Page 97 of Delta Force Defender

“We both know why I acted the way I have for the past five years.” Her eyebrows arched. “But you don’t have the excuse of being chased by homicidal maniacsand having to hide out to save your own life and protect your sister. What haveyoubeen doing?”

“Right. Of course. I must be the bad guy, because I like you. Because I’ve always liked you. And haven’t made a secret of it.”

“Who do you like, Isaac?” she asked softly. “WhoisCaradine Scott?”

He wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t. “I’m not the right person to play this game with. I’ve spent years pretending to be people I wasn’t. It’s never the differences that haunt you, in the end. It’s the similarities. The way it bleeds together until what hurts about an extraction isn’t what you leave behind, but what you take with you.”

It was the most he could recall saying about his career to a civilian... maybe ever. Caradine looked almost dumbstruck for a moment.

Isaac kept going. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me? You think I’m going to believe that I was just something you did to keep your cover?”

“No,” she whispered. “You were the one thing I did that I thought would blow my cover, and you know it. But that’s the problem. You don’t likeme, Isaac. You like what you can’t have.”

He wanted to roll his eyes. He wanted to shout at her, because once again, she had to be playing some angle.... But there was something devastatingly honest about the way she was looking at him. Not smirking. Not challenging him. Not stripping off her clothes to redirect his attention.

If she was playing him again, she was doing it by being so raw it hurt.

“You like to prostrate yourself to the impossible, because that’s the only kind of love you understand,” she told him, every word like a stone hurled from a great height. He could feel each one of them hit. And the damage each one inflicted. “The kind you lose.”

Something roared in him, a wild kind of howl. He wanted it to be temper, fury, outrage—but he had the distinct sensation that it was really more like grief.

“You don’t know how to love anything,” he told her, and he wanted to shout. To make noise. When instead, he was so quiet it was like he was the one who’d died. “You’ve been running so long that you don’t know how to stop. You asked me to help you and then you manipulated me anyway. You don’t trust anything or anyone, and I don’t think you could if you tried.”

She swayed a little, as if he were the animal in that lobby, pummeling her. As if he’d landed a much harder hit than her brother ever had.

And Isaac was always surprised that it was possible to hate himself more. To find a new depth to it.

But he detested himself tonight.

“Your response to your parents’ death was to turn yourself into the patron saint of lost causes,” Caradine told him, almost gently. Almost as if it hurt her to say these things to him, and that only made it worse. “The marines weren’t enough. Delta Force wasn’t enough. When you left the service, you had to set up your own thing so you could keep on fighting the good fight, knowing you could never, ever win.”

“Or possibly to do good in the world.”

“You don’t want to win, Isaac,” she said, very distinctly, her blue gaze on his like a revelation. “You want to suffer.”

He thought he was reeling, but the wall was at his back. “You keep telling me that, but it doesn’t make it true.”

“Okay, then let’s test it.” She crawled to the side of the bed, in nothing but the T-shirt she was wearing. His T-shirt, and his chest felt tight enough to blow. Then she knelt up and laid her palms on his chest, still looking at him. Through him. “I love you, Isaac. We don’t have todate, let’s jump right in to the real stuff. You want to move in with me? Or should I move in with you? It’s been five years, why wait?”

He felt numb, everywhere. “Do you think this is funny?”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life. You want me?” And that look on her face wasn’t the usual challenge. If anything, she looked sad. But resolute. Something in him... broke. “Here I am. I’ve been fighting for years, but I’m done. I’m not running anymore.”

Isaac wanted to wrap her in his arms. He wanted to tell her she was wrong about him, and about this. He wanted to prove it. He wanted to fight.

The truth of what she was saying might as well have been another pipe bomb. He felt his foundations go up in flames. He thought about the choices he’d made after high school, in college. Officer training, then the corps. And every choice since then.

Always to fight.

He always, always wanted to fight.

Isaac had no idea what waited for him on the other side of the fight, and he didn’t want to know. If he thought about it at all, he’d imagined he’d live out his days doing what he did now until he couldn’t do it any longer. And he’d never imagined himself growing old.

He’d figured he’d die in battle first.

His heart thudded at him. Time flattened out again, and there was nothing but Caradine’s hands on his chest. Her blue eyes seeing far too much.

“Caradine...” he whispered.

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