I gasp, snapping my gaze in Koen’s direction. “I’ll have both of you know that I’m armed and dangerous now!”
Chase rolls closer. “Oh yeah?” He snatches the target paper away from me, whistling. “Stone cold killer, this one.”
“Do not mock me!” I squeal, snatching the paper back from him.
Koen busts out laughing, and both of us freeze in place as if we’ve seen a ghost.
“Her face,” he laughs, wiping tears from his eyes.
Chase looks at me, horrified. “What have you done to my friend?”
“Me?! I didn’t do anything. I think he’s finally cracked.”
“Oh,” Chase argues, “he cracked a long fucking time ago.”
Koen stops laughing, staring between us. “I don’t think I like you two being friends.”
Chase scoffs. “Well, too late. I’ve claimed her as my honorary bestie from henceforth. Besides, I think she’ll be far better company than you.”
“I saved your life,” Koen argues, all humor gone from his tone.
It takes us both a minute and a look shared between us to decide if he’s joking before Koen’s lips slip into a slick grin.
“You saved his life?” I ask him, but this takes the temperature between us down ten degrees, and all laughter and joking gets shoved aside.
Chase clears his throat. “He did.”
Koen sobers, turning and heading inside, and I know he’s going to need a minute to wrestle whatever demons just clawed their way to the surface and do so alone, so I remain on the lanai with Chase.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”
Chase sighs. “It’s alright. I’m shocked he said anything. Fuck, I’m shocked helaughed.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh.” My tone braids with sadness.
“It’s rare.”
“Has he always been this serious?”
Chase’s gaze drops from mine, drifting through the doors Koen left open in his wake. “No. He was the life of our unit, even though he was our commander.”
That news hits me dead center, and now my gaze follows Chase’s as if it’ll bring Koen striding back out the doors.
“That doesn’t shock me. He has this… authority,” I reply.
“He’s a shell of what he was before.”
The sadness in Chase’s tone has my heart bleeding for the man that I’ve come to love, despite how we began, despite the blood dripping from his hands.
Everyone needs that one person in life, their counterpart. And sometimes, those counterparts aren’t who we’d have sought out on our own, so fate has to step in and turn the wheel in the right direction and align the stars.
For me, that’s Koen.
Though I know if we make it through this and I stay with him, in his possession, he’ll never be able to love me back as I do him, and I have to decide if I can live like that.
“Come on, let’s get back inside before the bugs come out and eat us alive,” Chase says, his voice crackling with emotion.
“Yeah… bugs.”
