Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

of my many party tricks. Several years ago, we were in a really bad spot. Thankfully, I’d only ever had to give Coop hangover IVs. No matter what happened—shot, stabbed, general bullshit—he’d pack his own wounds with whatever he had on him, mud if nothing else, and carry on. Hearing Coop calling for me…praying for me to put him out of his misery like some kind of wounded animal… He must’ve truly believed he was going to die. It’s the oddest thing—the ones who will make it always think they are dying. They beg for me to make it quick. It’s the ones who plead to be saved…”

God. Nik would give anything to not hear those desperate cries for help sounding in his mind. Hell on fucking earth…

“Will.” Thea didn’t pose it as a question needing an answer. It was the answer.

Nik closed his eyes, but the scene was too vivid to keep them shut. “I could’ve…” He faltered.

“From the start,” she whispered.

“The start… We were on a fairly common mission. Supposed to be easy. Nothing stood out as hinky. We exited our vehicle, I maneuvered, and pop, the guy next to me drops to the ground with a hole in his head.”

“You didn’t know you were being shot at?”

“Sniper. Shit goes south fast. Millimeters between you and someone else.”

“You think it should’ve been you and not Will?”

“The bullet probably had been aimed at me, but no, this guy was an asset the CIA had been working in country helping us track a HVT, um, High Value Target. He gave us bad intel and sent us into an ambush…a death trap. Guess he didn’t count on karma being such a bitch or his friend being such a bad shot. My team got into a safe position and we were able to suppress the fire and go after them. I knew Will had been hit, but he said he was fine. I should’ve checked him over. I could’ve…but, I…”

The words ‘didn’t save him’ came up like zombies from their burial graves. They were followed by many more words which had never found their way into any After Action Report or forced therapy sessions. Not the place nor the people involved nor the mission details. Those were all, in fact, classified. Thea wouldn’t have cared about those parts anyway, nor did he need to share them. It was the things the government didn’t give a shit about—how fucking helpless he felt, how responsible for Will’s death, every horrific detail of Will’s last moments—festering like an infection inside of him.

“When I got back to Will, it was too late. He’d lost too much blood by then and knew he was dying. I should’ve checked his wound before. He’d told me it wasn’t bad and QRF, um, Quick Reaction Force was en route. But he wasn’t fine.”

She didn’t bother with declarations of how nothing he could’ve done differently would’ve saved Will. Buried deep beneath the tornadic debris of her memory loss, she must’ve known those kinds of reassurances wouldn’t help. She had to have been told the same after her sister had been drug away before her very eyes. If anyone understood how accepting the horrible truth—enough hadn’t been done—meant more, it would be her.

He chased the bitter pill of Will’s final moments with a litany of other regrets from the Godawful day. Which abso-fucking-lutely trod deep into classified territory. Nik didn’t care. Not about it being classified and not about her knowing the violent side of him. Nik could handle Thea hating him because of the truth, but he couldn’t live with her believing he was someone he wasn’t.

“The rest of the Team had the tangos, um, terrorists, surrounded. I put Will in the helo for evac and went for the sniper. I wanted the guy who killed Will to suffer. I wanted him to know he would die, like Will did. So I engaged him in a way…”

“You made it look like self-defense?”

“Something like that.” He expected her to recoil in horror at the revenge he’d taken, but neither disgust nor shock ever saturated the empathy in Thea’s eyes.

Her only response was the whispered truth, “Some scales are never meant to balance no matter how much we need them to.”

She said it in a way only someone who knew one life would never equal another could. And yet, she still had no memory of why she’d know such a heartbreaking reality. Danny Dalton’s murder while in prison probably hadn’t given her any comfort. Why should it when it couldn’t bring back her sister or her father?

Thea shifted under his scrutiny and silence, reaching around him to adjust the monitor. “You’ve been researching the tornado?”

Thankful for the distraction, Nik nodded. “There were three fatalities. Two males and a female.” Which wouldn’t have been a concern, except the red-haired girl he had found dead under Thea’s truck wasn’t among those listed.

“I was lucky you found me.”

“You can thank Titan.” Nik drew in a long breath. He’d avoided talking to Thea about all the things he’d found out about her past, but the time had come when he needed her to know. “I’ve also been researching you.”

“I figured.”

“I’d only been able to get so far on my own, but Leo helped me for a while before he went on to bed.”

“You told Leo about me? Coop, too?” Thea’s body stiffened and her face blanched as she slid off his lap and stood. “I don’t know them. I don’t trust them.”

“You don’t have to. You only need to trust me.”

She leveled her eyes, her deep coppery irises exploring his. “You found out something bad. I can tell.”

Nik didn’t try to charm her or turn her body into a molten pool of need. Two things he could’ve easily distracted her by doing. “Would you prefer the good news first?”

“It would be a nice change of pace.”

His fingers reached out and wrapped her wrist to find her pulse kicking hard, thrashing in fear. This scared her. Trust. Truth.