Reeves: Copy. You staying long?
Me: As long as it takes.
Reeves: About damn time.
I ignored that last message and pocketed my phone.
Reeves knew about Betty. He was one of three people on the planet who knew the real reason I'd built Black Hawk Protection into what it was. Not for the money or the prestige, but because it gave me the resources to keep tabs on the one woman I'd never been able to forget.
He'd called me a lovesick idiot more than once. Told me to either go get her or let her go.
I couldn't do either.
I settled back onto the couch and let my head fall against the cushions, staring at the ceiling in the dark.
Ten years.
It had been ten years since I'd walked out of her life, and I could still remember every detail of that night like it had happened yesterday.
We'd been twenty-two. Young and stupid and so in love it hurt to breathe when she wasn't next to me. We'd been living together for two years by then, in a shitty studio apartment with a leaky faucet and a mattress on the floor, and I'd been happier than I'd ever been in my life.
Betty had that effect on people. On me.
She was fire and light and fierce, stubborn determination wrapped up in curves that made me lose my mind. She laughed with her whole body, argued with her whole heart, loved with an intensity that terrified me even as I craved it like oxygen.
I'd known from the first moment I saw her across a crowded bar where she was slinging drinks and giving some asshole customer hell for grabbing her wrist, that she was going to ruin me.
I'd been right.
And then I'd gotten the call.
Special operations. A classified unit that didn't officially exist, doing work that would never be acknowledged. The kind of job I'd been training for my entire military career.
The kind of job that got the people you loved killed.
I'd seen it happen. Watched a guy in my unit lose his wife because she'd asked the wrong question to the wrong person at a dinner party. Watched another guy's kid get snatched from a playground because someone wanted leverage. The men in these units didn't get to have normal lives. They didn't get to have families, girlfriends, anyone who could be used against them.
And Betty, my beautiful, fierce, stubborn Betty, would never have stayed quiet. She would never have stopped asking questions, demanding answers, refusing to be kept in the dark.
She would've gotten herself killed trying to find out what I was doing. Or worse. Someone would've used her to get to me.
So I'd made a choice.
I'd lied.
I told her I didn't love her anymore. That I needed to focus on my career. That she'd be better off without me.
I could still see her face when I'd said the words. The way the light had drained out of her eyes. The way she'd stood there in the doorway of our apartment, still in the oversized t-shirt she slept in, her bare feet on the cold floor, looking at me like I'd just put a bullet through her chest.
"Don't do this, Hudson. Please. We can figure it out."
But there was nothing to figure out. I'd already made my decision.
So I'd walked out. Closed the door behind me. And spent the next eight years in the darkest corners of the world, running missions that didn't exist, killing men whose names I'd never know, and telling myself that the hollow ache in my chest would eventually go away.
It never did.
I'd started keeping tabs on her almost immediately. At first, I told myself it was just to make sure she was okay. That she'dmoved on. That she was safe and happy and living the life she deserved.
