Page 77 of The Wrecked One

Her husband, Finn, had his arm looped around her side, as if he might need to hold her back to prevent her from trying to crawl through the camera to strangle me.

Her wrath was merited. I’d disappeared on her same as everyone else, and she was mad as hell. We’d been through so much together with Tucker, and she’d saved my neck in Dubai. She deserved better from me. They all did.

All the more reason why I couldn’t go back. I’d walked away and abandoned those who loved me. I hurt them. Forgiveness wasn’t something on my radar—and it shouldn’t ever be—but I still planned to make use of the word sorry at every turn I could. And damn well mean it.

Standing behind Malcolm’s desk, with Mya in the chair next to me, I eyed the larger of the three monitors set up in his office. We were on a secure line, and not only were Julia and her husband there, as well as Falcon in Zurich, but so were Gray and Jack from their safe houses. Of course, Gwen and her father, Wyatt Pierson, were on the call, too. Teddy and Easton were absent from the line, but I hoped that meant they were still busy getting answers from the asshole they’d taken from the runway.

With no one yet talking, I went ahead and voiced my thoughts. “Why does this feel like an ambush? Or an intervention?”

“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” Julia was crying, and she had a hand on her . . .

Wait. I swallowed and braced against the desk. “Are you pregnant?”

“She didn’t want me to tell you,” Mya whispered as Julia nodded, swiping away her tears.

“I’m so sorry.” There was that word I’d wanted to come across as deep and meaningful, somehow sounding pathetic and weak. I scanned the different squares. Jack’s. Gray’s. Carter’s. And so on. Taking them all in. “To everyone, I’m sorry.”

“That’s not why we’re on the call.” Carter stepped in front of the other team members on site with him—Jesse McAdams was present, along with Griffin Andrews, Sydney Archer-Hawkins, and Mason Damn Matthews. Not that he was Falcon, but at this point, he was pretty much an honorary member.

“Did we hear from Teddy or Easton yet?” Mya redirected, and I mentally thanked her for drawing the attention away from me. Because if looks could kill, Julia was seconds away from murdering me.

Before anyone could answer Mya, Julia clamped a hand over her mouth as more tears spilled, murmured an apology, and took off.

I’d rather her yell at me than cry.

Finn cursed and gave a quick one-shoulder shrug, tossing out, “Probably the hormones. Give us a minute,” before the screen went dark.

I closed my eyes, seeing stars while hating myself all over again. Not that I’d ever stopped.

“She’ll be fine. We’re just bloody relieved you’re both okay,” Wyatt spoke up, his British accent sharp that time. Wyatt was on Echo Team with Finn, and he’d come to know Julia well.

For the sake of my sanity, I pushed away from the desk, opened my eyes, and forced myself to pull it together.

“Thanks to those assholes, I can cross skydiving off of my bucket list.” Mya attempting to joke was her way of coming to my rescue again. Along with their forgiveness, it was something else I didn’t deserve. Especially after I’d refortified my walls out on that deck and told her I had no plans to come back.

Relentless, stubborn woman. And I fucking loved that about her. That was the problem.

“Sure, sure. Like jumping from a plane was ever on your list,” Sydney teased before bolting upright in her seat, eyes wide. “Wait, rewind. You jumped from a plane? Easton said you safely took off.”

I let Mya take the wheel and share the events of our climactic afternoon, still a bit lost in my head and on edge with my old team all on the call. I’d expected dirty looks from the guys for abandoning them, but what I got was much worse—empathy in their eyes and slight nods of what I interpreted as understanding and support. Also, very much undeserved.

“Glad you’re good. We haven’t heard any new updates from Easton or Teddy, or received anything about Steve’s situation, but we’ll fill you in when we do,” Carter said when Mya finished her retelling of our day, throwing in a few of her made-up words as adjectives about skydiving. And fuck me, that almost had me smiling.

She’d left out the part about her nightmares and had yet to share the bomb she’d dropped on me about her parents.

“There is something else.” Mya wrung her hands together, resting them on the desk. She peeked at me over her shoulder before addressing the team on-screen.

Here goes.

I remained quiet, too absorbed by what she was saying to remember the aches and pains in my body as I listened to her talk. I wasn’t prepared to accept that the Vanzettis were part of The Collective. I knew what that’d do to her, and she didn’t need any more pain in her life. She’d been through enough.

At the end of her bullet-point summation of facts, recounted as if they were details from someone else’s story, Sydney was the first to break the silence on the other end of our call. “There has to be another way The Collective discovered Steve worked with us. Maybe they spotted him on our trip in New York on the Fourth.”

“Unless it was your husband or kids,” Mya quickly discounted her idea, “aside from my parents, there was no one else who saw any of us together those two days. Plus, we took Carter’s second jet there.”

“And Carter’s pilots would rather fork themselves to death than betray him,” Jack jumped in. Carter rolled his eyes, but Jack was right.

“Mya,” Mason grated out, eyes pinning her with unmistakable worry.

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