Page 67 of Strangers in Love

Eoin

I pulled out my phone,so I didn’t have to watch her walk away without a look back. She’d slept almost the entire flight home, but I hadn’t minded. It’d meant I didn’t have to come up with excuses for why I wasn’t talking to her. I could just pretend that nothing had changed since I’d flown out of this same airport.

I called Da first.

“Hey, Da. I’m back.” I went back into the plane to get my stuff.

“Good to hear from you,” he said. “You’re in L.A., then?”

“Yeah, L.A.” I slung the bag over my shoulder. “Plane’s at the airport. Thank you for loaning it to me.”

“You can use it to fly home at any time.” He paused before adding, “Are you thinkin’ of staying in L.A. for a bit?”

I’d made the most of the long plane ride, using the time with Cain to work out whether or not I’d be a good fit with his team or if I should look at other agencies. The only thing I’d been sure of, after this mission, was that I didn’t want to be in charge of anything. It’d been one thing to lead a group to find my niece and then help my brother’s girlfriend put together a sting to take down a corrupt cop. It was something else to have men put their lives in my hands in a situation like the one we’d gotten into in Iran. Easier to trust Cain than it was to trust myself.

“The friend I know here offered me a job.”

Another moment of silence. “This is the person who helped you find Evanne?”

I hadn’t given my parents all the details about what’d gone on in Seattle, but they knew I’d used some contacts to help Alec.

“He is,” I said. “Cain was army intelligence. After he had an…accident, he left the service and put together a security agency.” More or less. “It’s all former military. We do all sorts of jobs.”

“Some dangerous?” A bit of his concern bled into his voice, telling me just how worried he was.

“Some,” I answered honestly. “But not all of them. And we can at least choose what jobs we want to take.”

I let him stay quiet for a bit, knowing he was thinking things over. I wasn’t really in a rush.

“Will you be back for Thanksgiving?”

I wasn’t surprised by the change of subject. He’d process, then talk to me. “I will.”

Even if it wouldn’t be the first Thanksgiving I’d been home for since I’d enlisted, I would’ve gone back for the simple reason that I needed to get all my shit. I’d talked this over with Cain too. I’d spend the next few days apartment hunting, take the plane back to San Ramon, then drive from San Ramon back here with my stuff.

“I’ll let your mother know,” he said. “Bring the plane home then. And you take care of yourself, son.”

“I will, Da. I’ll see you guys next week.”

I took a deep breath as I ended the call. It was time to start living again.

Forty-Six

Aline

I wanted to be home,even if it was my childhood home and not my apartment in Stanford, but instead, I was sitting on a hard exam table at a hospital. I’d known being here was inevitable, but it didn’t make it any easier.

“I want to take a couple x-rays just to be sure there aren’t any cracked bones,” Dr. Stein said as she jotted a few things down on her clipboard. “Just a precaution.”

She’d tried to avoid looking directly at either Freedom or me, which I’d originally just thought was something she did until I saw her make eye contact with two of the nurses who’d come in over the last twenty minutes. It took me until now to realize that her problem was simple…she didn’t know which of us to actually address.

Freedom had wanted me to come here instead of our family doctor in case I needed the sort of treatment that we could only get at a hospital, and Dr. Stein had recognized us from some of our mother’s charity events. While I appreciated having a doctor I knew, I’d still asked Freedom to stay with me for the examination, and that had, apparently, completely thrown Dr. Stein off.

“I’ll give you some antibiotic cream for when you change the dressings,” Dr. Stein continued. “You can take the bandages off to shower, but I want you to keep them covered most of the time and use the cream until it’s gone.”

I nodded and refrained from telling her that I’d had my fair share of scrapes and bruises as a child. Even a couple small cuts. Granted, I’d never had this many at the same time, and definitely not for the same reasons, but none of my injuries were to the extent that I couldn’t just use common sense.

“Now.” Dr. Stein looked up and appeared to be bracing herself. “Sit back and put your legs up.”

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