My reply? “When?”
“When I’m done.”
So, I made dinner, a surprising feat for me considering I sucked at it.
The band Tear Asunder would come over every Sunday when they were in town and I’d help make brunch, but that was the most cooking I did. It was a pretty big group now that Kat and Emily were with two of the band members, Ream and Logan, it was like a big family gathering. Even my parents often stopped by. Crisis had a thing for my mom—well, Crisis had a thing for every woman. The guitarist was a sex God … at least he thought he was. A blond one with a sexy ass and devilish eyes.
I had hit on him … more to make Deck jealous, but that was when I was drunk, and that night it wasn’t a pretend drunk—I was smashed. Deck ended up throwing me over his shoulder and taking me back to his place where the usual happened—nothing.
I pulled the tilapia out of the oven and sprinkled more lemon pepper on it then dished it onto the steaming green beans. I poured light garlic lemon butter sauce over the whole thing.
“You made dinner.”
I hadn’t heard him come out of his office or approach me and I dropped the sauce pan. It clattered onto the counter and remnants of sauce splattered. “If you want to call it that.”
He grabbed my hips from behind then leaned down and kissed the side of my neck below my right ear.
I melted, sinking into his touch like a flimsy stem of a dandelion. Wow. He was being sweet. I didn’t get why yet after whatever went down with Kai, but I was getting sweet Deck and after all the shit I just told him I was taking it.
He took the plates out to the terrace and I brought two glasses of ice water with lemon. When we sat and ate, it was still sweet and … comfortable. Deck actually opened up and told me about how he and Connor competed in JTF2 training. They were both the top of the class, and Connor excelled at everything involving water while Deck excelled at tactical planning. It was a toss-up with who had the better shot.
“And I bet he bragged about every single thing he did better than you.”
Deck chuckled. “Hell yeah. Connor was the cocky bastard who made everyone laugh.” Yeah, my brother had always been the easy-going one. Even when I was upset at something silly, he’d come in my room and within five minutes, he’d have me giggling. “When we were in deep on a mission … ” Deck paused as if thinking about it. “He could put a smile on the guys’ faces. Even Vic’s.”
I laughed, and the tension I’d been feeling slipped from my shoulders. I hadn’t realized how uptight I still was. I looked at Deck sitting back in his chair, the tautness around his lips gone and it was like … well, it was like there were no shields between us. We were two normal people talking.
And I loved him even more for doing this. Giving me a piece of my brother I hadn’t seen.
“Your brother was good at what he did, Georgie. The best man on the team. And he loved it, too. ” I noticed a flicker of uneasiness in his eyes before it vanished and he grabbed a green bean and tossed it in his mouth. “We’d been in a covert situation for three fuckin’ days. Sitting in the desert sweating our asses off. No communication except hand signals. Taking a piss was the most movement we did. Our target was inside a bunker and had yet to make a move, but we had intel that he never stayed in one place for longer than five days. So we waited.” A flicker of a smile danced at his mouth. “Your brother, he fuckin’ loved it. It was like a challenge to him to see how far he could push himself. While the rest of the men were on edge and just wanted to get this shit done, Connor was relaxed. It didn’t even faze him.” I saw the flicker of something in his eyes again. “He was good at his job because he loved it so much.”
“Did you?”
Deck looked a little startled at the question as he placed his fork back down and looked at me. “Yeah, I did. It was my home, Georgie. They were my brothers. Now the guys at Unyielding Riot are.”
“You’re Unyielding and Connor is Riot. That’s why you named it that.”
He nodded.
“What about your real home? Brothers? Sisters?”
He shrugged. “Never had a real home. No family.” He paused before he said, “I killed my father.”
Holy fuck. I tried to keep the shock from my face, but I knew he must have seen my eyes widen with surprise because he was looking at me when he said it. Connor had said he’d gone to Juvie and then was on the streets before he joined the Army. Was that why?
“I was fifteen. He was beating up my mom like he always did. Fuck, it was a weekly thing in our house. He stopped hitting me when I hit him back the year before. He actually stopped beating both of us for a while after that. Then … he left us. Not sure why, but I didn’t care. He just disappeared one day and we didn’t see him for five months. My mother cried for weeks. Guess in a way she loved him; I mean, he did bring her presents all the time—after he beat her. Made me sick seeing him all sorry and shit while my mom’s face was black and blue and she couldn’t leave the house for weeks without a hat and sunglasses.”
I knew what was coming. A guy like that didn’t just walk away.
“He came back but this time with a gun. He shot her right between the eyes then kicked her over and over again. It was in the middle of the night. I woke to the shot and came running downstairs to see him beating on her dead, lifeless body.” Oh, God. I felt sick to my stomach and put my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t noticed I’d been crying until I felt a warm tear drip onto my hand.