Skin Deep (9 page)

“How can you believe it’s possible that I’m in love with my son so quickly, but I couldn’t possibly fall in love with you just as fast?” Hotch asked.

Toby babbled softly, resting his head on Hotch’s shoulder while Toby played with his own wiggly fingers.

“Adult love is different. If anyone knows that, my father does. Don’t you, Dad?” she said, drawing him back into the conversation.

“Marriage isn’t the answer.” Her father’s words sounded clipped and final.

“For once we agree,” she mused.

“Don’t give up on us,” Hotch insisted. “There’s time. I’m being recalled. You and Toby have time to settle in here, take a breather while you figure things out and have everything you need taken care of. If not for me, for your mom who lives nearby and for your dad who’ll come home too.”

It was a generous offer. Having her mother near, the base for work and daycare, and the home as a perk of Hotch’s career would definitely afford her time to clear her thoughts and make a plan. The house would be empty anyway, and living rent-free would give her time to figure out what she wanted to do.

“I’ll stay,” she agreed. “I make no promises that there’ll be anything between us when you get back.”

Hotch nodded his understanding, though he seemed a bit defeated. “I understand.”

“Stay away from my men, Erin. All of them. When Hotch and I return, you move out. Move in with me or your mother, but don’t shack up with another man from my team.” Commander Hawking insisted.

Erin frowned. These past two weeks had been monumental for firsts. However the prospect of standing up to him one more time, made her insides shudder with fear. Telling the commander to back down was scary. He might be a bloated jackass sometimes, but he was still her daddy. She was still his baby girl and no matter what she said, his approval meant everything to her.

Her mouth had gone cottony and her joints trembled. Some things required saying. He didn’t have any qualms about battering her with words, so why did telling him how she felt as an adult and a mother make her blood pressure soar? Nothing was ever easy with the commander. Nothing would ever be easy with him.

“Daddy, I love you, and I will never be one of your men. Barking orders at the team will get you what you want every time. Barking them at your family gets you lonely. I’ll do whatever I need to for my son. Whatever I need to do for me. I wish you’d support my decisions and love me anyway, but your approval isn’t required. Please leave. Hotch and I have a lot to talk about and you’re not helping.”

Toby began to fuss. His jaw tensed as he tried to grind his four teeth together and his eyes filled with tears.

“Hotch, he’s hungry. Would you feed him some cereal? Do you remember how to make it?” she asked.

Hotch nodded. “C’mon, big guy. Let’s find some of that yummy peach cereal your mom makes you.”

Toby sobbed with a combination of relief and desperation. She knew his sounds well. So close to food, yet not able to eat it and finally understood enough to know it was coming. It put a smile on her face as she watched Toby and Hotch retreat to the kitchen.

“You’re making a mistake,” her father said. “These guys are
on
most of the time. They don’t hang on to relationships and they come back marked.”

“I know. My father is one of those guys,” she reminded him unnecessarily.

“It’s different. An officer is removed from battle. They’re in the thick of it.”

“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have baggage. Besides, I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

Her father took another step closer to her and lowered his voice. “Did he tell you how Nebraska died?”

“No, nor should he. Isn’t that military confidential?” she asked.

“You were engaged to him. Don’t you want to know?”

“I wasn’t engaged. I was dating him,” she corrected.

“Your mom said he had a ring.”

“He did. He hadn’t asked me yet. And before you go off about him being another one of your team members, that’s just coincidence. I met him when I worked in the administration building after I graduated.”

“Of course you did.” His tone said he didn’t believe her.

“He asked me out the second summer.”

“So hooking up with Hotch was coincidence too?” her father asked.

“It was Troy’s funeral. I wouldn’t have met Hotch otherwise.”

“Nebraska’s funeral and his Brutus was there to see it and sweep his buddy’s girl straight into the sack and knock her up. How convenient for both of you.”

“Get out,” she snarled.

“A team leader should have protected Nebraska. Ask him how Nebraska died.” He turned and walked to the front door. At the last moment, hand on the knob, he looked back at her. “You know, my house will be empty while I’m away too. You have memories there. You’re just as welcome to stay in your childhood home as a stranger’s. I’ll give you the same deal you have going with Hotch. Free room and board. Hell, I’ll even chip in a tidy allowance. Think about it.”

He left before she could throw something at him.

Chapter Six

Tomorrow Hotch had to return to duty. She’d debated asking him about Troy all week and hadn’t built up the nerve. She needed to, though. She couldn’t keep living in this altered state of reality where she pretended to have a family and a home, only to wonder if it was more of a lie than she already knew it to be.

The wind off the Atlantic kicked up. Toby wriggled his bare toes into the wet white sand. His tiny fists wrapped around her fingers as the tide just touched his feet before retreating. He took a wobbly step with her help. A tendril of her dark hair whipped across her face and she turned into the wind to knock it back.

Hotch came up behind her, wet, cold, dripping, and grabbed her hips to pull them against his groin.

“Geez, Hotch. Just because I’m bent over doesn’t mean I’m begging for it.”

He laughed. “I know, babe, but I can’t help myself. That tight ass looked too tempting to ignore.”

“Did you have a good swim?” she asked.

Hotch crouched beside Toby. “It was okay. The tide is a little bit rough, but I got my five miles in.”

“Did you hear that, Toby? He’s all done for the morning. That means he can play!” she said in a high-pitched voice.

Hotch tickled him and Toby laughed until he couldn’t hold on and plopped his bottom to the sand. The slight drop jarred him, and he tipped his head back to look up at her with huge watery eyes. His bottom lip began to tremble.

Hotch swept in, lifted him high, then brought him in for a tummy flub. Erin couldn’t help but laugh with them when Toby’s peals filled the air. In such a short time, Toby had fallen hard for his daddy. Her heart kicked a little faster. Erin had fallen for him too. Except for a few important things. Like the fact that he was a SEAL and that her father had left a nagging doubt in her mind about Hotch’s involvement in Troy’s death.

He was leaving tomorrow. She either asked now, or never. Erin took a deep breath. Whatever it was, she knew it wouldn’t be pretty. Her father never would have suggested she ask if he didn’t know something that would bother her.

“Hotch?”

Hotch swung Toby to his hip. Toby squirmed to get down, so Hotch set him on the sand, then crouched near him. Erin sat down behind Toby, offering her body as support in case he fell backward. He wouldn’t. He’d been sitting too well for too long to fall over, but she did it anyway.

“How did Troy die?”

Hotch’s gaze shot to hers. “I can’t discuss mission details.”

“Dad said I should ask you. He said you knew how he’d died and I needed to hear it from you.”

“The day he was at the house yelling?”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged.

God, he didn’t want to tell her. Guilt that had been pushed away temporarily came rushing to the surface. Damn the commander for setting him up! Yet, getting it out in the open would finally get it off his chest.

After the weeks they’d spent together, first tentative walks in the park and catching time with each other, to moving her in and being with her every day, he hoped he’d earned a modicum of trust. He absolutely owed her honesty. Yet, he had more to lose than ever.

Hotch glanced over. She was playing with Toby’s hair, dropping little kisses on his temples. She completely avoided his gaze. Erin seemed to be preparing herself for the worst, calmly sitting and waiting for him to tell her what she’d evidently been afraid to ask before now.

He owed her truth and honesty. She already had his love, even if she didn’t trust it. Would he lose the progress he’d made? What if she hated him for his part in Nebraska’s death and she not only moved out, but kept him from seeing Toby.

His heart wrenched.

In keeping with top-secret protocol, he decided to tell her what he had to without divulging military operations information. He could protect that easily enough.

“We were on a drill,” he started, beginning the misdirection that the team had been instructed to use. He couldn’t tell her they’d been spying in enemy waters.

He filled in the details slowly, watching her for a change of expression. She didn’t have one. His heart pounded heavily as he got to the part where the doors closed on Nebraska. Erin briefly closed her eyes. When she reopened them, the green depths looked distant, glassy, wet. She had the look of someone imagining the story as it unfolded.

Hotch had to pause. He didn’t want to get graphic, but he knew she needed details. He also wasn’t sure he could say what had to be said. He hadn’t spoken about Nebraska’s death. Not to the commander, not to the base psychologist who’d insisted Hotch spend several afternoons in his office. It wasn’t any easier telling Erin.

“I couldn’t get him out.” Hotch swallowed passed the lump in his throat. “The doors closed on him. I tried, Erin, I swear I tried. I grabbed his hands but it was too late.”

“What happened?” she asked flatly.

“It closed on him. The full weight of the steel door closed on him and didn’t open. He was dead almost instantly.”

“Did he suffer?”

The question hung in the air between them. “Briefly.”

“He suffered,” she said, breaking it down. Briefly or not, she understood.

“Yes. I’m sorry. It should have been me. As team leader, I should have been the last one to clear the lock. I’d always done it before. That day—was different.”

Toby dropped onto his side, head resting on Erin’s knee as he made motorboat sounds and poked at the sand. His child’s play seemed surreal next to the information about Troy. He wondered if she thought so too. She watched him, absently brushing sand off his little arms.

“It should be him sitting on the beach with you,” Hotch told her quietly.

She lifted her head and searched his eyes. “Why? You think you deserve to live less than he did? It was an accident. The nature of accidents is that they’re accidental.”

Was she kidding? She didn’t appear to be. “He had more to live for. The promise of a wife, a future with you.” He motioned at Toby. “It should be his kid on the beach with you.”

“But it isn’t, and one life isn’t more valuable than another. Isn’t that exactly the reason you’re in the Navy preserving the rights of Americans? Are you going to try to convince me that the druggy on the street corner is worth less than the brave men and women who fight for our freedoms?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

Erin’s eyes flashed angrily. “Then why do you think you deserve to live less than Troy?”

“Why do you think he deserved his death?” Hotch countered.

“I don’t. I’d never think death is a fair tradeoff to life. But I’ll remind you that you knew death was an option when you signed up, and no life if more important than the next. He died because he died. You lived for the same reason, and if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have Toby.”

“I always left the lock last. Always.”

“Not that time,” she emphasized.

“Why aren’t you angry at me? I have nothing to offer you. No family, no happy go lucky outlook on life. Nebraska did. He had all those things and because I changed it up, he’s gone.”

“He’d never have blamed you.”

“That makes the betrayal worse.”

She tilted her head to the side. Toby’s little body had gone limp and Hotch suspected the tike had fallen asleep.

Erin looked into Hotch’s face urgently. “Do you think he’d blame you?”

“No. Nebraska wasn’t like that.”

“You’re right. He wasn’t. Are you trying to make me angry at you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Hotch admitted.

He shrugged. His skin felt oddly tight around his shoulders and he wanted nothing more than to dive into the ocean and swim until his body gave out. That maybe by killing himself he could somehow give back the life he’d stolen from Nebraska.

“I’m not going to be angry at you. I’m going to be angry at my father for him thinking Troy’s death would put a wedge between you and me. I’m going to be angry at you if you can’t live the gift Troy gave you with gratitude. I’m going to be hurt that by wishing your life away, you’re essentially wishing my beautiful boy never came to be. I’m even going to be hurt that while you tell me you have feelings for me, you feel colored by guilt in accepting them.”