One to Save (One to Hold 6)

“I seem to recall you like the way I wake you.”

He’s out the door before I can make another quip. It’s probably for the best. He’s right, after all. I do love the way he wakes me, especially when he starts with slow, lingering kisses below my waist.

Warmth curls my toes and I sigh. “Oh, Derek. What are you hiding now?”

Chapter 2: Threats

Derek

I’m not hungry. Maneuvering my black Audi through the empty streets of Princeton, I pass under traffic lights blinking yellow, block after block, taking me further away from what I have to do. I’ve never run from a problem, but the reasons driving me on are inescapable.

They’re a woman who smells like roses mixed with the ocean, who fulfills me in a way nothing else does, and a little boy with round, sapphire eyes just like hers. My fiancée. My son. The second-chance I thought I’d never have that dropped in my lap one week in the desert. The future I could lose just as fast.

Gripping the steering wheel, images trickle from the corners of my brain—a dark conference room, Patrick and me cramped in the adjacent tech booth, fighting with all my strength. On the other side of the glass is our target. He’s holding a woman—our bait—by the throat, strangling the life out of her while he hisses his poison in her face.

Star’s cheeks go from red to purple as he grips her, and the sound of her sniffs, her nose running as her life is twisted from her body, is a noise that still ignites an explosion of rage in my chest. He touched Melissa that way...

The necklace was the final nail in his coffin. When that fucker pulled it out, holding it for all of us to see, I knew I didn’t have a choice. He’d been in her cottage and taken it from her somehow. She didn’t even know he’d done it.

I’m at the Alexander-Knight building. I don’t remember driving here, but I park the car near the front entrance and kill the engine. That night is like a dream. With one word, Sangria, Patrick released me. The shock and recognition barely registered on Sloan’s sick face before I had him in my hands.

Closing my eyes, I can still feel his wretched skull against my palms. No hesitation. Immediate action. The satisfying Crack! of his fucking neck as I twisted it echoes in my brain. In one motion, I ended his threat to my family forever, then I stood over his dead body and smiled, the warmth of satisfaction flooding my veins like hot liquid.

I have to tell her. I have to do it before the wedding. It’s not like she loved the guy. It’s not like she probably didn’t wish him dead. It’s not like he didn’t beat her, leave her with that scar at her hairline... My jaw clenches so hard at the memory of the photograph she showed me. Her beautiful blue eyes rimmed in ugly purple bruises, the jagged cut extending into her scalp, gaping open like a blood-red mouth. A tiny silver line is all that’s left to remind us what he did to her, yet the memory of him hurting her that way... I’ve never felt such consuming wrath.

I’m breathing too fast. I need to get out and think. I need to calm down and clear my head. I walk under the security lamps to the obelisk fountain in the center of our courtyard. It’s cool out, but not frigid. Spring is breaking all over, and the fresh scent of new growth fills the air.

Dropping onto a nearby bench, I lean forward and jam my hands in the sides of my hair. I know why this is so hard. Lowering them, I study my palms. With malice aforethought, I placed my palms on the sides of Sloan Reynolds’s head and murdered him. It wasn’t wartime. He wasn’t an enemy combatant. He wasn’t even coming at me with a weapon.

I charged out of that tech booth with one thing on my mind, and I walked straight up to him and snapped his neck like a twig. Then I stood over him and allowed the sick satisfaction of what I’d done to wash over me like some fucking psychopath. I reveled in that revenge. I drank it in like the finest Scotch.

How can I tell her that? It’s a side of me Melissa has never seen. It’s a dark and brutal part I’m not sure she could love. It’s useful in combat, but it doesn’t make me proud. Clearly, I can’t even control it.

Patrick, Toni... or Star, and I have never talked about it directly. None of us has ever named what I did. We only reference it sideways. It’s our secret. The variable we didn’t plan for. The thing we’re all so ready to sweep under the rug and forget.

Patrick’s position is to walk away. He and Star both say it was justice, and telling Melissa will only make her blame herself. For a little while it worked. I’d believed my only reason for keeping it from her was to protect her from somehow adopting the blame for my actions.

Time has pulled the curtain back on that half-truth. Protecting Melissa is only part of why I can’t tell her. The other part is much more basic, more black and white. In one moment of authoritarian rage, I turned my back on everything I believed, everything I dedicated my life to defend. I sank all the way to his level that night. I became the monster I killed.

With a growl, I clench my fists, and I know with painful certainty Melissa won’t understand. How could she? Over and over she begged me to put it behind us. She wanted to move on and be stronger than her past, and now I’ve chained us to it forever.

No statute of limitations applies to what I’ve done. I didn’t simply take the law into my own hands, I put our family in jeopardy. I’m a felon, a murderer. No matter how many years go by, how far we get from that night, how old we are or how much she might need me, if I’m ever discovered, I’ll go to prison. Depending on the circumstances, I could get the death penalty.

“Fuck.” Pushing against my thighs, I stand, staring out across the courtyard. “He deserved it,” I try, but the words ring hollow.

Who the fuck am I to decide what anyone deserves? When did I buy into vigilante justice? I’m a Marine. I took an oath. I trained as a cop. Everything I’ve ever done has been to uphold the laws of this country. I put my life on the line over and over to defend our way of life, yet in one moment, I turned my back on all of it.

I’m no anarchist. I’m an American hero. At least, I was.

“Melissa... Melissa.” Closing my eyes, I say her name like a prayer for forgiveness. Will she forgive me? Will she understand?

I killed a man in cold blood with the very hands I use to touch her... with the same hands I use to hold our son.

“God dammit!” My shout echoes off the concrete walls, and I know what has to happen. I have to look what I’ve done in the face. She has to know the truth and decide if she’s willing to live this life with me. If she can marry me knowing what’s hanging over our heads.

If she wants me to turn myself in, I will. If she can’t love me anymore... Shit. I can’t even think that.

Either way, I have to say it out loud to the one person who makes everything real, and I have to do it soon.