Page 53 of Unloaded
“You know I can’t keep her!” I growl. “She deserves better. I’ll never be able to be what she needs long term. I thought you knew and understood that.”
“Duke, I know something happened to you on that last mission, more than you getting shot,” Dalton begins “But you have to let whatever that was go, man. You are letting it rule your life.
“I know you don’t believe it, but you deserve that woman in there, and she deserves you. Don’t lose her over the past that can’t be changed. I don’t know what happened over there because you won’t talk about it. I can tell you feel responsible and take the weight of whatever went wrong, but I know you.
“I know how you operated in the field. I find it very hard to believe you made a mistake, but even if you did, we are onlyhuman. We can’t be perfect one hundred percent of the time. It’s past time to let that shit go, because Rachel needs you. Not me or the team at Invictus, she needsyou.
“Stop being a pussy and accept it. Be the man she needs, keep her safe, and when this shit is over, claim her, and keep loving her like I know you do, even if you haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.”
Fuck me!Dalton has always known how to cut me to the quick when I’m being stupid, but I can’t accept he’s right about this. Rachel is too important, too special to take a chance that I’ll ruin her with my ugly past.
“Man…fuck!” I hem haw, not sure how to respond to his very thorough analysis of my situation. “She’s the most important person in my world. I’ll only end up hurting her. Hell, I’ve already hurt her!
“I should have let you take her to your place or one of our safe houses. I knew I couldn’t keep my hands to myself, then Jason just had to take the boys to his place. Maybe I could’ve held off if they’d been here.”
Dalton has a goofy grin on his face. I’ve admitted Rachel and I went there, but he knows I’m not giving details. I wouldn’t own up to it with anyone else, but Dalton won’t say anything to embarrass her, unlike my inappropriate, immature brothers.
I take another look at Dalton and his knowing grin when it hits me. He and Jason, hell, maybe even my brothers were in on it too. They set me up! I punch him hard, knocking the grin off his face. He steps back, rubbing his jaw where I’d landed my fist.
“I’ll let that one slide, brother, but don’t think you can try to kick my ass, and I’ll let you,” Dalton warns.
He’s correct. I might get in a lick or even three, but he will be the one to win should we ever really fight. He might not be as tall as I am, but he’s mighty in the muscle department. Plus he fights dirty. I guess from how we grew up looking after ourselves in lessthan stellar neighborhoods. I learned a lot on the streets, too, but I had my brothers at my back. He’d had no one.
Until I met Dalton, he’d been on his own, looking after his little sisters and his mom. He hasn’t told me everything, but I know his family went through some shit before I met him. It made him tougher than most and gave him a determination to protect his family at all costs.
“You set me up,” I accuse. “You knew I wouldn’t resist with the twins out of the house. Fuck man! You don’t know what you’ve done, not only to me but to her!” I’m so pissed I can’t think straight.
“You needed the push,” Dalton replies calmly. “Rachel is a strong woman. She knows what she wants, but she isn’t going to beg for it. She’s got too much pride. She’s been taking care of herself and those boys for far too long to think she really needs a man, but shewantsyou.”
I narrow my eyes at him. Yeah, I know she wanted to fuck me, but long term? I’m not so sure about that. She said it herself last night she knew this wasn’t forever, just the night but…could she truly want more, and if she does…Nope! I’m not going there. She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into.
“Even if she thinks that, and I’m not saying I agree that she does, she doesn’t know what she’s asking for…whoshe’s asking for.” I give Dalton a pointed look. “I…I care too much for her to saddle her with the likes of me.”
“What the hell has gotten into you?” Dalton demands angrily. I’ve rarely seen the man pissed, but when he is, heaven help whoever has pissed him off. I take a step back, not sure if he’s about to kick my ass or not.
“You are the best man I know, and I know a lot of really great men, your brothers and our co-workers included,” Dalton says heatedly. “I’d trust any of them with my mom’s and sisters’ lives,and you know I don’t say that lightly. So why in the hell do you think you’re so unworthy?”
Here we go. He is finally going to make me tell him about my worst failure as a SEAL and as a man. I hang my head, trying to gather the strength to confess what I haven’t ever said out loud.
Yes, I had to give a debrief after the incident, and yes, I spoke to Brooke’s parents and her little sister in person after the funeral, but I didn’t tell any of them everything. Not how I felt about it or how her dying like she did affects me to this day, but I know I’ll be telling Dalton. He won’t accept anything less than the truth.
“It’s complicated,” I reply with a heavy sigh. He continues to glare at me as if to say, ‘no shit, Sherlock’. “My team was sent on a rescue operation to recover a hostage. She’d been taken in broad daylight off the streets in Kandahar. We’d been lucky to have some cellphone footage a tourist had taken of the incident, but no one would give a statement, despite the streets being full of pedestrians at the time.
“She was held for two months before we got a lock on her location. We laid in the desert heat for two days, casing the place, listening to them torture her…rape her.” Dalton lays his hand on my shoulder in support, but I shrug it off. I don’t want to taint him with this, but I don’t have a choice. I’ve already begun this sick tale. I have to finish it.
“We went in and got her and several others out. We should have been in the clear, but we ran into trouble every time we turned around. It was like the damn insurgents knew every extraction site we had. We were ambushed, stalled on the road, nowhere to go, we were making our stand, ready to die trying. The insurgents said all they wanted was the girl, and they would let us go, but there was no way we were going to let that happen.
“The 1Lt was between me and two of their men. They had guns trained on her, us on them. She looked me right in theeye and said she couldn’t let them take her again. I’d given her my Ka-bar to defend herself with, just in case we got in a tight situation, such as we were.
“She used it to slit her throat…right there in front of me. I begged her not to do it. I promised I wouldn’t let them take her, but she did it anyway.” Dalton doesn’t say a word. He just grips my shoulder again. I grit my teeth, knowing I have to finish.
“I should never have given her the knife. I thought I was protecting her, but I gave her what she needed to end her life.”
“There’s no way you could have known she’d do that,” Dalton argues. While it might be true, I should have known. I’d been with her for hours. I’d heard her mumbling things that didn’t make much sense. I should have known how unstable she’d been. I can understand why she did it, not wanting to be used and tortured again, but it should never have happened. Not on my watch.
“I can read your thoughts, man. There. Is. No. Way. You could have known or prevented it.” Rationally what he is saying makes sense, but I’ve blamed myself for so long, I don’t know how to stop, nor do I think I should. I’ve run those events over and over in my head a million and one times. I should have protected her better.
“Look I know you aren’t just going to stop blaming yourself, but you need to make the effort. Rachel needs you and not just until she’s safe. She needs you long term, and if you don’t get this shit out of your head, you will lose her, and you’ll both pay the price. You don’t care about yourself, but you need to think about her and what she’s going to have to go through when you walk away.”
