Twisted and Tied (Marshals 4)

“No, think about it. I want to do a job. We can stay like we are, investigators working for Kage, or we can both go to SOG. Either way, those jobs stop at the end of the day. If you’re in Custodial, does that stop?”

He was basically telling me what he thought I should do with my life. It was arrogant and hurtful and blind… but I knew it was coming from a place of loss. Ian had lost his father to divorce, his mother to death, had just made a huge choice to leave the Army, and now, if he didn’t have me—his husband—then what was left? So I had to reassure him while sticking to my guns at the same time.

“Of course it stops.”

“No, I don’t think so. I know you. You’re going to be thinking about the kids, about saving them, about fixing things for them all the time.”

“Ian—”

“I left the Army to be here with you, home with you, and be your partner at work. If we’re not partners anymore and I don’t get to see you because you’re going to be putting in ridiculous hours, then what was the point? Tell me what the point was.”

“The point was that we’re together, and you’re home and—”

His phone buzzed on the nightstand, and after a few beats of pained silence, he got up and walked around the bed to check it because we were required to. After reading the display, he picked it up and answered. “Morning, sir.”

I watched him listen, saw him furrow his brows as he slowly drew himself up, all the rippling apprehension that had drained away back in seconds, the strain easy to read on his scrunched-up features. In the past I would have thought he was about to be deployed, the call coming in to get his gear and head for the airport. But Ian had dropped his retirement packet, so he no longer went out on missions, just had to do his drills one weekend a month and two weeks’ AT in the summer. But the rigid stance I saw couldn’t be military, and so had to be something else.

“Yessir, we’ll be right there,” he said and then disconnected the call and turned to me.

“What?”

“This discussion isn’t over, but Kage wants us downtown now.”

I nodded.

He charged back around the bed, and I stood fast so that the second I could reach him, I reeled him into my arms. Wrapping him up tight, I pressed my face against his shoulder and simply inhaled, loving the fresh, clean detergent and fabric softener smell of his clothes, along with the trace of lime from the shampoo he used, and the vetiver and cedarwood from the skin balm he smoothed over his face every morning.

There was a truth here I needed to be smart about. Nothing was more important that Ian. I made him a promise the day we exchanged rings, and that was bigger than anything else. Remembering how it was when he was deployed, how I was, how lonely and untethered it made me, how I ached for him body and soul, made it even more obvious.

“I thought wherever I go, Miro goes. It was never a question.” Ian sighed, leaning his head on mine, holding me as fiercely as I was him. “I know that was an assumption, but—”

“No,” I insisted, even though I knew that in a way, he was right. It was an assumption, and truthfully, a wrong one. Because we didn’t have to do the same job to be together, and in that respect, he needed a reality check. We had completely different strengths, and what I was good at and what he was good at might not work on the same team. But there was one absolute, and I needed him to know. “I won’t sacrifice us for any job, Ian. I swear to you I won’t.”

“I don’t think that’s a promise you can keep,” he murmured before kissing my cheek and resting his forehead against mine so we were breathing the same air.

Taking the job or not had just become a much bigger decision than I ever imagined.

BY THE time we got downtown to the Federal building, I was stewing. It had occurred to me while Ian drove that, had he been with me when I got hurt, and had he seen Wen at the hospital and then gone to Cullen’s office with us, maybe he would have said something right then. And if he had spoken up when Kage was thinking about me in the director’s role, then perhaps Kage would have rethought his position, and none of this would have ever been an issue. Not that I didn’t want to help kids, not that this wasn’t the place for me, but maybe Ian could have stopped the whole cycle from starting.