when she actually had a girlfriend she could confide in, Ava wasn’t even able to reach out to her for help.
She could only reach out to Justin.
As she’d stripped off her T-shirt and jeans, she realized she was shivering again.
She wasn’t going to fall apart, not when there was so much on the line.
She put the shorts on first, then pulled Justin’s T-shirt over her head, pausing for a minute to smell the combination of freshly laundered shirt that still contained a hint of the Justin she remembered, like fresh air and raw, uninhibited energy.
Justin was sitting in the chair across from the bed, waiting for her. “Don’t touch the windows or the door,” he warned. “They’re alarmed.”
“Okay,” she said, grateful at the moment that Justin was some kind of one-man army. Navy. Whatever.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty? I could run out and get you something…”
“No.” She shook her head, almost wishing Justin wasn’t treating her with such kid gloves.
“You should get some sleep, then.” He’d drawn the curtains tightly. She’d never have known the sun was just dawning.
“I’m a little too keyed up to sleep,” she admitted. “There’s so much I left behind, so much unfinished.”
“I heard you were engaged,” he said suddenly. “Will your fiancé be worried about you? Will he alert the police?”
“We’re taking a break,” she said, and Justin was silent for a second. “He’s not even in the country,” she added, because Justin still wasn’t saying anything.
“Oh. Okay.” He paused, then asked, “He’s a desk jockey, isn’t he?”
“Not everyone has the desire to be a big, bad Navy SEAL. But if you must know, he’s a commodities trader. He moved to Japan for a year and he wanted me to go with him.” He’d given her a ring after two months of dating, even though she’d protested. After five months of her duck-and-run routine, he’d gotten tired and taken the job. And she’d returned the ring.
“Okay.”
“Could you stop saying okay?”
“Why didn’t you go with him?” he asked instead, and suddenly she realized that okay was much, much better.
“Because I’m not following someone around the globe. I have my own life. Subject closed.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“I’d go back to okay, but that seems to annoy you,” he said. And he was smiling a bit, with that still-familiar look he always gave her—the look she hadn’t been able to forget, a cross between amusement and indulgence. It was the indulgence part she’d always counted on. The part he probably didn’t even know he was giving away.
It was nice to have at least something on him because truthfully he drove her crazy. This was treacherous territory. Heartbreaking.
Nine years should be long enough for anything to fade, but it had never been easy between them. And with both she and her brother in trouble, difficult was par for the course.
JUSTIN SWORE he could hear the wheels in Ava’s head spinning at full speed. She nibbled her bottom lip, and suddenly there it was—the serious look on her face tempered by the freckles on her nose and cheeks, and a gleam in her eye that meant she could never, ever be tamed.
He knew people would spend a lifetime trying anyway.
He never got why someone would want to restrain something so free and wild. Run it a bit, harness it, yes, he got that. He’d tried to help where Ava was concerned, do his part, until she’d started to resent him and he got tired of being the daddy and everything blew up in their teenage faces.
That would happen again if he didn’t start pulling it together and figuring out what to do next.
He refused to let it happen. Not this time. He didn’t want to head back to base with his tail between his legs and admit to his friends and SEAL teammates, like Hunt and Rev, the extent of his longing. Well, Cash knew already.
“How do you do this?” She’d begun to pace like a caged animal. “How do you just sit around and wait?”
“Normally, I’m on the offensive. In the field. I don’t babysit for a living,” he said quietly. “I know it’s frustrating. But right now, the best thing we can do is get you out of harm’s way and let Turk do his job.” He saw her eyes soften a bit at the mention of her brother.
“Do you think we’ll hear from Leo?” she asked.
“Probably not. It’s better that way.”
“But he’s got the DEA backing him, right?”
“Yes,” Justin said patiently, but he knew she wouldn’t trust what he said fully. She knew better. The world of undercover operations wasn’t always a play-by-the-rules type of situation, and the very fact that Turk had sent Justin in meant her brother could possibly be in way over his head.
She stared him down hard. “Do you ever go on missions where no one’s backing you? No ID, nothing?”
“You know I can’t answer that.”
“Yes, I know. Classified. You and Leo are all sorts of classified,” she muttered.
“Just like you and your current case,” he tried to refute, tried to bring it around to something she could understand.
“That’s different, and you know it,” she countered. “You can’t protect me forever.”
“Do you think I want to do this? Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life cleaning up after you?” He struggled to keep his voice tight, controlled. Stay rational.
“I stopped knowing what you wanted years ago. And I never asked you to clean up after me. That was always my father and Leo’s doing.”
“I never knew what you wanted,” he said, aware that he couldn’t hide the anger. “You never did either—that was a big part of the problem between us.”
“Us?” She laughed, a slightly hysterical sound. “There was never any us, Justin. That was the real problem.”
Her words hit him harder than he thought they would, harder than they should have. Maybe they’d never gotten together, but that hadn’t been from lack of want on his part. No, he’d had to tread lightly around Ava for many reasons—she was the sister of his best friend, she’d become one of his best friends…she hadn’t wanted to get serious with anyone who was considering a career more dangerous than sitting at a desk. She’d told him that, time and time again.
There was never any us, Justin.
No, there was no way he’d ever believe that. He might never have done anything about it, but that had been for her benefit, not his. He’d promised himself
