Iris (Mike Bravo Ops 1)

“I love you, Brock Harlow. I never thought that would be possible, but we’re not the same men we were ten years ago. I’ve never believed that someone could be made for me, mainly because fate and destiny don’t mean shit when you’re in a war zone. I didn’t think it was possible to love someone as much as I crave forever with you.”

Saint’s eyes get watery, and I wish I could reach for him, but it hurts to move any part of my body.

“If I don’t come out of this—”

“You will.” Saint sounds like he was going for a growl, but it comes out as a sob. “You can’t leave me. You’re my rock, my light … you’re the reason I get up every morning.”

Okay, now my eyes are beginning to leak too. “When I get out of surgery, we need to talk about your dependency on my awesomeness. Just saying.”

Saint laughs. “You can talk about it all you want when you come back to me.”

“We need to take him now,” someone says.

“I’ll be here waiting,” Saint says.

And as he lets go of my hand, the coldness from his absence wraps around me. When they wheel me into surgery, the last thing I see before they push through those doors is Saint’s sparkling blue eyes.

Chapter Thirty

Saint

As they take Iris into surgery, my whole world crumbles.

I can’t do this. I need to be by his side. I need to see what’s happening. Without any indication of how it’s going, my brain only wants to tell me the worst.

I wait in the triage room, pacing back and forth.

It’s not a fully equipped hospital. It’s literally an airplane hangar. What if the lack of resources is the reason Iris doesn’t come back to me? We should’ve airlifted him out of here and flown him to, I don’t know … Doesn’t Europe have some of the top surgeons in the world? That’s only a couple of hours from here.

Time ticks by so slowly, the clock tells me it’s only been thirty minutes. It’s a lying liar who lies, because my heart has been beating in my throat for what feels like an entire day.

When Trav appears in the doorway, he has weary eyes and looks about as good as I feel.

“There’s no news yet,” I say.

No news is good news, right? It at least means he hasn’t died on the table, because then they’d come and tell me.

“Brock, listen,” Trav says, and my heart drops.

No, no, no, this can’t be happening. He can’t be dead.

“What do you know?” I croak.

He’s quick to shake his head and reassure me. “It’s not about Iris.”

“But … your tone. And my real name. And—”

“It’s your friend. The one we couldn’t locate.”

My friend? I don’t have any friends outside—wait. “Parsons?”

“When Atlas and the team went back in there … they found him.”

“His body?”

“No. He’s alive.”

“He’s what?” I exclaim and scare half the people in the room. I lower my voice. “He’s alive? How?”

“They’re bringing him in now. He’s dehydrated, malnourished, and not in good shape. But he’s alive. I thought you could do with some good news.”

I stumble, the back of my legs hitting the edge of a cot, and I plonk my ass down on the bed. “He … he’s alive?” I say again because it doesn’t make sense. “It’s been months.”

Trav steps aside.

Some medics bring in a lifeless and frail body and move him to the bed next to me.

“He’s sedated,” Trav says. “We think he was delusional by the time the guys found him. He kept blabbering about being an American soldier, like he thought we assumed he was Muharib.”

He’s been alive this whole time. While I’ve been getting my life back on track, he’s been stuck here in the desert.

“You can go sit with him,” Trav says. “I think you could both use someone to lean on.”

I stand on shaky legs and make my way over to him.

He’s unshaven, his face and neck have scars and scratches from fuck knows what, but for whatever reason, he’s held on all this time.

I don’t know whether to be happy for this mission, bitter at it, or maybe both. If we can bring Parsons home, that’s a miracle in itself. But will giving my friend his life back be worth losing my soul if Iris dies?

Farouk is dead. That was our mission, and we carried it out. And with finding Parsons, we’ve done more than we set out to do.

But without Iris, every achievement is empty.

Parsons wakes before Iris is out of surgery, and when he sees me, he lets out a loud “Fuck.”

I swallow my heartache and manage a sarcastic “Tanner Parsons, as I live and breathe.”

“I’m dead, aren’t I? It figures your ugly ass would be in my afterlife.”

“I missed you too, brother.”

“I must be in hell too. In heaven, I wouldn’t be in so much pain.”