Page 41 of Sutton's Shadow

“I—I,” she stuttered. “Did he ever know how you felt?”

He lowered his eyes to the picture again, taking in the friend he missed. While they hadn’t been as close in the year before he’d died, they’d been like brothers until they’d been compelled to go their separate ways; him because of the injury that had forced him out of the Army, and Liam because of his career change working with Condor’s Overwatch.

“No.”

“Wyatt,” she entreated, a tremble in her voice he could feel in the hand that still lay on his arm.

“It’s okay. I had come to terms with it. You two were good together. But now...” He stopped, still contemplating the picture in front of him. Invisible cables were winding around his heart, squeezing tighter the longer he stared at his lost friend. It was wrong to want his best friend’s fiancée with such a ferocity he felt like he could hardly breathe.

“But now, what?” she breathed.

He didn’t know how to answer that. Now she was free; Liam was gone. Yet he felt like he was betraying his friend because of his feelings for Sutton. It was a strange dichotomy to want someone with a passion and to feel guilty about it at the same time. So instead of answering her question, he tried a different tack.

“I didn’t like you much when I first met you,” he admitted.

Her jaw dropped as his words sank in before she snorted a laugh. “That’s usually the first impression I get from people. I’ve never understood why.”

“As a Ranger, they trained us to look out for danger everywhere. Any little thing we come across while out on a mission that could be a potential threat. Then there was you. You blew past the danger, dragging the rest of us with you. I thought it was reckless and put all of us in jeopardy.”

She dropped her eyes to her hands in her lap, her shoulders slumping. Wyatt covered her hands with his, drawing her attention. “But then I watched you closer. Really observed you work. I could see you evaluating the situation before rushing ahead. You were aware of the risk; you weighed and measured it carefully before acting. Not everyone in our unit saw that part. They only saw you rushing ahead, arguing with command, and basically being a menace to our peace of mind.”

“I didn’t argue that much,” she protested.

Wyatt’s brow arched. “Your nickname in the unit was Ballbuster.”

Sutton scoffed. “It was not.” He sat silently; brow still arched. “Okay, fine. I gave them a hard time. But they always tried to keep me away from the most important situations, the ones I was there to record. In some foolish idea of protecting the ‘little woman.’ It drove me nuts.”

“It was entertaining as hell once I got to know you better. The shutterbug was a spitfire. I saw you in a different light. Your job was to get to the truth. To document it. To preserve it for all time. I saw the way you interacted with your subjects, like those schoolgirls. You treated every single one of them as the most important aspect of the story.”

“I just did my job.”

“It was more than that. You had a way of allowing people to open up to you, and it showed in your pictures. You preserved their struggles, their wins, their lives, giving them voices for the world to hear, through pictures. It was incredible to witness.”

That gorgeous blush stained her cheeks again, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. “I enjoyed working with you. My respect for you grew, as did my feelings. But so did Liam’s. He’d always been there for me, especially when I was dealing with Ronnie. He treated Bethany like she was his sister too, and never judged me for the way I was raised or the things I had to do to help Bethany. The least I could do for all his support was back off when I realized he was falling for you. I was happy that he was happy. When he told me you were engaged, I was thrilled, even if, deep down, I was raging. I was determined not to let it affect our friendship. We had too many years together, seen too much horror, to let my latent feelings get in the way.”

Needing to touch her, he leaned closer and cupped her cheek in his hand. His heart nearly took flight when she leaned into his palm, burrowing into his touch like a kitten hungry for affection. A tenderness manifested inside him that combined with his desire to a potent effect. “But they never died. And now...”

Andnow...Shewantedto scream at the unspoken words. Now Liam was gone. Now she was a free woman. Now he was free to act on his feelings. But did she want that?

Looking into his eyes, feeling the warmth of his hand on her skin, she’d say yes. The way he made her feel... It had been a long time since she’d felt anything similar. She and Liam had shared a passionate relationship. They had quickly fallen into bed with each other. But the shine had dimmed. Toward the end, it felt like all they had was what they shared between the sheets. They’d drifted apart. Their interests taking them in different directions. Liam seemed unaware of it. He never noticed her discontent.

But Wyatt... he noticed everything about her. He made her feel alive again. He made her feel seen in a way Liam never had. But could she do it? Could she risk her heart again?

He was still a hero, still prone to protecting those he cared about. Theoretically, she knew she didn’t work in a war zone anymore. There would be no reason for him to risk himself for her. But her incident at the pier the other day proved that accidents could happen. He’d been hurt because of her. She knew she couldn’t live with herself if she was responsible for someone else’s death.

But those thoughts were crazy. There was no danger here. No insurgents intent on killing Americans. No militant gangs trying to expand their territory through terror. She was safe in small-town America. It was time for her to live. And for one night, she could forgo all the doubt swirling around in her brain and live.

Gazing into eyes as dark as midnight, she leaned into the heat of his palm. “And now there’s tonight,” she ventured.

“Tonight?”

“I don’t know if I can give you more than tonight,” whispered Sutton, hoping her words wouldn’t hurt him.

His lips turned up, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “One day at a time. One moment at a time. What more could I ask for?” His eyes dipped to her mouth, and when his gaze came to hers again, the desire she saw there caused a flooding sensation between her thighs. A zing rushed through her, crashing over her like a wave. She swayed closer, drawn in by his gaze, his heat. The look on his face was so full of naked yearning, it forced the air from her lungs.

He swallowed audibly as the space between them dwindled. She could see the pulse point on his neck thumping, matching the rhythm of her pounding heart. Desire rushed through her, her nipples pebbled, and her body came alive in a way it hadn’t in years.

His thumb brushed her lower lip, and she sucked in a breath. Just the simplest of touches from Wyatt, and she tingled all over. It was both thrilling and disconcerting that she sought more of his touches.

---