Smith (Silver Team #3)

Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

We were lying in Aria’s bed, her head resting on my chest, her arm diagonal across me with her hand on my lat, her legs tangled with mine. And for the first time that day I felt like I could breathe.

It was after the pizza I’d ordered was delivered, and we’d sat at her bar in her kickass kitchen and devoured the whole thing. As was Aria’s way, she’d guided the conversation away from the heavy and told me how she’d planned on salvaging her bottom line. She didn’t wheedle or pick apart my relationship with Rie or demand to know where my head was at. Instead, she gave me time to digest—and there was a fuckton absorb.

Aria was not the first person to confront my self-imposed blame. She wasn’t even the second or third. But she was the first person who’d asked a question I never thought to ask myself.

How much more were you supposed to love her before she started loving you back?

She was also the first person to challenge the on-going ‘what-if’ game that played out whenever someone brought up Rie. The fuck of it was, Aria was right. Way back when, if I’d walked away from Rie or I’d left her behind when she first started to waver, I wouldn’t have been able to live with the guilt. The truth I hated to admit was, I’d tried. I might’ve failed, but I’d busted my ass to keep her with me.

“I have a confession,” Aria said softly as we lay in bed.

I couldn’t tell if her muted tone was just sleepiness or if it was her nerves. After the shit I’d put her through, my guess would be apprehension.

A pang of new regret scored through me. Aria was not ever timid. I’d done that to her.

“What’s that, baby?”

I felt her rub her cheek against my bare chest, then she lifted her head, twisted, and pressed a kiss to my pec before she whispered there, “I’m falling for you.”

With that, she resumed her position with her cheek on my chest like she hadn’t just rocked my fucking world.

I waited, lying there in the dark with Aria’s body molded to mine for the fear to come, for the deep-seated knowledge I would never be good enough to come, but it never came. All I felt was gratitude and relief. So fucking grateful and relieved I hadn’t fucked up so royally it would take an act of God to get her to forgive me.

“You gotta know, I feel the same.” She snuggled closer. Then I gave her the rest because she needed to have it. “That’s why I pulled the shit I pulled. I knew the moment you opened your door I was in trouble. I knew when I told you making you safe wasn’t a waste of my day and you gave me a lopsided smile, I was gonna fall in love with you and there’d be no stopping it. And when you made a quip about no lube, no foreplay, I knew I was gonna take my shot knowing it was the most foolish thing I could do. By the time I left your house that first day, I was in so deep it scared the hell out of me. Every day since then, it’s been a losing war fighting against the knowledge I’ve fallen in love with you and scared as shit I’m gonna fuck this up and hurt you.”

“Smith—”

I tightened my arm and spoke over her interruption.

“Only part of that fear is wrapped up with Rie. The rest of it is knowing you deserve a man who is a thousand times better than me.”

Apparently Aria had something to say and wouldn’t be put off. She demonstrated this by rolling over me, planting her knees on either side of my hips, and pushing up so we were face to face, her looking down at me with a scowl.

“Only I get to decide what I deserve,” she asserted. “And for the record, I knew I was in trouble when I opened the door and found the hottest guy I’d ever seen standing on my porch. But when you looked at me through the storm door, and I felt your stare like it had reached inside me and grabbed hold of my heart, that’s when I really knew. I also knew I was lying when I promised to keep my eyes open and my heart closed. For a shot at you I was willing to try, but I knew it wasn’t going to work.”

“That was fucked-up to?—”

“No part of how we got here is fucked-up. We had to travel whatever path we needed to travel.” She fell silent for a moment, then worry etched into her eyes when she said, “I can’t go back.”

She didn’t have to say more, I knew what she meant. And I was pleased as hell she felt that way.

“Neither can I.”

“So we’re doing this?”

“By doing this you mean I’m gonna stop being a dumbass and start working to make this worth it for you so you don’t kick my ass to the curb.”

“It’s already worth it.”

Fucking shit, that felt good .

“I knew that no lube one-liner was a winner,” she noted and smiled.

Aria could be sexy, she could be funny, she was always beautiful, but there were times when she was so fucking cute she made me want to kiss the hell out of her. And since I could, my hand shot up, tagged her around the back of the neck, and I pulled her down to do just that.

It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since I’d kissed her, but it had felt like a lifetime. With every glide of her tongue, she erased a little more of the sting of my past until all I could taste was her.

Beautiful, sweet, funny, cute Aria.

Nothing tasted better.

The alarm I’d set on my phone woke me up. Since Aria had fallen asleep straddling me, with her face tucked into my neck, chest to chest, this meant the alarm woke her up, too.

“No,” she grumbled and shoved closer.

I’d never slept with a woman full out on top of me. It wasn’t a comfortable position but Aria’s sleepy, warm, soft body on top me was my new favorite way to sleep. It sucked I couldn’t enjoy waking up with my woman for the first time with nothing weighing heavy, no secrets between us, no coming up with excuses to push her away while holding her close.

I needed to get my ass up and get on the road.

Aria’s problems were over. In a few hours after we got what we wanted from Billy Rice we’d hand him over to the police and Aria’s file would officially be closed for us. The police would do their thing but Z Corps’ part would be done.

“Need you to roll off, baby.”

“I very much dislike Billy Rice,” she dejectedly grumbled as she just as dejectedly rolled.

I tagged my phone, stopped the alarm, then rolled with her, coming up on my elbow.

Damn, she was pretty. I didn’t need the light to see it. Her beauty just filled the room. And I almost threw all that beauty away, almost lost it, would’ve, if it wasn’t for her calling me on my bullshit. That thought made my gut roll.

I brushed her hair off her neck, kissed her throat, moved to her lips, kissed her there, but pulled back before I texted my team to hit Billy’s without me.

“Sleep, baby. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“ Home ,” she muttered and it sounded like she was smiling.

I rolled back the other way, hauled my ass out of bed, and got dressed.

It wasn’t until I was standing in the doorway of her bedroom looking at a sleeping Aria did it finally hit me.

This was it.

This was how every morning of the rest of my life would start, or a variation of it. But the mainstay would be the same—waking up next to Aria.

On that thought, I walked out of the bedroom, through the quiet dark of her house, out the front door to Jonas idling at the curb.

I did this with my head full of the future I never would’ve believed could be mine, with a woman who I never would’ve believed I could earn, but I had.

Meaning when I left Aria’s I knew without a doubt she was mine.

“Clear,” I called out from Billy Rice’s empty bedroom.

Three more ‘clears’ were called out from Theo, Jonas, and Easton from three other bedrooms.

What the fuck?

It was four AM on the dot and the asshole wasn’t in bed.

His truck was parked in his driveaway. As of ten minutes ago when Garrett ran a trace on Billy’s cell it was inside this house.

But no Billy.

I yanked my phone out of my pocket, found Cash’s name, and hit the call icon.

“That was?—”

“He’s not here. You got anything?”

“No. Me and Coop have eyes on the house from the back, clear shot of the storage parking lot, and three of the neighbors’ back yards. No movement.”

Fucking hell.

“Cell’s in the kitchen,” Theo announced.

“Standby.”

“Copy,” Cash said and disconnected.

I looked around Billy Rice’s bedroom.

Bland, boring, no personality, nothing on the walls, nothing on the dresser or nightstands. If we hadn’t had confirmation from the neighbor Mike that Billy actually lived in this house, I’d wonder if he did.

I opened a drawer in his dresser.

White socks, folded neatly, all lined up. I opened another drawer. Boxers, all grey, folded neatly. I went through each drawer and found much of the same. Tees precisely folded, white in one drawer, shades of blue in another, black in another. All plain, no logos.

The closet the same, color-coded and clean.

Good Christ, I’d had to stand for inspection and my footlocker had never been as exact and organized as his closet.

Something was wrong—it was not the way Billy kept his home, it wasn’t that his cell was in the kitchen, his truck in the driveway, his ass not in bed—it was all of that and more.

The why of it.

I could feel it.

I pulled my phone back out of my pocket, scrolled to Aria’s number but didn’t get to connect the call before Easton raced into the room.

“I got something.” He held out a sheet of paper. “Cash receipt for the storage place. Name on the receipt is George Calvin, unit six-two-four-one.”

“George Calvin?”

What the fuck?

“Payment is cash, no way to confirm if it’s George’s or Billy’s.”

“Kira said there are no working cameras.” I reminded Easton.

“Nope. We need into the unit and we need to talk to the manager and show him…or her pictures of both men. Hopefully, they’ll feel helpful.”

Yes, we needed to do that after the facility opened. Before that we needed to break into the unit. One good thing about cameras not working was Garrett didn’t have to worry about taking them offline while we did our thing.

“Let me call Aria—” My phone vibrated in my hand.

Zane’s name scrolled across the screen.

That feeling I had turned poisonous.

I fucked up leaving Aria in bed.

Alone in bed in her house.

An address Billy knew.

Fuck!

I connected the call.

“Yo.”

“Get Jonas and get your ass to Aria’s. Leave the rest?—”

I was already jogging out of the bedroom when I interrupted.

“What the fuck’s going on?”

“Before I tell you that, I need you to know me, Linc, and Leo are on our way to her house now.”

Zane. Linc. Leo.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Jonas!” I yelled.

He popped out of one of the rooms, paused long enough to see whatever it was that Jonas saw that made him so perceptive, then he asked, “What do you need me to do?”

Pure Jonas.

Theo rounded the corner coming out of the kitchen and stopped. “What’s?—”

“Jonas and I are leaving. Zane will call you with a brief.”

With Jonas dogging my heels I walked out the front door.

“Talk,” I clipped.

“Captain Taylor called me. He was on the phone with Aria when she heard someone break in?—”

“Motherfucker!” I shouted, uncaring it was the butt ass crack of dawn and it was likely I’d just woken up the street. “Her cameras?”

“Were taken offline, five minutes before Taylor reported the line went dead.”

“Keys,” Jonas demanded.

“I’m—”

“Give. Me. The. Keys.”

I tossed Jonas the keys and jogged to the passenger side.

“We’re five minutes out,” Zane informed me.

Which meant he knew for the last thirty minutes at least Aria was in danger.

Motherfucker .

I bit back my commentary about how I felt about that and climbed in the Escalade.

“What’s Garrett doing?”

“Kira’s on it. Garrett’s staying intel for your team.”

No doubt Kira would be on it but I was still going to call her.

“You call Theo. I need to call Kira.”

I disconnected, found Kira’s number. My finger was hovering when Jonas barked, “SITREP.”

“Aria was talking to her father when she heard someone breaking in. That was over thirty minutes ago. Zane, Linc, and Leo are enroute to her house now.”

I knew Jonas was doing the same calculations I’d already done.

Roughly fifteen minutes after we rolled down her street someone was in her house.

The house I’d left her alone in.

Jesus. Shit. Fuck .

Jonas hit the accelerator and drifted around the corner onto route 50.

I left my woman sleeping in bed with a head full of the future I never would’ve believed could be mine, with a woman who I never would’ve believed I could earn but I had, and I did this while not paying attention to her street.

I got into the Escalade knowing Aria was mine, but didn’t bother to scan the cars are we drove away.

This shit was on me.

And this time, there was no denying I was to blame.