Page 23 of Redemption

And I have to admit that simple act really pleases me. Growing up where I did, we always left our outside shoes near the door, so I’m happy I don’t have to train that into him. Now, it’s just a matter of acting just annoyed enough about the club girls to get him to go down on me tonight—because that licking he gave me the other night was the stuff of legends.

Entering my room, I hurry to toss the clothing I left on the rocking chair into my closet, only having another second to glance around before I hear the top step creak. When it creaks again, I pop my head out of the door and tilt my head in question.

“Handy that,” Vector says with a grin as he puts his weight on it a third time. “Only step that made a sound the whole way up.”

“Dad said Pops did that on purpose, to bust him when he’d try to sneak out.” I confirm his suspicions.

“A lot of care has been put into this home,” he replies, walking toward me. “There must be a good story or two about why he never fixed it after his son moved away.”

When Vector stops in my doorway, his hands braced on either side of the frame, the look he gives me causes my heart to bounce up to my throat and I take a deep breath.

Is it possible he was this good looking the first time I met him?

Why do I find him more attractive every time we’re together?

“You can come in,” I hesitantly say, unsure of the frown that has settled up near his eyebrows.

“Babe, no giving me shit about the club girls. There’s always gonna be some and I wouldn’t be chasing your ass if you weren’t all I want. I said we’re together, and that means I ain’t going to fuck around on you.”

“Now I really want you to come in,” I tell him, reaching up to tug on his cut.

Just as he wraps an arm around my waist, we hear the door close downstairs, and my Pops is calling out a greeting.

The look on Vector’s face causes me to giggle, which deepens with his frustrated growl.

Vector

Later that night, as I’m holding Sloane’s sated body against mine, memories flood through my mind and I steal myself against the regret of old mistakes. Leaning down, I kiss her forehead as a silent promise that there won’t be a repeat of the past.

Once upon a time, Grace was everything to me and our future was so clear. Yeah, we’d get into arguments here and there over little things that seemed big to kids who were barely in their twenties.

Me re-enlisting in the military was a huge point of contention between us, but there was always some part of me that felt like I needed to keep her separate from the Northern Grizzlies. Grace was just too good, and a little naïve about the world. I always felt that pulling her into my father’s lifestyle would taint her.

Besides them, the military was the only way I could figure out how to support a wife and the family we would daydream about during hot summer days—and nights—down by the river.

As soon as I got home from that tour, I was going to formally propose. The problem was, I simply wasn’t the same person after I was wounded, and I didn’t know how to pretend to be.

Laying in that hospital in Germany all of those months, I convinced myself that everyone back home was better off without me. Their lives would go on, and I’d make my own way. Even once I got back to the States, I remainedno contactwith everyone.

I stayed within an easy distance of the VA hospital in Maryland, still needing skin grafts and continuing care. Eventually, I started working with some of my fellow soldiers, those who were becoming more involved with the pain pills they had been prescribed, than with the world around them.

If not for my wonderfully pesky little sister, I don’t know where I’d even be now.

From infancy, Bridget showed an aptitude beyond her years, as she was the youngest kid in her eighth-grade class, she had to kick and scream until our dad and her mom allowed her to go on the overnight class trip to D.C.

Something they promptly regretted when they got word that she was missing. It turns out she had nosed around our dad’s office and found out that I was in Bethesda.

For an adult, it was an easy enough train ride from where the group would be staying. But for a pre-teen girl? It turned into an Amber Alert.

I shake my head at the memory of one of the security guards racing up to me that day. Bridget had been busted walking around the medical campus, slightly dazed as she realized the scope of it, compared to the small hospital in our hometown.

My shock turned to fear, when the guard told me my baby sister was there alone and how they matched her up to the regional alert from earlier in the day.

Ten minutes later, when Bridget was in my arms, sobbing about how much she missed me and wanted me to come home, was the first time it ever occurred to me how much she looked up to me.

Besides having a different mom and our age difference, I’d always made time for her. Until the day I crawled into my own shell and pushed the world away.

Dad and Nadine were there to retrieve Bridget a couple of hours later. Three days after that, I caught a ride home.

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