Collateral Damage (9 page)

Thanks. Be well
, was all she could think to say. Charity didn’t send anything else.

As Honor set the phone back on her nightstand, a sinking sensation filled her, the same reaction she always had when the scale of the loss hit home again. Though she was on the other side of the world in a combat zone and had just been wounded in a deadly attack, it was knowing that she essentially no longer had a family that made her feel totally alone. Seeing Liam again today and his reaction to what she’d said felt like the last tether of hope grounding her had been severed.

The hut door opened and Captain Candace “Ace” Bradford walked in, dressed in her flight suit. Ace stopped inside the doorway as she shut the door behind her and raked her gaze over Honor, her eyes zeroing in on the sling and bandages. “How bad is it?”

“Not as bad as it looks from this, just a few stitches and stuff.” Stuff being a few remaining shards of shrapnel they hadn’t been able to dig out of her. And a mild concussion that made her feel like an army of miners was hammering at the inside of her skull with pickaxes. She set down her e-reader. “Did you guys get airborne when the attack happened?” She hadn’t seen a Spectre in the air earlier, but everything had happened so fast and she’d only seen a portion of the battlefield from the Chinook’s shoulder window.

“Yeah, but it took a while. We’re lucky we didn’t lose more aircraft to those rockets.” Ace walked over and sat on the foot of Honor’s bunk, her expression worried. “Heard you were in the air today too.”

“Who’d you hear that from?”

“Ryan.”

Of course. His and Ace’s relationship had caused quite the scandal when the story had first broken in the media—them both being in AFSOC, and Ace’s father being a Senator and all. Somehow they managed to see each other and still fly under the radar while being back here together. Not an easy feat, to make a relationship like theirs work, but they clearly loved each other a lot and were willing to do whatever it took to stay together.

Honor admired them both a lot for that. She should have given Liam that exact same dedication and loyalty when she’d had the chance.

“Who’d he hear that from?” she asked, pushing aside the painful thought.

“From a SOAR pilot.” Ace’s brown eyes searched hers. “Were you on Liam’s bird?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know it until I got on board though. Everything happened so fast, it was utter chaos out there. A crew chief came up yelling that they needed a gunner. One of my guys and I just ran after him up the ramp.”

“I know, it was crazy out there.” Ace leaned back on her elbows, still studying her. “So. You guys talk at all once it was all over?”

“Unfortunately,” she muttered.

Looking all kinds of intrigued, Ace rolled to her side and propped her head in one hand. A few tendrils of honey-blond hair that had escaped the tidy bun framed her face. “Why, what did he say?”

“I think he felt bad about the way he’s ignored me, so when he realized I was hurt he came with me to the hospital.” She reminded herself that it was likely guilt that had motivated him, nothing else.

“So he definitely still cares.”

Honor swallowed and lowered her gaze to the blanket she’d draped over her legs. “Yeah.” As much as he’d let himself, anyway. She supposed she should be grateful that he cared about her at all anymore. “Not that it much matters now.”

“What? Of course it matters.”

“What matters?” Erin asked as she stepped into the hut.

Ace glanced at Honor for permission before answering. “She was telling me about Liam.”

“Oh.” Erin shrugged out of her jacket and came over to perch on the other side of the bed, leaning on her hip and elbow beside Ace. She raised a dark eyebrow, her expression curious. “So, you were saying…what about him? That he’s an unfeeling prick and doesn’t deserve the time of day from you?”

“No.” She scowled as a wave of protective anger washed through her on his behalf. Only
she
could call him a prick, no one else. “It’s not… He’s not…” Man, she so didn’t want to have this conversation, let alone when she was so raw. “Look, he’s not a prick, okay?”

Erin blinked in surprise at her vehemence. “Uh, okaaay,” she said slowly. “Can you elaborate on that then? Because from what I saw earlier at the hospital, you wanted him the hell away from you as soon as possible, and I assumed it wasn’t because he was being a sweet, supportive guy. So please enlighten me,” she finished blandly.

Honor glanced at Ace, who was now watching her with avid interest, then back at Erin. Their low opinion of him was her fault. She’d never told anyone the details of what happened to cause the break-up, not even Erin. She was too ashamed of everything about it, how she’d reacted, how she’d handled it, and couldn’t bear to see her friends’ expressions when they found out what a coward she’d been. If there was such a thing as karma then she’d definitely received the punishment she deserved because losing Liam had been the most devastating thing of all.

“It’s complicated.”

They both just kept looking at her, waiting.

Honor sighed and leaned her head back against her pillow, propped against the steel-frame headboard. “There were family issues involved on my end. Big ones. Stuff you’d see on a really bad reality show. Long story short, I handled it badly and I screwed up. Okay? I screwed up big time and now he won’t forgive me.”

Erin sat up. “Wait, does this have anything to do with why your family basically disowned you a few months ago?”

Ace’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Your family would do that to you?” Her appalled tone made Honor wince inside. She wouldn’t apologize or defend her family’s actions though, because there was no excuse for their narrow-minded view of the world and their hypocritical treatment of others. She’d just never been forced to outright confront that harsh reality before Liam. Not really.

And that made her feel like a coward too.

She shrugged. “It sucks, but to be honest it’s probably for the best. Something had to give.”
The truth is, you probably did us both a favor.
Liam’s harsh words still rang in her head.

“Wow, I’m sorry,” Erin murmured. “And I assume this is probably somehow related to the whole Liam thing?”

Honor could only nod, unwilling to spill the ugly details, even with her closest friends.

“Okay, no,” Ace said with a frown. “You need to back up and tell me the beginning of this story because I can’t stand not knowing now.”

Oh, God.
Honor rubbed a hand over her face and decided to go for it. “All right. You know I met Liam because he was seeing my older sister for a short time, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how that all happened either. From what I know of Liam and your sister, she and Liam have
nothing
in common, so I can’t see them dating.”

“Yeah, it didn’t last long. Only a couple of dates spaced out over a few weeks. Charity met Liam at a bar off post one night and went nuts over him.” Honor winced at the choice of wording. “She’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder about a year before that. Manic highs, crazy lows. They’d found a combo of meds that seemed to help her, but from day one she somehow had it in her mind that Liam was The One.”

Ace’s eyes were wide. “Holy. From day one?”

Honor nodded. “She came home from the bar and went on about him for over an hour to me. A week later they went out to dinner before he left for a training mission. During the short time he was away they texted and e-mailed each other, and Charity became obsessed with him. It was scary to see her like that, to be honest. I knew she’d gone off her meds but my parents wouldn’t listen. They were ecstatic to see her so happy, couldn’t see how unhealthy her attachment to him was.”

“He picked up on it right away though,” Erin said to Ace.

“Yeah, he told me later that after their second date he’d already been thinking of ending things because of how obsessed she seemed to be getting,” Honor said. “Anyway, she invited me and a guy friend of mine to dinner with them on their second date. Liam and I hit it off right away and it was pretty clear we had way more in common than he and Charity did. I didn’t have any romantic intentions toward him or anything.”

“And that’s the night he realized he was with the wrong girl,” Erin said, a smug edge to her voice.

“That’s what he said later, yeah, but I didn’t realize it at the time. Charity called me later that week, bawling that Liam had broken up with her. I tried to point out that they’d only gone out a handful of times, but it hadn’t done any good. She’d built Liam up so much in her mind, she was devastated when he ended things. She’d already gone off her meds but after that she started drinking and threatening to kill herself if he wouldn’t take her back. It was ugly.”

“Whoa,” Ace murmured, propping up a little higher on her elbow. “What did she do when she found out you guys were dating?”

“We didn’t get together until months later, after we’d become good friends and gotten to know each other really well on the phone and by e-mail. Liam kept his distance at first. Kind of a cooling off period he later said, for Charity’s sake. We didn’t start officially dating until the day he came to surprise me down at Kandahar two years ago.”

“And how’d your sister take that news?” Ace asked.

Honor huffed out a breath. “Not well, but I knew she wouldn’t. She seemed to slowly accept it, though I never talked about him to her. That’s why Liam and I kept how serious things were between us a secret from my family for so long.” Her parents hadn’t taken the news of them dating much better than Charity had.

“Until they got engaged. Then the shit hit the fan,” Erin added to Ace.

“Okay, wow, I didn’t know all that,” Ace said, shaking her head in wonder. “And what happened when you got engaged?”

Honor fiddled with the edge of her blanket. “I’d rather not get into it.”

Ace’s eyes filled with sympathy. “Sure, of course. And so whatever happened is what led to the falling out thing with your family?”

“Initially, yes, but I did what I could to smooth things over with them after Liam and I broke up.” That had come at a price far higher than she should have been willing to pay. “No, the real problem was when I finally worked up the nerve to do what I should have done in the first place.” Sided with Liam instead of them.

Erin’s eyebrows rose. “What did you do?”

Honor shrugged. “I told them I’d been wrong to let him go, and that if I had to choose between them and Liam, then I chose him.”

Resounding silence filled the hut as the other two women stared at her.

“Holy shit,” Ace finally said. “I had no idea you were going through all that all this time.”

“Me neither, on the last bit,” said Erin, her expression showing a flash of hurt that made Honor feel badly for hiding everything.

Not that she ever wanted either of her friends to know the lurid details of what had happened the night they’d gotten engaged. Or the other events that had led to the break-up.

“I know. And it’s not that I don’t trust you guys or anything, it’s just that I’m ashamed of the way everything went down. I mean, my dad’s this well-respected preacher in my town and my family’s supposed to be this upstanding, Christian model for the rest of the community to follow, but the things they said and did, and then them forcing me into the position they did… The hypocrisy just makes me sick.”

Her fingers curled into the blanket, her stomach taut. The very reason she’d never defied her parents in the first place was because she’d instinctively known how they’d react. Looking back, she realized now that her being cast out one day had been inevitable. When it had finally happened, much as it shamed her to admit it, in a way it was a big relief. “I should have stood up to them a long time ago.”

Erin reached out and rubbed a hand up and down Honor’s leg in silent sympathy. “I’m really sorry, hon, that’s so shitty of them. As for Liam, maybe if you just go and apologize—”

“I
have
apologized. Several times. First by e-mail because he wouldn’t take my calls, and then today I finally apologized to him in person. He didn’t exactly throw it back in my face or anything, but he doesn’t believe me.” Well, maybe he believed she was sorry, but definitely not that she’d sided with him over her family.

Erin’s eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “Then that makes him a prick in my book.”

“
No
.” Well, kind of, yeah, but… “You just—you don’t know him. He has his reasons for not wanting to give me another chance.” And they made her guilty conscience writhe.

She knew how badly she’d hurt him the night she’d walked out, and there was no way to fix it now, no matter how much she wished she could. That devastated look on his face when she’d left was something that would haunt her until her dying day.

“Well, I still say he wouldn’t have gone to the hospital unless he cared,” Ace said. “So at least that’s something. Maybe he just needs some time now, to process everything,” she finished, ever practical.

“Yeah,” Honor murmured, not really believing it. Somehow, knowing he cared made the ache in her chest even worse. God, unrequited love was the
worst
.

Erin withdrew her hand from Honor’s leg and put on a smile. “Well, you’ve got us, no matter what, no questions asked. Right?” she said to Ace.

Ace nodded. “Absolutely. And for God’s sake, talk to us next time something happens, instead of keeping everything inside. We’re both here for you.”

Honor smiled. “Thanks, guys.”

Erin waved away her thanks and pushed to her feet. “You take the prescribed meds I gave you?”

“Yes.”

She raised one eyebrow. “All of them?”

Honor couldn’t lie for shit. “Well…”

Erin rolled her eyes and rounded the bunk to grab the plastic prescription bottles on the nightstand. “Here. Two of these, and two of these. Right now.” She thrust out her palm and wiggled it impatiently. “One dose of each every six hours until I say different. Or else.”

Ace laughed as Honor took them meekly. “Your patients must love your incredibly gentle bedside manner,” she said to Erin, sarcasm dripping from each word.