Eyes.
The smell of sulfur fills my nostrils, and smoke sears my lungs. The heavy weight of the rifle in my hands is like second nature to me. I could carry it in my sleep. During training, I probably did.
But it’s the eyes that chill me to the bone in the middle of this hot desert.
I don’t know how the intel had gone so bad. I know it happens, but not like this. One minute, the mission was going to plan, and the next, the world exploded. Spurts of gunfire can be heard all around me, but it’s the screams that ring in my ears.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I hear Adams scream through the comms in my ear. “They’re dead. They’re all dead.”
And he’s right. They’re all dead. Every last one of them. I was helpless to prevent this, yet still I feel like I should have. It’s as bad as if their blood was directly on my hands.
I make my way through the village we’ve been watching, my heart in my throat. Buildings, homes, the carts in the market, they’re all gone, burned out shells of what they were before. And bodies crumpled where they fell. Men, women, children—death does not discriminate. Their eyes vacant after life left them.
If eyes are the windows to the soul, then this is a portal to hell as I look at the faces of each person who should not have died. A child we gave a candy bar to yesterday, an old lady who offered coffee in the market, and a beautiful young woman whose belly was swollen with a baby.
Her dark eyes watch me, haunt me, as she sees me and nothing at all. And then they change to the brown of Ashley Horner’s, her belly cut open and her child just gone. I was helpless to stop her death too. I didn’t know her, and she still died.
The smoke burns my throat as I turn to the left and see Emma’s blonde-and-pink hair, her blue eyes open and watching me, her beautiful body mutilated because I was in her life.
“No!” I shout.
But the eyes of the dead scream that this is all my fault.
“Lee!” someone shouts. I don’t know who it could be. It sounds like my girl, but I know it’s not, because she’s dead and it’s all my fault. It’s all my fucking fault.
I should have trusted my gut not to trust the intel. Jake said time and time again that it didn’t feel right. Something was off. Rick, Wes, and I all agreed. It was off. But still. I should have known. It’s my fucking job to know this village was harboring a terrorist, that they weren’t safe, even the women and children.
I should have protected them. It was my job to protect them.
And now they’re all dead.
“Lee, baby, come back to me,” someone says as my body is forcefully shaken, and a small hand grips my shoulder hard.
My eyes blink open, and I stare into the concerned blue eyes of Emma. Not dead. She’s not dead. She’s alive and well…. Well, seeing as she’s currently in a hospital bed, that is a relative assessment.
Fuck.
I had another nightmare, and they’re getting worse.
I blink again and sit up. It takes me a second to get my bearings and realize where I am. I’m in a hospital room, but it’s not my room; it’s Emma’s.
And then it all comes rushing back to me.
We were in my office at the station, and she was talking to me. Wes and Claire were there as a buffer, because they had known what was about to go down. They knew. Emma knew. I did not know, and what I did not know was that she lied to me about the baby she carried. When I found out she was pregnant a few weeks after she had broken it off with me—again—only this time without a reason, I had asked her point blank if the baby she carried was mine, and she lied to my face. And then she compounded that lie by lying to my face about it every day for the last seven months. And like a fucking idiot, I believed every word out of her mouth.
Even after I busted my ass to make her mine again, this time for keeps, she still lied. Until yesterday, when she came clean and I lost my mind, because it fucking burns to know she would do that, knowing how I felt about her all along.
And then she collapsed, and my whole world ended. Because even if it burned like nothing else, even if she cut me like no one ever had, she was still mine, and that baby in her belly is still mine. I’m still in love with her, because she is it for me, and it was my job to protect them. But I did not do that, and it fucking burns to know that. In a way, I know it will always burn deep in me.
“Hey,” she whispers.
“Hey,” I whisper back.
“You came back to me,” she says in a way that I know she means more than just I left the dream world for her, but that some seriously heavy shit went down between us and I am still here with her. So I answer her the only way I can—truthfully.
“Always.”
She closes her eyes, taking them away from me as she angles her face to her lap, but not before I see the tears welling in them.
“Baby,” I murmur. I keep my voice soft and gentle. It’s a shit thing we have to get through, but I don’t ever want to hurt her again. Never again.
“I’m so sorry.” She sniffles.
“Baby, eyes.” I need to see her eyes, and I need her to see mine, to see this is real and it’s happening, but we have to put this hurt behind us first.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” she cries.
“Emma, honey,” I say a little firmer. “Give me your eyes.”
She looks at me instantly. And when she does, I see the tears she’s shed for me dripping down her pink cheeks, and that is one more cut that scores across my heart where Emma Parker is concerned.
“Baby, don’t cry for me,” I say softly as I press my palms to the sides of her gorgeous face and use my thumbs to wipe away her tears, but they’re falling faster than I can sweep them off.
“I can’t help it,” she says as more fall.
“I guess I’m just going to have to find a way to stop the tears and make you smile,” I tell her just before I press my lips to hers. I kiss her tears away, and it is deep and wet and hungry.
Someone clears their throat behind me, and I pull back, but I don’t let her go. Her face is bright red in her embarrassment at getting caught making out like a couple of teenagers, but it just makes me grin at her. She’s mine, and I don’t give one fuck who knows it. Emma takes one look at my shit-eating grin and rolls her eyes at me before I look over my shoulder to see her doctor stepping into the room.
“While I do advise you keep my patient happy—” He smirks. “—I don’t think you should make her too happy for about three to four days… if you catch my drift.”
“No orgasms,” I reply. “Got it, Doc. Anything else?”
“Kill me now,” Emma mutters under her breath, but it’s loud enough for me to hear it, and I throw my head back and laugh. I do it knowing that for the first time in a long time, my soul feels lighter.
“I wouldn’t say no orgasms,” he says. “Sexual activity should be all right as long as it’s not too… rigorous.”
“Sounds good, Doc.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her.
“Kill. Me.”
“No can do, gorgeous,” I say, winking at her. Emma just sighs.
“Here are your follow-up instructions,” the doctor says, handing me a neatly stapled stack of papers. “If you have any questions, feel free to call me, and definitely follow up with your OBGYN, but otherwise, I see no reason why you can’t go home.”
Home.
I didn’t get it before, but now, I do. Home is wherever Emma is. I’ll follow her anywhere, and I will die before I let her be hurt again.
“The nurse should be in shortly,” he says. He turns back just before he leaves the room to look at us, where I’m holding Emma’s hand tight in mine. And he says something so softly I almost don’t hear him, but I do, and I know Emma does to by the hitch in her breath. “Take care of each other.”
“Will do, Doc.”
I carefully peel back the covers and help Emma dress in the pair of my sweatpants and my favorite AC/DC tee that’s a million years old. I know for a fact Emma has been trying to steal it for a while now, and I keep taking it off her body and putting it back in the drawer. Of course, whenever I would have to divest her of my favorite tee, I would soften the blow by making love to her.
Now, all evidence suggests she shared her plight to steal my shirt with my sister, who aided and abetted her in her endeavors by packing it in a bag for Emma to wear home and by bringing no other options, including Emma’s own actual clothing.
I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face when I realize what Claire has done for my girl. Fuck me if it doesn’t make the scars seared into my chest feel a little lighter, knowing my family still has her back, because that means they also have mine.
And then the nurse comes in with a wheelchair, and I lift my girl in my arms like a bride and place her in the seat. When the nurse tries to take control of the chair, a rumble bubbles up from my chest, and she wisely steps back.
I loaded her up in my truck and then drive her home.
Home.
The place where I can take care of her. A place to be a safe haven, a shelter in the storm, one where we can raise our children and I can keep them secure.
Only I would find out later—much, much later—and much too late that it wasn’t.