The Perfect Wrong, page 32
Still, he’s more worried about me missing D-day than any distracting fuckery I’ve gotten myself into.
Delia was waking up as the call ended, that worry I hate brimming in her eyes.
I still want to fuck her. I always want to fuck this chick, through tragedy and triumph, morning, noon, and night. But I want her heart to stop galloping first, and I want to taste her lips on mine without any salty tears mixed in.
“Dammit,” she moans miserably, shaking her head for the thousandth time. “What if this was all a mistake? Chris, I have a bad feeling. What if Dad flips out over us? What if she talks him into pressing like criminal charges?”
My finger crosses her lips. I push down gently but firmly, right over the seam of her mouth.
“Quiet, babe. You’re working yourself into a frenzy. What-ifs are never worth it. As shitty as this is, I promise you it’ll blow over.”
“But—”
“Delia.”
“But Chris...”
Moving my finger aside, I kiss her deeply, only pulling away when I’m confident she’s done worrying herself sick.
“Fuck crisis mode. We’ll get through this, and I don’t want you telling me anything different unless you want to talk about what we’ll do when I’m home—or why the hell you still love me after I’ve put you through the grinder.”
Her mocha-brown eyes heat, warming the frostiness of her face.
She loosens the death grip on my neck, dragging her nails softly over my skin.
Even when we’re under the proverbial gun, every bit of me bristles.
Delia’s touch makes my blood sing.
And that beautiful, mad music of ours is still there, even with the entire world turning against us.
I can’t help it.
Pushing her face to mine, our lips collide with a hot, desperate hunger.
Every kiss is medicine, and I know she feels it too.
We need the reminder.
There’s nothing—goddamned nothing—that’ll ever come between us.
Not my junkie mother and her poison.
Not her spineless dad.
Not the bullets, the hostages, the fear, the certain hell I’ll be facing the minute Enguard sends us charging up Joaquin’s ass.
When she’s trembling, her whole body begging for breath, I break the kiss and lay my hands on both sides of her head.
I hold her face just like that, steadying, urging her to look at me and just be.
Be safe because you’re mine.
“You make it sound so easy,” she whispers. “I just need to know you’ll come home safe. I can’t handle this alone.”
“I will, woman. We’ll be out of this mess before you know it. Fucking count on it.” I kiss her again, these strange, crazy words boiling up from my gut. “I’m not drawing my last breath till you’re wearing my ring and we’ve got a couple kids in the family portrait.”
Her mouth trembles.
Her eyes crest with tears.
Only, this time there’s a smile behind her sadness, and that’s what I worship with my lips. I let her cry as we kiss for the better part of the next hour.
I never thought I’d ever be this happy making out like this, never even advancing to full-on horizontal heaven.
I think she believes me, too.
She’s had her faith in us restored, our future so sure—until there’s a fist banging at the door and gruff voices shouting.
“San Francisco PD! Open up!”
“Police!”
Shit.
It sure took them long enough.
We share one last long, agonizing look as I give her a parting kiss.
Then I take her soft hand in mine and we stand, walking together to face down one annoying bump in the road to ever after.
* * *
We say our last goodbyes through a window at the police station.
Delia walks past the room where they’re holding me first, a sour-looking Bruce a few steps ahead of her. First time I’ve seen her old man showing more emotion than a steamed turnip.
An hour later, I’m released to Sexton, who’s waiting outside in his old brown pickup. Guess it only took a call from the FBI agent working with Enguard to convince the boys with badges I’m too important to waste away in the drunk tank.
He drives me straight to the office and tells me he’s made arrangements to have my truck taken to a trusted chop-shop to fix the damage from crashing the gate.
It won’t be cheap, especially owing Bruce some damages on top of it.
Never thought I’d look forward to hazard pay.
“Tell me you’ve got it out of your system?” he asks once we’re in the meeting room, waiting for the rest of the team to go over logistics.
I look at him and shrug.
Sex grimaces with a sigh. “You know why I’m asking, Triton. If you want to think with your dick on your own time, that’s your business. If it risks tripping you up on the operation...”
He stops and stares at me.
“Sex, I’m solid. It’s one more reason to get this shit over with so I can come home.”
“And what, pray tell, are you coming home to?”
My mouth pulls open, but I can’t find the words.
I’m not sure why he’s so persistent. It’s not like him to crawl up anyone’s ass over something this personal, however dumb it seems.
“Exactly,” he whispers. “Here’s a nickel of free advice—switch off and forget her while you’re in Mexico. Forget about your mother and whatever other problems that’ll still be here staring you in the face when you get back. The stakes are too high to risk having your mind anywhere else.”
“Don’t know if I can,” I admit harshly.
His eyes soften. He looks like he’s about to launch into another fatherly lecture—the kind every man on this crew pretends we can’t stand while we’re actually soaking it in—but his phone goes off loudly in front of him.
He picks it up and must not know it’s on speaker.
“Papa, hi!” a tiny voice chirps over the line.
“Hey, munchkin. Ten bucks says you’re calling about that English homework, huh?”
I smile as that gentle twinkle in his eyes amplifies. He gets up quickly and rushes out of the room, already promising his granddaughter her weight in strawberry ice cream because he can’t be there to help her in person this week.
Sexton Jones never lets anybody see what a softie he is, and maybe that’s the point.
Deep down, I know he’s right.
I need to get Delia out of my head for the next few days, however impossible that seems.
Once this is over, we’ll have a whole lifetime to get our shit sorted.
* * *
The next forty-eight hours are a blur of briefings, restless nights on pull-out beds that are harder than I remember, and a whole lot of nervous jokes with my teammates.
Every man has his own way of bullshitting his nerves away, but as zero hour approaches with a plane waiting for us at a private airport less than an hour away...
It’s already pure torture.
I stow my phone away in my locker long before I need to so I’m not tempted to hit up my princess.
At the ass crack of dawn, we’re split into two teams and loaded on an unofficial cargo flight technically being run by the CIA.
The airspace over Cabo isn’t that far, only a couple hours away. The plane is dead silent with men visualizing the drop.
It’ll be my first airborne assault since Syria, aiming for the skinny strip of land where the compound juts out to sea, and hoping like hell the wind doesn’t blow in the wrong direction.
That’s where my mind should be, but it’s not.
Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit or I’ve seen too much, but I know it’s not that.
I can’t keep my mind off Delia, no matter how many knowing glances I get from the commander.
And even when he’s standing in front of the open hatch screaming, “Go, go, go!” with a lead weight strapped to my back, it’s her on my mind.
Not the dark churning waves and cutting cliffs I barely miss on the way down.
Not the first barking gunfire lighting up the night as the cartel realizes they’ve got company.
Not even the deadly whomp-whomp-whomp of their goddamned contraband military helicopter—an asset we missed in our intelligence.
It’s hovering in the air before I even hit the ground, spraying a cluster of men ahead of me with death. The way their screams choke off instantly tells me some of that hellfire found its mark.
Fuck!
Less than sixty seconds on the ground, and we’re already taking casualties.
The instant I can run, I do, leading my unit—or what’s left of them—toward the break in the outer barbed wire gate we were told about by local informants.
Thank God that part was right.
Everything else is already so FUBARed it makes me shudder, even as I dodge a sweeping searchlight and a new hail of gunfire.
Even as I aim my rifle at a makeshift guard tower and pop the asshole sniper inside.
Even as a few more of my men catch up with me, and I hear Sexton over the radio, roaring louder than the storm overhead.
“Forward, boys! Shake your tails, right over the wall. Do not get bogged down. They’ve got backup moving in fast, about eight miles out.”
Son of a fuck.
I motion to my men when we come to the massive concrete inner wall behind the hole in the fence. This is where we need a break while we climb over it.
I cover Gering and Batista while they deploy the ladder for the escalade. Then the first men are flying up over the top like pissed off army ants, two at a time.
The plan said to hang back, secure this sector, wait for Sexton and the last of our crew to catch up while the diversionary force on the other side drew them away.
But that goddamned cartel warbird complicates everything.
Explosions erupt behind us, a proper firefight between our stragglers and the helicopter spraying bullets. As much as I want to join in, this might be our only opening.
“Go! Up, up, over the top!” I bark into my radio, moving swiftly behind my guys who have already scrambled up the ladder.
On paper, it’s supposed to be as easy as it gets from here.
A few paces through a courtyard garden to a kitchen with large glass windows that aren’t reinforced.
An entry into the compound’s living quarters, where we can split off in two directions—one searching for anything underground and the rest for the bedrooms upstairs.
It’ll be guarded, no question, but once we’ve barged inside and they’re forced to fight us on even terms, it’s just a matter of time.
I’m praying with all my might that somebody blows that bird out of the sky and we don’t spill more blood.
There’s nothing between us as we hit the ground on the other side—definitely the courtyard, strewn with vegetable vines and flowers—and we beeline it toward the dark gaping window just a few paces away.
Batista groans as he hurls a stun grenade through the window, shattering it instantly.
I give the flash one second, and then—
It’s like the blinding flash is speaking. What the hell?
“Hold it! Drop your weapons. One wrong move and you die,” a man roars in a thick accent behind me.
I wheel around with my finger on the trigger.
I’m expecting a couple lightly armed guards, the usual half dazed cartel henchmen you’d expect to find skulking around the living spaces for security in the middle of the goddamned night.
Not an entire group of tall, dark men in heavy armor. They’re decked out in what looks like SWAT gear swiped from Mexican Federales.
Shit, shit, shit.
There must be at least a dozen of them, and the heavy footsteps behind them announce more piling in by the second. A resounding thud behind the wall tells me they’ve taken down the ladder on the other side.
Fuck, what else can go wrong?
“Comprehende? I said guns down! Drop them!” the leader yells again.
I see Gering’s chest heaving, his back bowed like a drawn arrow, too ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
Except if we do that, it’s three on twenty and certain death.
I fucking hate that I have to be the one to make the first move.
Locking eyes with the man in charge, I slowly, carefully wrestle my rifle to the ground and put my hands behind my back.
My other men follow my lead, thank fuck.
I want to believe it’s a temporary setback.
One bad misstep in a battle we’re bound to win, but why the fuck is it so silent?
I smell thick smoke in the distance, a roaring fire over the wall that tells me their chopper must be down.
Just too fucking late.
“Do not move,” the henchman snaps again, keeping his gun trained on me.
“Asshole, we won’t,” I throw back. “You want to get this over with or what?”
For a grim second, he just stares at me.
This isn’t new. I’ve been taken prisoner before, and I’ve never been afraid.
Now, though, there’s a reason my blood ices over.
Now, I have Delia, and it guts me with a rusty knife to imagine her grief, her pain, her heartbreak if I let these devil fucks put me in the ground.
A few gunshots start up again in the distance.
A man screams. No telling which side he’s on.
“Well? We surrender!” I bellow again, wondering why he’s taking his sweet fucking time. “Are you just gonna stand there jacking off all night, or are you gonna—”
I never get to finish that sentence.
They’re swarming us, all two dozen men at once, darting in like stinging hornets on a warpath.
Even the pile of Kevlar I’m encased in can’t soften the bone-breaking blows of their weapons falling all over me like brute clubs.
Even the agonized gurgle in my throat can’t match the anguish I feel at those big brown eyes flashing in my head before everything I am flashes black.
Delia.
Delia, forgive me.
19
Green Heartache (Delia)
24 Hours Earlier
“Dad, I...” I lick my lips and swallow thickly. My hands are clenched in my lap and I’m staring at a stranger across the kitchen table. “Before you say anything, I want you to know we never meant things to happen like this. I don’t know what she’s been telling you, but—”
“Cut the crap.” His hand moves through the air like a knife, silencing me. “Evie didn’t need to explain anything. I saw it all. The way you were...tangled with him, defiling our home. Jesus Christ, Cordelia. Your own stepbrother?”
Gut punch.
Dad’s face softens, but I realize a second later it’s only because he’s so disgusted.
Not because he has any empathy.
He can barely even look at me.
I watch him spreading his hands on our big table. Are they shaking?
God.
He’s that overwhelmed, that horrified by whatever the crazy witch showed him.
My eyes burn like hazel cinders when he finally meets my gaze again.
But I cross my arms defiantly.
I won’t apologize for falling in love.
Aside from the unintended gate destruction, I’m not in the wrong. Neither is Chris. And the only person who’s truly at fault couldn’t care less about setting anything right.
Still, it hurts to ignore that shocked hangdog look on his face.
“Walk me through this. Help me understand,” Dad says softly, raking another hand over his face. “What the hell made you do this? You’re a gorgeous, smart girl in her prime, sweetheart. You could date any boy on campus, I’m sure of it.”
I open my mouth, but he holds up a hand.
“Why him? He’s handsome and brash, yes. But he also has all the grace of a bull moose at a tea party. Men like him don’t just do a one-eighty and settle down.”
Dad’s anger matches mine.
But his pain sneaks through my defenses. He’s still trying to protect me more than anything in his own messed-up way, thinking Chris intended to pump and dump me or something ridiculous.
Dad doesn’t know him well enough. Isn’t that the whole problem?
And if Evie has her way, he’ll never get the chance.
“Delia—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“Dad, we’re in love.” My confession just falls out.
He actually rocks back like I just hit him square in the face.
Am I actually trying to justify my love affair with my badass stepbrother to my own father?
Yes.
Yes, I am.
“Love,” he repeats, sounding so neutral and confused, giving me a shred of hope. “Goddammit. I’m starting to think Evie was right. Cordelia, look, I don’t know what he’s done or what crazy thoughts he’s put in your head. She said he has a way of doing that.”
Thoughts in my head? Like I can’t think for myself?
My hope goes up in a puff of anger.
Dad reaches for my hand, but I push him away, jerking back in the chair.
“No. You’re dead wrong about this—and so is Evie if she’s convinced you Chris hypnotized me or whatever. I’m not a stupid little girl who decided to throw myself at the first handsome boy who gave me the time of day, Dad. If you really think I’m so smart, you should know that. Have some respect.”
Okay, so maybe I did throw myself at the first handsome face who called me beautiful.
So what?
My feelings for Chris Triton are real, and I shouldn’t be on trial.
“We love each other, honestly. Ever since that trip to Vegas... And...and we were a couple at that party, the night Evie sent you the pictures. It’s true we got carried away dancing, and we certainly never meant to run into her. We planned to sit down with you after you came home and have a discussion.”
“A discussion,” he echoes numbly. “Is that what you call doing that in my wine cellar?”
