“Hey,” he says.
I swallow. “Hey.”
“Can we talk?”
I nod and step aside. Still, I want to drop to my knees in front of him but I let my thumb rub the smooth, warm wedding band on my left ring finger.
I belong tothatWilson brother now, not this one.
It’d be a lie to say I don’t still love Carter, though. Even this many years later.
How do you forget the first person you truly fell completely, madly in love with? It wasn’t Elsa, even though I thought it was, back then.
No, it was Carter, and all the little things. Him teaching me German phrases so he could talk to me when she ordered no English. Him consoling me and giving me what Elsa wouldn’t and couldn’t. Him being patient and opening his arms and bed to me when Elsa tortured me in the wake of his departure.
It was knowing he looked after me as best he could—as best as I’d let him—and how he kissed me that day when he left Elsa.
Defying her to take me from him.
My heart belonged to him then, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself, much less anyone else.
I close the door after him and he waits for me to lead him into the living room. “Did you want coffee or anything?”
“No, thanks. Jace here?”
“Yes, Si—yeah.”Dammit. Old habits die hard. “Did you want me to get him? I think he wanted to give us time to talk. If that’s what you want.” I also clip off thatSirstruggling to slip out.
He settles on one end of our large sectional sofa. “When we’re done, then. I would like to talk to you first.”
“Okay.” I sit in Jace’s usual place, at the far opposite end of the sofa from Carter. Normally, I’m stretched out on the couch with my head in Jace’s lap, or curled up on a cushion on the floor with my head resting against his legs. It depends on how my leg feels and what Jace wants me to do.
Right now, fresh in my mind is the smell of gun oil and desert sweat. The feel of my knees grinding in the dirt and Carter’s grunts as he quickly fucks my face.
The way his hands fist my hair.
The taste of him.
I realize for the first time I can now think of this man with a lower-caseh.
Unintended pain is no longer part of my life. Jace is my focus, my anchor, the glue holding me together. He gives me everything I want.
More importantly, he gives me everything Ineed, and things I didn’t even know I needed.
Carter still looks damned good, but where I used to see Carter’s ghost in Jace, now I realize I’m seeing Jace in Carter. His brown eyes hold silent, ancient depths of a lifetime left behind in the shadows. There’s a little grey brushed through his hair, especially around the temples, but thinking about the times I ran my fingers through it so long ago doesn’t have the power to knock me out at the knees any longer.
Taking a deep breath, I hold it for a moment before slowly blowing it out. “What brings you here today?”
He wastes no time. “The colonel, for one.”
I sit back, Jace’s warnings to me clear in my mind. I’m certain he’s standing close by and listening to this entire conversation.
“Why do you want to talk about that?”
“I want to know we’re safe.”
I can’t imagine Carter ever turning on us and wearing a wire or recording us. He’s too damned careful, too thorough to obtain evidence that would indict him, too.
And he wouldn’t turn on us. I know he wouldn’t.
