sweetheart, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

He turns his head, no longer talking to the empty space above him. His eyes haunted.

“I needed to stay dead.”

I gasp and feel the tears welling up. “Baby … you don’t mean that.”

He sits up, shifts his body so his elbows are resting on his knees, and drops his head down in his hands.

“Every one of them,” he whispers. “I died for them.”

“You aren’t dead, honey,” I exhale, feeling a desperation I hadn’t before crawling up my throat.

“Been a dead man for more than half my life.”

“You aren’t making any sense. I don’t understand what you’re saying, honey.”

“Fuck!”

I jump when his bellow rips through the quiet room—bringing his attention back to me. It’s too dark to read what’s on his face, though. Instead, I wait for him to talk again with my heart pounding in my chest.

“Didn’t think it was possible to find you, though.” He lifts his head, and I feel his gaze burn across my skin.

“Honey…”

“Gotta let me get this out, Liv.”

His words stop me. I don’t even take a breath, reaching out and pulling one of his hands into mine, kneeling in front of him.

And I wait. I wait, silently, so he knows that this is his time, and I’m listening.

“Don’t know where to start.”

“Drew,” I exhale.

“I know, sure as shit, I never want to hear that name out of your mouth again, though.”

I feel myself blush, embarrassed I had forgotten. “Coop, shoot, I’m sorry. It’s new for me and slipped my mind.”

He pulls his frame up and takes his hand from mine, reaching out to turn on the lamp behind my shoulder. When the warm light hits the darkness around us, it takes me a second to adjust. I blink a few times before I’m able to focus on him.

When I do, I gasp.

Gone are the eyes that I’ve grown to love over the past few months. I had questioned him before, but never had any confirmation from him about it. Well, I do now. His eyes are blue now. Completely different from the dark green I had seen every day for so long. Seeing such a vibrant color is a shock, but it’s the changes to his whole face that have me so stunned. They’re like a stormy sea in the clearest of waters. He doesn’t look away as I study him. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing, just waiting for me to get a good look.

“I was born Zachariah Cooper. There hasn’t been a single day since the one when I became Andrew Shaw that I haven’t wished I could be Zeke Cooper again. When I died, I knew that void would remain a giant hole inside me. They were my past, and a dead man can’t go backways, no matter how much I wanted to or missed the family that I left. I knew when I told you about my family, you believed them to be dead, but it was me who died to them.

“I had someone from that past visit me the other day,” he continues, rumbling softly, the words sounding painful. “He shouldn’t have been able to find me, but there he was, and it was like twenty-plus years hadn’t even passed. He stood right over there and, just like you, had more questions than I knew how to answer. One thing he did manage to do is remind me how much I’ve lost just by standing in my apartment. I have no business wanting them all back in my life, but that’s all I can think about.”

Not wanting him to stop, I keep my lips pressed together and bite the inside my cheek so I don’t get the urge to interrupt. My heart feels like it might rip through my chest with its frantic pounding.

“They all think I’m dead, Liv. I made sure of that. I turned my back on my family and let them mourn for a man who wasn’t really dead. Just living like he was from that day on. They moved on eventually, thank God. I heard from the person I had in town that they were all breathing easy, alive and well. I know I did what was right back then, but now? Now, I’m not even a little sure I did.” He holds my gaze, so much working behind those beautiful blue eyes. “When I was shot, I made it my life’s mission to wipe the earth clean of the scum that had threatened my family. I knew I had one choice and that was to let them think I was dead so I could ensure the threat that got me would never touch them. I just had to make sure I stayed a dead man, stayed in the shadows and hunted. All of the people responsible for that bullet I took—the bullet I took to stop it from hurting my family—they’re where they belong. Didn’t matter, though. They took that life from me, and I have been living like the dead man they all thought I was. It didn’t matter what I did, I had to live with the choice I made to keep them safe. Dead men don’t come back.”