“You can’t let him get hurt, Shadow. He’s my world. You can’t let anything happen to him. I won’t survive it.”
Colson’s desperate plea is a reminder of why finding love is such a dangerous game. Colson loves Specter and my brother loves him back, and that increases the risk every time he walks out the door to do his job.
“No one is getting hurt,” Shadow says, more calmly than I would have guessed he could given Colson’s grip on him. “There’s strength in numbers, and we know what we’re dealing with this time. They have to pay for what they did, and they will.”
Shadow closes the distance between him and Colson, leaning in so far that Colson has to tilt his head back, but he doesn’t flinch. He’s a fighter.
“Your job is to be a source of strength for Specter, not to add to his worries. He cannot be effective if he’s worried.”
Colson’s hands fall from Shadow’s arms and he nods. “I-I understand. I’ll work on that.”
“Good. He’ll come back to you in one piece.”
“Thank you,” Colson whispers before turning and pressing his forehead to Specter’s shoulder. “I love you. I’ll be waiting.”
Specter lifts Colson’s face and presses a soft kiss to his lips. “Motivation to get back home.”
We walk out as a team, heading to the garage stall before separating into two groups. I join Specter, Whisper, and Carnage, while Shadow, Ghost, Nimble, and Phantom take a different car. Soon we’ll have Stealth back in the mix, and I really wonder if we can go back to the way things were. Well, not completely. That’s what led to this event in the first place.
Specter is seated next to me, his jaw so tense he looks like he might crack a tooth. I reach over and squeeze his knee. He closes his eyes and blows out a breath.
“Thanks, man.”
“Just a reminder that we’re here for you.”
“I know. It wasn’t even personal. They didn’t come after me specifically. They came after all of us.”
“But you have Colson now, so you’re worried.”
He shakes his head. “No. I’m not worried when I’m out here doing my thing. I’m worried about the effect this life will have on him long term. Look what happened with Bellamy. Am I being selfish by keeping him?”
“Do you have a choice anymore? Could you let him go?”
Specter swallows hard. “No.”
“Right then, so what are your other choices?”
“I don’t fucking know.”
“You have to know,ja?”
Specter nods. “I could help him. Help him understand how protected we are. That getting shot was an anomaly and it won’t happen again.”
I grab his hand, giving it a soft squeeze. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,bror. There are risks in this occupation, and we know what they are. Give him truths he can hold on to. Tell him the precautions we take, our history as a team. Don’t compare him to Bellamy. They couldn’t be more different. Your relationship is different too. We have no idea what Shadow talked about with him.”
Specter tilts his head back before he blows out another breath. “You’re right.”
Carnage turns around while Whisper navigates the roads. “What do you think it’ll be like when Stealth gets back?”
I shake my head without answering while Specter shifts in his seat. “Don’t fucking know,” he says. “I wasn’t close to him before it all happened.”
“None of us were,” Whisper grunts. “That’s part of the problem. We should’ve…” His words trail off as he shakes his head. “We should’ve noticed.”
“We can’t beat ourselves up,” I say. “He’d hate that. We have to do our best to treat him as normally as possible.”
“Shadow will set the tone,” Carnage says. “We’ll follow his lead.”
My stomach twists with unease. We followed his lead before and we almost lost a brother. I rarely question our leader’s directions, because he’s almost always right, but he wasn’t this time. I’m willing to push back if I have to.
