Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (31 page)

Evan hadn’t shut the door, but he did so now. He’d been too knocked sideways by the sight of Katsu collapsed on the floor of a room that resembled what had once been his office. Now she was angry and hurt and so goddamn scared, and no one in the world, not even Command Force Alpha, had the right to see however this played out. He looked directly at the room’s fisheye camera and made a cutting motion across his throat.

Jayden or whoever the hell was at the helm wisely obeyed his silent command. The red dot at the base of the lens winked out.

They had privacy now. What he’d do with it was beyond Evan.

Christ, he was exhausted. Laurie’s coded lead had been exactly what Evan had hoped for—a starting place. From there it had been a matter of following breadcrumbs for twenty-eight hours. At the end of the line had been men who were now incredibly valuable property. Fletcher probably already had them talking—about Firebird, Evan hoped. They needed answers.

Because they were learning that Firebird was so much bigger than a crime family and a few smuggled weapons. It was a monster that had been growing in the dark for years. Command Force Alpha’s entire reason for being was to stop threats before they stepped out of line, but they’d failed on this account. Firebird had slid right under their radar, and Laurie had paid the ultimate price for what he’d learned.

Or he’d succumbed to the monster.

“I have something for you,” he said, trying to hold on to his calm. Yeah, it probably irked the shit out of her, if the state of his office was any indication. She wanted shouting and hurling. He wanted Katsu back. For good.

She shoved tear-matted hair out of her red-rimmed eyes. “You don’t have anything I could possibly want.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You don’t beg,” she said sharply. “Otherwise you’d have been begging me for years.”

Evan was still in the process of shrugging a bag off his shoulder. “Years?”

“Begging for my forgiveness. You don’t have any idea what you did to me, do you?” She sniffed and scowled at the same time. “No, you couldn’t, because I only pieced it all together about four hours ago.”

“Kat, I want to understand but I’m…” He carefully set the pack against the wall then sat heavily with his knees bent and his elbows draped across them. He wanted to collapse on the couch, but the movement would probably shock her out of her skin. “God, I’m tired.”

Her expression softened briefly. There she was. There was the woman he loved—because he did love her, in ways he never thought himself capable of adoring another person. He loved her so much that for the first time since he’d met Colonel Stafford, he wished his career had taken a different turn. Something more predictable. Something safer. Something that wouldn’t drive her mad every time he stepped out the front door.

That image was fierce enough to smash his heart like so much trash in a compactor. He saw her clearly, standing on the porch of his horse farm, her little body wrapped in his robe, her hair sleep-mussed from a night of hard, tender loving. And she was waving goodbye as he left.

How could he fight for her, when he knew the kind thing would be to keep that image from becoming reality?

He’d fight, because he’d fought for a lot messier, dirtier, gut-churning reasons. This was pure. His love for Katsu was the purest part of his life.

Evan had never needed anything so much.

But her expression had regained leather-like toughness. Whatever her concern when he’d admitted his fatigue was gone now.

“Fine,” he said. “Tell me. You want to unload, so unload.”

“I was eighteen and fresh from school. And boom. My dad dropped you like a nuke into my life. ‘Here,’” she said, mimicking the colonel with surprising skill. “‘Meet Evan Sommers. He’s a good guy. Lots of potential.’ What was I supposed to do against that? You had obviously impressed Dad, who’s a damn good judge of character—part of this whole fucking problem. And you looked like a
god
. I’d have jumped you the first time his back was turned, but you got to me first. I was glad. I look back on it now, and it’s so damn obvious. We had great sex.
Great
sex. Because you took charge. You were the big-bad soldier, and I was the ravished virgin. I loved every second. I’ve been looking for that ever since, and it makes my skin crawl to think I’m such a stereotype.”

“Then why are we fighting? That was years ago. We know what it means now.” He jabbed a finger at her. “You can’t deny how good it can be when we give ourselves over to it.”

“We’re fighting because that’s not where my particular fairy tale ends. Do you remember, about five weeks into our affair—you shoved me in a closet. Do you?”

Evan cringed. “We were at my hotel room. Your dad got back early from his trip to DC and stopped by. What else were we supposed to do?”

“We?”

“Okay, what was
I
supposed to do?”

“Do what you did at the hospital! Stand up to him and be a man! You managed in order to take command of CFA. You did it for them, telling him that you had everything under control.” She swallowed tightly, her words hushed. “I was scared, but I’ve never been prouder of you.”

“It was time,” he said simply, trying to process what her pride meant to him.

“But did you do the same when he read us the riot act about having a not-relationship? Did you hold my hand and meet him in the entryway of that crappy little airport hotel room? ‘Hi, Sir. We were just going out for breakfast. Care to join us?’ No. I sat among your boots and shoes, listening from inside a motherfucking
closet
.

“I convinced myself it was okay,” she continued, throwing the words at him. “Because it would’ve been really hard to look Dad in the eye and admit we were lovers. I would’ve done it, though. I was that proud of being with you, when you didn’t deserve it. You charge into danger all the time, but you were too much of a coward to take responsibility for your actions and tell your beloved colonel that you were banging his little girl.”

Evan’s jaw hurt because he clenched it so hard. He’d been convinced he could take anything she hurled his way, but he was wrong. “It wasn’t like that and you know it.”

“How the hell would I know that?”

“I walked away from you because I didn’t want…” He waved a hand around his demolished office, his sad home away from an even more pathetic home. “I didn’t want this for you.”

“I said it at the hospital and I’ll say it again. You never gave me a choice.” She snagged one of his crumpled T-shirts from the armrest of the couch and wiped her nose, then picked a clean spot and scrubbed her eyes. “I would’ve waited. Young and dumb and eighteen, I would’ve waited for you to come back from Spec Ops. What did I get instead? You rolled back into my dad’s life like just another one of his robots.”

“Watch it, Kat. We’re not fucking robots. Working for him is an honor.”

“So I’ve heard. But did you even say hello? No, you avoided every barbeque he put on. A dozen random people in his backyard, all of them members of the unit—I learned that eventually. And still…never you. It was on purpose too. I knew it after I missed one, when I was in the middle of spring finals. Dad offhandedly mentioned how nice it was to see that you’d finally taken him up on his invitation.”

The back of Evan’s neck heated. His cells couldn’t decide whether to be angry or ashamed. Angry was easier. “You stopped coming to them too.”

“I had every reason to. It was shitty enough to look around for someone who never showed his face. To know it was because you were
avoiding
me? Fuck that noise.” She stooped to grab the nearest magazine and pitched it across the room. “Now you say those six weeks meant something to you. A complete line of crap. How much would it have taken for you to ask me out one day and admit the truth? ‘Hey, Kat, it’s just not gonna work. You’re great, and we had a great time I won’t forget, but I’m a workaholic coward fuckwit who doesn’t deserve you.’ It wouldn’t have been a happy ending, but at least I would’ve had closure.”

“You’re not wrong about me,” he said, feeling wooden and ready to catch fire. “I’m a workaholic. When it comes to how I behaved after our affair, I was a coward. And I’m a fuckwit who doesn’t deserve you. That doesn’t mean I’m letting you go.”

“Ooh, the words of a Dom. And delivered so well. Nice touch.” She still stood against the far wall. The bullets he’d dodged that morning had a lot in common with how she looked at him now. “But you don’t get to run my life, not if I don’t give it to you to run. No way is that happening. I won’t go nuts, waiting like I have been, for the days when you’re back in my arms.” Her voice cracked. She looked away, burying her face in his T-shirt again.

Although he shook with an overload of exhaustion and emotion, Evan forced himself to move slowly and evenly, as if he were under strict light and noise discipline. As if his life depended on it. Part of his life definitely did.

He unzipped his bag, which sounded overly loud in the dense space of his office. “I got your laptop back. We’re still working on finding your files.”

After clearing a space on the small table in front of the couch, he set her MacBook in the center. He adjusted all four sides to align with the edges of the table. Then, without speaking, he began to make sense of the disaster Kat had wrought. Socks. Underwear. The rest of his clothes. He found the wastebasket under his desk and pulled out the liner. The strips of magazine paper were surprisingly sticky, until he realized he was sweating. He shed his combat jacket, checked the chambers of his weapons and flipped the safeties, and resumed his cleanup.

On occasion he glanced at Kat. She still hadn’t moved, but she watched him intently. Confusion marred her brow, as if she couldn’t understand what she saw.

“What?” he asked.

“I never… It doesn’t…” She shook her head again. She pushed away from the wall and found her bag. She retrieved a brush and began to unsnarl her thick hair. Over and over, she brushed the silky strands, speaking to him without looking at him. “I knew what I’d find when I went through your stuff. Perfection, of course. But I never imagined you on your knees picking up trash. It’s not…” She shook her head again, more furiously now. Her grip on the hairbrush was strong enough to turn her knuckles white. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go.”

Evan stilled. His heart stopped. “How’s it supposed to go, Katsu?”

“You’re not supposed to be on your knees.” She flipped the hairbrush over her shoulder, cussed a few dozen demerits worth and flopped on the couch. “But hey, your choice. Must be nice to have one.”

“You sound like a child when you talk like that.”

“Maybe because I was a child when I learned to live like this. Call it stunted emotional growth and move on. I hate choice. Hate it with a fucking passion, and you know why? All because of this. Because I learned to live without choice when I was practically an infant.” But her tone had softened, turned wary. She toed the edge of her MacBook, sending it mere inches out of alignment with the table. Then, as if she couldn’t stand it, she sat forward and put it back. “What does this mean?”

“The threat’s been dealt with.”

“The threat? Against Dad and me?”

“Yes.”

“So I can go home.”

Evan kept his eyes on the last scraps of paper. He finished the job before he answered. “Yes.”

“Back to my apartment and my job hunting and all that stuff you don’t have a say in?”

The tender skin at the back of his throat burned. “Yes.”

“No more tricks to keep me in line? Dom voice all used up?”

“You’ve made it clear that I’ve been dropping bombs in your life for some time now.” He stood, tied off the bin liner and sat beside her. Feeling more daring than he had that morning as Bokun assassins had nearly taken off his head when he’d been first through the door, Evan placed his hand on Kat’s knee. She flinched. “I wouldn’t use that against you because it’s always been voluntary, for both of us. Do me the courtesy. Don’t insult me by implying I’d use that part of our relationship to coerce you.”

“It’s not a relationship,” she said, cold and distant. Evan wasn’t even sure he could feel her knee beneath his palm. “Or so I heard.”

“I heard you say you love me.”

“And I heard the same from you.” She abruptly stood and picked up her laptop. “I’d like to go home now. Please get someone to drive me.”

“So that’s it?” Evan worked hard to control his hurt and frustration, but he was beyond that. He was too raw. “What if I said I’d give it up? What if I quit CFA and contented myself with loving you for the rest of our lives. The colonel would be my father-in-law, not my boss. Those horse paddocks wouldn’t be empty. My bed wouldn’t be empty. Kat, we could have a life I’ve never imagined.”

Genuine defeat clouded her eyes like a thunderstorm blotting out the sun. “You’ve never imagined it because you’ve never wanted it.”

“How do you know?”

“Because all of those pretty words were hypothetical. ‘What if…? What if…?’” She wiped away what seemed would be her last tear. “There’s no telling what I might’ve said had you meant it.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I think this place is going to start charging me rent soon.” Kat sat cross-legged on the end of her dad’s hospital bed. To climb up, she’d needed to struggle out of her boots and leave them on the floor, but it was totally worth being so close to him.