Page 4 of Tactical Lies

Several minutes ticked by, and the tears continued to burn the backs of her eyes—angry tears not sad ones—Connor continued to stand there.

He didn't speak.

She pretended he wasn't there.

He didn't move.

She pretended he wasn't there.

Until she couldn’t.

Spinning around at warp speed wasn't good for her prosthetic foot, and she stumbled a little.

Moving faster than the speed of light, Connor was there, his hand on her arm, steadying her.

Sucking in a shocked breath, Becca froze.

It had been so long since she’d felt his touch.

It used to ground her, but now it picked her up and threw her into the wind to be tossed about.

There had been a time when she needed it so badly, when she craved it more than her next breath of air. For so long it was the only thing keeping her going, and she’d had no idea how she was supposed to survive without it.

But she’d learned.

She’d learned how to survive without Connor and the last thing she wanted was for him to be back in her life in any way, shape, or form. Whatever reason he had for being in Cambodia had nothing to do with her and he could leave her the hell alone.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed, jerking backward and almost losing her footing all over again. Learning to walk with a prosthetic foot had been one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do but it wasn't the hardest.

The hardest was learning to live without Connor. He was the man she had planned to spend her whole life with. He was her first love, and she’d expected them to marry, have kids, and grow old side by side.

But that wasn't what life had planned for them.

And she had learned to live without Connor.

She had been living without him just fine until he came intruding on the life she’d built.

Connor’s blue eyes widened in shock at the tone of her voice, and even though she’d stumbled again he restrained from reaching out to steady her, his fingers curling into fists at his sides, knuckles white, indicating the tension in him and the level of restraint. The man before her reminded her of the boy she used to know in some ways, but in others he’d changed so much he was barely recognizable. He was still tall, a little over six feet, but instead of the long, gangly limbs she remembered, he was pure muscle, his black T-shirt straining to cover his chiseled torso and arms. His brown hair was a little longer than the last time she’d seen him, and back then, he hadn't had a scruffy beard.

“Becca.”

Her name was all he said but it was all he needed to say. She had known this man her whole life, they’d been together as a couple from the time they were fourteen until they were twenty. They had been best friends, they’d done everything together, she knew Connor better than she knew anyone else.

Or at least she thought she had.

Turned out she hadn't known him at all. Because the man she had thought she loved wasn't one who would walk away from her when she needed him the most.

Now his voice was so full of pain, grief, guilt, and regret that it tore at the wounds his betrayal had caused. Wounds that she’d thought had scarred over, but in this moment, she realized had merely scabbed over and underneath were still raw and open. Infected and festering.

“Don’t,” she snapped. There was nothing he had to say that she wanted to hear. If he was there because of her, she wasn't interested. The past needed to stay where it belonged.

If she allowed it to creep into her future, all the hard work she’d done rebuilding herself and her life would be for nothing. In the blink of an eye, she would become that terrified and traumatized twenty-year-old girl all over again.

That couldn’t happen.

She had work to do and people relying on her, there was no way she would let them down by reverting to who she’d been in the aftermath of her assault.

“I don’t care why you're here, Connor. I don’t care why, after twelve years, you felt the need to track me down and come back to torment me some more. Leave now. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you, I just want to pretend you don’t exist.”

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