She shoves against me with more strength than a little thing like her should have, and I release her, catching sight of the ropes of old burns winding around my right forearm. Yeah. No wonder she’s terrified. Sometimes I forget. Just for a minute. Most people don’t see anything but a monster when they look at me. Hell, that’s all I see half the time.
The woman flees without another word, leaving behind the subtle scent of honeysuckle. With a shake of my head, I take a seat in the little waiting area the receptionist directed me to.
Wiping my hands on my jeans, I try to talk myself into leaving. After we got out…I only saw Dax once in the hospital. I couldn’t face him. Kept tabs on him through West and a couple of the other SEALs who went back with me to obliterate Hell for good, but every time I tried to pick up the phone…I’d see him in his cell. Hear him screaming. Imagine what he went through after I escaped.
“You can go back now, Mr. McCabe,” the receptionist says with a bright smile and a gesture towards the hallway. “All the way down the hall to the last office on the right.”
My heartbeat thuds in my ears. I don’t know why the hell I’m here. Except…Dax is in every one of my nightmares, and I need to find a way to exorcise those demons for good. Or stop fighting.
Conversations float around me from some of the other offices, and three guys gather around a break area, falling silent and giving me hard stares as I pass.
At Dax’s door, I pause with my fist raised, ready to knock. He’s standing at the window, his back to me, sunlight cutting a slash across the far corner of the office and hitting his shoulder and left arm.
“You never were very good at taking hints,” he says, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Say your peace and get out.”
Stepping inside, I close the door behind me. “I deserve that.”
“No shit.”
I’m not having this conversation with the man’s back, so I take two steps forward and reach for his arm. But Dax whirls around, grabs my hand, and twists, sending me to a knee. “You want to get your ass kicked? Happy to oblige.”
A hint of a southern accent colors his words, and I stare up at him in shock. Sweeping my other leg around, I catch him behind the ankles and send him to the ground with a loudoof.Once my hand’s free, I grab his arm again and haul him to his feet. “I’m not doing this with you, Dax. Not now, not ever.”
The door swings open with a loud bang, and a big, burly dude with a few strands of gray at his temples bursts in. “You okay, boss?”
“Fine. Ryker was just leaving, Ford.”
With a quick glance at Ford, I weigh the odds on taking him down. Fair. Not great. But if I run now, I’m not going to resolve a damn thing with the man I know better than anyone else in this world. “No. I’m not.” In my periphery, Ford takes a step closer, but I raise my hands in surrender. “I came here to apologize. Not fight. Five minutes. Give me five minutes, and you’ll never see me again.”
Dax rubs the back of his neck, eyes closed, and sighs.
“Please.” I’m close to begging, and the memories roughen my voice.
“Please. I’ve told you everything I know. I’m just a grunt. A mechanic. I follow orders. I was only on the chopper as a precaution,” Dax says as two men kick him and spit on him.
“Five minutes. Ford, shut the door.”
Once we’re alone again, I stare down at my best friend’s shoes. “I broke the only promise that mattered.”
“Yeah. You did. You deserted me.”
Despite knowing he’s right, I flinch at the words. “If I’d stuck to the plan, maybe…”
“If you’d stuck to the plan, maybe I’d know what my own fucking office looks like.” He takes off his tinted glasses and throws them down on the desk. “Maybe those bastards wouldn’t have held me down and blinded me with acid. Maybe you wouldn’t be so much of a coward that you can’t even look me in the eyes.”
I draw in a sharp breath, because…how the hell does he know?
“I can hear the echo of your voice off the floor, dumbass.”
Raising my head, I blow out a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, the movement highlighting the muscle he’s put on in the past six years. His hair’s longer. The black strands are tousled, partially covering the long, narrow scar across his forehead. “Why did you come? Why now?”
“Something happened.”
“A lot of things happened. Lucy couldn’t handle being married to a blind, scarred, ex-soldier suffering from PTSD and bolted. I lost my house, my in-laws, half my civvie friends… And the one person on earth who knew the shit I was going through wouldn’t return my calls.”
I wince and rub my hand over my scalp. My hair never grew back right after we got out of Hell, and I feel the half-dozen divots where our captors slammed my head into the edge of a table over and over again. “I had my own demons.”
