Heaven and Hell (65 page)

“He died in my arms.”

I blinked then I froze. Completely.
Head-to-toe.

Sam kept speaking.

“Bled all over me, his blood so warm, swear
to Christ, I actually felt his life draining out, leaking all over
me.”

Oh God.

He was talking about Gordo.

“Sam –” I whispered.

He cut me off with, “Nine words.”

He said no more.

“Nine words?” I asked quietly.

“His last words. There were only nine.”

I waited, my heart beating hard, not wanting
to hear it,
needing
to.

It took some time but then he gave it to
me.

Everything.

“He said, ‘Love you, man. Tell my wife I
love her.’”

The tears came back and didn’t hover. They
just fell over and slid down my cheeks one right after the
other.

Sam kept talking.

“Then he died. Said those nine words then he
was gone. Fuckin’ watched the light die in his eyes. Just blinked
right out. I will never forget that. How he was there, Gordo, my
boy, lookin’ at me and not even a second later, just a blink, he
was gone for-fuckin’-ever.”

“Honey,” I whispered.

“Then I had to go tell Luci that shit.”

Oh God.

“I did it and watched the light go out in
her eyes too.”

Oh God!

“Didn’t matter to her that his last thought
on this earth was that he loved her and he wanted her to know that.
All she could feel was that he was gone. All she knew was that she
had him,
all of him,
so much, he’s in a goddamned chopper,
the blood leakin’ outta him and him loving her is the last thing
that fills his mind then suddenly, in a fuckin’
blink
, all
that was gone because he was gone.”

“Sam,” I said, stepping toward him but I
stopped when he stepped back.

My heart skipped.

He had never moved away from me.

“Told Felicia too,” he declared.

Felicia?

I blinked then whispered, “Who?”

“Ben’s girl. The one I told you about whose
friends puked in my car. Only girl he had. They hooked up when he
was fifteen, she was fourteen. Got tight fast, stayed tight. She
gave herself to him when she was fifteen. He asked her to marry him
when she was eighteen. He was focused on his career, his education,
givin’ her the life she didn’t have, the life he didn’t have.
Thought he had forever to do it. He didn’t. He died before he could
do it. And it was me who had to tell her he was gone. Three days
after we put him in the ground, she overdosed.”

My hand flew out and I backed up until I
caught a chair, steadied myself and stopped.

Sam watched me move but he didn’t. He just
kept talking.

“Found her almost too late. Ma did. Her
folks were whack jobs, her entire fuckin’ family, dicks and
bitches. The lot of them. All she had was us. Ma was worried about
her so she went to check on her. Thank Christ she did. Ma called
the ambulance and then she called me. Shit was in her system. They
nearly didn’t get her to the hospital in time. Then it was touch
and go if she did damage to her body, her brain. She survived. She
came out unscathed. She’s married now, has a kid, another one on
the way. But every time I see her, every time I speak to her, the
last thing she says to me is, ‘You know, he’s not Ben.’ She lives
that. Her husband lives it. He’s second best to a dead man and he
knows it. He tries. He loves her so he tries. Still, I do not see
good things.”

“I can imagine,” I said gently.

Sam kept going like I didn’t speak.

“I thought I could take up his work where he
left off. I thought, I did what he intended to do, he’d live on.
But that shit keeps going. There’s always a fuckin’ enemy. There’s
always a fuckin’ assignment. Idiots in suits, most of ‘em who don’t
even care enough to expend the energy to walk down the hall, sit in
their leather chairs and speak for their people, tellin’ men and
women where to go, taking them from their families, putting them in
danger, getting their legs blown off, making them bleed. That work
will never be done. I gave up what I loved doin’ to take up Ben’s
fight and I fuckin’ failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” I assured him softly.

“Yeah? We at war?”

I pressed my lips together.

“We’re always at war, Kia, even when we’re
not. I’m trained to kill and I’ve done it, hand to hand. The light
goin’ outta Gordo’s eyes was not the only light I’ve seen go out.
I’ve
made
that light go out, with intent, and in the end I
don’t fuckin’ know
why.
”

“To make people safe, honey,” I told
him.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “I held onto that. I
held onto the fact that the men at my side, taking my back, were
men the caliber you cannot conceive. Honor wears a uniform.”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“You have that, you get out, you get
lost.”

My heart skipped again.

“Lost?” I prompted when he didn’t go on.

“Lost. I loved playin’ ball but I never
missed the pads and jersey. I fuckin’ missed the uniform.”

My fingers clenched the chair. “Then why’d
you get out, baby?”

“Because I didn’t understand what I was
doin’ anymore, I only knew I respected who I was doin’ it
with.”

That was a good answer.

I was silent.

Sam wasn’t.

“They found Gordo first. A unit. Private
firm. Buddies of ours. Men we knew. Men we respected. Ex-Rangers,
Night Stalkers, SEALs, Green Berets. Gordo recruited me. Pay was
huge. Assignments dangerous but worthwhile and infrequent. We were
doin’ a K and R extraction when he bought it.”

“K and R?”

“Kidnap and Ransom. Kid was seventeen. They
had him for three weeks. We went in, small team, elite, four of us.
But intel was faulty. We didn’t know that and that was unusual.
They had six times our number and they were heavily armed, serious
shit, shit no one has but terrorists, drug cartels and militaries.
It was a far bigger operation than we thought. By the time we made
it to where they were keepin’ the kid, we couldn’t abort. We got
him. He was weak, I was carrying him out, Gordo had my back, he
always fuckin’ had my back. He was providing cover fire. Then he
stopped and I knew why. I got the kid to the chopper and went back
for Gordo.”

Oh God.

I didn’t want to hear this but more, I
didn’t want Sam to relive it. I had enough; he didn’t need to give
me more. Suddenly, I didn’t need everything.

“Sam –”

He kept talking, intent on giving it
all.

“It was stupid, against all my training but
I couldn’t leave him behind. He was my boy. He was Gordo. He wanted
me to teach his sons football. I wanted him to stand up with me
when I found a woman who was worth it. I got in, I got to him and I
did it by killing twelve men.
Twelve.
That’s a lot of blood
on my hands but I didn’t care. They were filth and he was still
breathing. He took three to the back. He had my back, no one had
his and he took three.
For me.
”

The weight he carried, my God, so fucking
heavy. How did he bear it?

“Baby –”

“I got him home.”

“Sam –”

Suddenly he moved and he did it so fast, his
big frame coming at me, my only thought was retreat and I did.
Going back I kept doing it until I hit wall and I hit it hard.

Then Sam’s body hit me, pressing me in, his
hands came to my jaw and his fingers dug in, his face in my face,
so close, the world melted away and it was only him and me.

“Love you, man. Tell my wife I love her,” he
whispered.

That haunted him.

It haunted him.

Gordo was haunting him.

The tears formed and slid down my cheeks
again as my hands lifted and fisted in his shirt.

“Baby –” I started.

“Love you, man. Tell my wife I love
her.”

“Sam –”

“Felicia, broken. Luci, broken. I didn’t
want to break you.”

Oh God!

I went up on my toes as my hands slid up to
his neck, fingers curling around and digging deep.

“Honey, let me –”

“He had that in his death. Ben, no doubt, no
fuckin’
doubt thought about Felicia in his final moments. I
can take that. Fuck, I buy it, I
want
that, my last thoughts
on this earth to be of you. But they didn’t know. They had no
fuckin’ clue what they left behind. I knew. I lived that shit
twice. And I was not going to do that to you.”

“Please, Sam. I –”

“I love you, Kia.”

My breath left me and I stared. I wasn’t
breathing but my eyes were still forming tears and they were
falling.

Sam’s thumbs slipped through them but his
eyes didn’t leave mine when he semi-repeated, “I love you,
baby.”

“Sam,” I breathed then said no more. I had
no words to say. I couldn’t even think.

I could only feel.

And what I felt felt fucking
great.

“You cannot leave me,” he whispered, his
hands tightening on my face and he repeated, “You cannot leave
me.”

“Okay,” I whispered back, my hands
tightening too.

He either didn’t hear me or decided to
ignore me because he continued.

“You walked into that dining room, baby, and
you know, the minute I saw you, I wanted to fuck you. Two days
later, I saw you outside havin’ a drink and even before you looked
at me with tears in your eyes, just when I saw you sittin’ there, I
was annoyed, thought you were playin’ games, and I didn’t care.
Just you sittin’ there I knew it was you.”

He knew it was me.

Me.

I closed my eyes.

“Look at me,” Sam ordered quietly and I
opened them. “Weeks after that, Kia, I saw you standing in my
kitchen writing a grocery list, doing nothing, just writing a
grocery list. But you’d just made me laugh and, just like you, you
made me do it hard. That shit with Gordo, with Luci, losin’ Ben,
Felicia tryin’ to off herself, that shit’s too much, it wears you
down. I hadn’t laughed like that in months, not since Gordo died
and in that moment, you in the kitchen, I realized I did it all the
time with you. There were times before, a lot of them, I’d look at
you and feel your pull, so strong. I wanted to fight it, deny it
but I couldn’t, you wouldn’t let me and I didn’t get it. But seein’
you standing in my kitchen, effortlessly beautiful, writing a
fuckin’ grocery list after you made me laugh like that, I knew what
it was. I got it. I knew it was more. I knew that wasn’t an offer.
That was a promise. Even with all the shit goin’ down with you,
shit that would wear any other woman down, it didn’t with you and
you gave me that from the beginning. And it hit me then that was
what my life would be like if I lived the whole of it with you. And
I knew I couldn’t live without you.”

Oh. My. God.

He couldn’t live without me.

His face got close. “You cannot leave me.
You can’t. I can’t live without you.”

He couldn’t live without me.

He was in hell, just like me.

And just like he did for me, I showed him
heaven.

“Sam,” I whispered, melting into him, “I
said okay.”

“Never,” he returned immediately.

“Sorry?”

“Promise you will never leave me.”

“Sam, honey, I love you.”

“But you left me.”

“Right, because
you
left
me
.
But now you’re back and you just gave me all of you. I needed it;
you came all the way to England and gave it to me so now that I
have you, all of you, I promise you, honey, I will never leave
you.”

He stared at me and I let him.

Then he said, “You went on a date.”

Oh man.

“It wasn’t a date,” I told him.

“Looked like a date,” he told me.

“Well, it wasn’t. We had coffee. I was only
there fifteen minutes. That’s not a date.”

“So who was he?”

“Some guy I met at a museum. He was nice,
friendly, asked me for coffee so he could tell me what parts of
London I should see. He’s from here.”

“It was a date.”

I felt my eyes narrow and snapped, “Sam! He
was just being friendly!”

“To you, because you’re clueless about bein’
beautiful. To him, he wanted in there.”

He was, of course, right.

But…

Seriously?

We just had a month of separation and an
emotionally charged drama and we were here?

I took my hands from his neck and planted
them on my hips.

“Honestly? I see you for the first time in a
month, I think we’re over, my heart is broken, I cry myself to
sleep every… single…
freaking
night knowing I’ll never have
all of you, wanting all of you so much it hurts to breathe and
knowing even what you gave me will be better than what I could get
from
anybody
, worried that I made a huge mistake but knowing
in my heart that I couldn’t live with the secrets. Then you come
back, give me all of you
then
you give me shit about some
stupid guy who means nothing to me, so much of nothing I didn’t
even remember his name. A guy who I will never again
see
instead of, oh… I don’t know,” I said the last sarcastically,
“maybe kissing me?”

Sam glared at me.

Then his gaze shifted over my features, his
face went soft, his eyes went warm, his lips twitched and his hands
slid back into my hair.

“You didn’t remember his name?” he
asked.

“No,” I snapped.

His lips twitched again.

Seriously!

Then he whispered, “You want me to kiss you,
baby?”

It was my turn to glare at him and I
returned, “I did. Now I’m thinking, not so much.”

His lip twitch turned into a smile as his
hands in my hair tilted my head one way, his head slanted the other
and his lips muttered against mine, “Tough.”

Then he kissed me.

It was heaven.

* * * * *

Naked, lying next to a naked Sam in his
huge, posh hotel room, my cheek to his shoulder, I was drawing
random patterns on his chest with my fingertips while my eyes
watched.