The Long Way Home (Corps Security #6)(48)
He stops talking and then he blows a long exhale. Somehow, I know in my gut that exhale tells me I should brace silently before he continues.
He tells me about the men he was enlisted with, the years they spent together before moving to Georgia. His whole demeanor changes as he tells me about his family. He continues as I learn about the people who he says he left behind when he took a bullet meant for someone else. The whole time he speaks, his voice is low, and sadness hangs on each syllable. I never in my wildest dreams would have guessed that the family he said was gone was gone because he made them believe he was dead.
“There’s more …” He pauses, and I start to think he won’t keep talking until he opens his mouth and shocks me stupid. “I … I have a son.”
My mind swirls as his confessions continue. I hurt for the pain he’s lived through. The tears burning behind my eyes begging to flow. Sadness for what this man has sacrificed and lived without.
“I have a son I didn’t know existed until a day ago. I have a son. A man now. I have a son who I don’t even know a thing about. A son my brother has raised. Only thing that doesn’t hurt is knowing how loved my boy has to be having my brother as his father. As much as that news has thrown me, knowing he has my brother is more comfort than you can imagine.”
“Honey,” I hiccup, blinking the tears from my eyes. “I don’t know where to start.”
“I don’t know where to start either.”
“You faked your death?”
He nods, not looking away and letting me see that he’s completely open to giving me all of him. There’s nothing holding him back, no walls built up or shadows hiding behind his eyes. His bright-blue eyes I still can’t get over.
My beautiful man needs me. No matter how shocked I am, he needs me.
“I know you think that you have to stay gone because of all this, but you have to know if there was even a small chance to have someone you love back, it’s taken. There isn’t an amount of time that could pass that I wouldn’t welcome my sister back. It sounds like they loved you, honey. Don’t you think they would want to know you’re alive?”
“Back then, Liv, the cases I was on put some unwanted attention on me and, in retrospect, them. The only way to keep them safe was to become a ghost.”
“And now? After all this time?”
He leans back, and I miss the heat of having him close to me. He takes a deep breath, studying me while he does.
“The men who I had gained a big spotlight from, they were part of an even bigger network. I couldn’t. Not for too many years. By the time I had made sure they were no longer able to hurt them, it had been damn near fifteen years. After that long? How do I walk back into that life, into the shoes of a man who they have spent over two decades mourning!”
“I guess by taking one step at a time.”
“Olivia, I have a grown-ass man son. What kind of fucked-up shit would he have to deal with because of me popping up in his life and saying surprise, not really dead after all?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go about it quite so dramatically. Maybe start with your brother and then … I guess then you just take one step at a time.”
“And if I go back and just bring more danger to their door?”
“And if you go back and just bring love and healing?”
“I’m not the man they knew anymore.”
“They likely aren’t the same people you left behind, either.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“This is your family, Zachariah Cooper.” He jerks when I use his real name, but I can tell it wasn’t because of something negative. I’m speaking to him … the real “Drew” I’ve seen this whole time, just didn’t understand what I was seeing glimpses of. I’m speaking to him, and he’s hearing me. “These are the people who made you who you are and then stayed with you from a distance while you made yourself all over again … alone, but never really when the memory of that kind of love is with you. I promise you, and I don’t need to know these people personally, a loved one would do anything to have someone they lost back. It doesn’t matter what the how’s are or what the whys may be. You take what they have to give and you let them heal while they heal you.”
“How are you not pissed I kept something this big from you?”
“You didn’t keep it from me because you were trying to hurt me. You don’t just wake up after all this time and spill to the woman you are with. The one you just really started something with. Trust comes with time, and I’m thankful that you feel like you can trust me enough now to share your pain with me. I’m not mad, honey. Gosh no. My heart hurts for what you have lost and lived without, but it doesn’t have to continue to cause you pain.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do.”
“That simple?”
I give him a small smile. His eyes watch my lips move.
“There’s more,” he tells me after holding my gaze for a couple of minutes. “You know I work for the government, but it’s more complicated than that. The reason they’re safe is because I made it so none of those men would ever touch them. That side of me? It changed me just as much as living as a dead man for all these years has. Please don’t ask me to explain the details of the job because I can’t, and it’s not to keep things from you; it’s to keep you safe from that world.”