Page 9 of Peace Under Fire

She sighed, pinching her bottom lip between her teeth. This obvious change in his routine was part of the reason she was unable to let him go. When he’d survived that last mission, she’d thought he was out of danger. But her dreams were full of pain. His pain. Both mental and physical. And his pain didn’t seem to be going away.

Something was wrong. And no matter how she wished otherwise, she couldn’t abandon him to his darkness and agony.

If only he’d listened to her message before he’d left for that last mission.

“I could go see him. Talk to him. Maybe there’s something I can do to help.” She tentatively tested the possibility out loud and cringed.

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip hard enough to hurt as their last argument drilled into her mind. Although it hadn’t been much of an argument, had it? She hadn’t gotten a word in edgewise after she’d offered him the plate of chocolate chip cookies—his favorite—and he’d exploded on her. It had been more of a blitz attack than an argument.

She flinched, her breath catching at the memory. Her chest went hot and squirrely. Man, he’d been so angry…so caustic…so…awful.

“I’m not interested in you, Mandy. I don’t want your cookies or dinner invitations or goddam fucking smiles. I’m not now, nor will I ever be, interested in hooking up with you. Not as a friend. Not as a lover. Why is this so hard for you to understand?” He scowled down at her, his eyes two chips of black ice, and shoved tense fingers through his unkempt dark hair. When he dropped his hand again, his fingers curled into fists. “I guess I need to make this clear. Crystal clear. How about this? You’re a minus ten on my ‘want to fuck’ scale. Hell, there’s nothing about you that arouses the horny bastard between my legs. There isn’t even enough interest to get him up for a pity fuck, which should tell you something as he’s not all that discerning. The two of us getting it on is never going to happen. So back the off.”

His words, the disgust on his face, the frustration burning in his eyes—they still burned through her all these weeks later. They still scoured her heart raw whenever she made the mistake of thinking about that day…like now.

But apparently the accompanying sting wasn’t strong enough to break the connection she felt to him and send her scurrying back home.

She wished she could just leave. Let him go. Let that damn connection die. But it wasn’t something she had control over. She’d been dreaming about him for as long as she could remember. Long before she’d even realized he was real. Long before she’d taken off to find him.

If she could have freed herself from this leash, she would have done so long before now, before she’d left the safety of the compound and went looking for him. Certainly after she’d introduced herself to him and discovered he didn’t share the same strange bond that bound her to him.

Nope, he hadn’t been sharing her dreams, nor did he have any interest in getting to know her at all. Which he’d made painfully clear time after time—with that last exchange by far the worse.

She should have listened to Giulia and Kaylee. Her older sisters had tried to warn her that soulmates didn’t exist. That true love was nothing but a fantasy and that her obsession with romance novels had filled her head with unrealistic expectations concerning the dynamics between men and women.

They’d warned her that her ongoing dreams about Jacob were not because of some mysterious soulmate connection that would lead to everlasting love, but rather her dreams were because of the endless experiments the white coats had performed on her during her formative years.

Her sisters had insisted that she hadn’t found her soulmate. Instead, she’d found another leash, another cage. Her sisters believed that those white-coated cockroaches had embedded something inside her brain, even though nothing ever showed on the MRIs. And that whatever they’d done to her had created the connection to Jacob.

And Lord knew it was possible. Those bastards had constantly messed with her mind—with all their minds.

But why install such a connection? What purpose would it serve? And why connect her to Jacob, rather than one of the scientists themselves?

Had Jacob taken part in their experimentation too? Was that how she’d become connected to him?

She didn’t think so. Judging by her research into him once she’d realized he was real and not a figment of her imagination, Jacob had had a normal childhood. He’d had parents, brothers, a home—even though his family had lived on multiple military bases around the world. Maybe he’d been part of a military experiment? One that had paved the way for their brains to sync? But that seemed unlikely too. There were no gaps in his history, no unexplained disappearances prior to him becoming a SEAL, and she’d been sharing his dreams long before then. She would have witnessed his reaction to the experiments through his dreams.

Besides, the white coats liked complete control over their subjects. They wouldn’t have let him go to school or live with his family. They would have isolated him. Subjected him. Caged him. Like they’d imprisoned her.

So, no, she didn’t believe he’d been part of the experiment. Nor did she believe that soulmates and true love were fairy tales like her sisters insisted. Something deep inside of her knew the two concepts existed outside of romantic fiction.

On the other hand, Giulia and Kaylee had obviously been right about one thing. All those romance novels she’d devoured since hitting puberty had fostered unrealistic expectations.

She’d truly expected Jacob to feel the same connection to her that she felt for him. She’d truly expected him to recognize her, at least on some level. She’d expected him to be drawn to her, to want to get to know her, to let their bond strengthen and pull them into happy ever after land.

Instead, he’d ignored her, avoided her, and in the end, attacked her.

And she tried so hard to impress him, too. She’d taken all the advice from the dating articles and women’s magazines to heart. She’d made sure she never swore in front of him. She’d always presented a sunny personality with an engaging smile. She’d dressed sexy, but not too sexy. She’d done everything right—damnit.

None of it had worked.

All those romance novels had certainly led her astray there.

She sighed and leaned forward in the armchair to ease the curtain aside again.

The truck was still there. If he was going to leave his condo, he’d do it now that the sun had gone down. He rarely left the condo during the day anymore.

She worried at her bottom lip again. There was something very wrong with him, and everything inside of her, every cell, every fiber, every atom of her existence yearned to go to him, to help him. But he’d made it very clear he wouldn’t welcome her intervention. With a grimace, she let go of the drape again and settled back.

---