Page 80 of Beautiful Killer

Another dead end. Miller was proving hard to catch and I was fucking done. I wanted him found goddamned now.

Hunter walked into the apartment. He didn’t do as may high-risk jobs as he used to now he had a family. He’d chosen to ease back for his woman. Him and Van had switched roles in a lot of ways. Now Van was in the field more and Hunter dealt with clients one on one, as well as the running of the agency. But jobs like this, that involved one of us, we all came in, no matter what it was.

“Let’s get the hell out of this dump,” he said and I followed him out of the building.

Van got in his car and I got back in Hunter’s.

He pulled out and glanced at me. “How’s Sunny?”

“Okay.” I shifted in my seat, knee bouncing with an excess of restless energy. We hadn’t talked much about what happened in the office two days ago, but the guys knew I’d moved her in with me. “She wasn’t throwing up this morning.”

Hunter stared straight ahead. “I envy you.”

I turned to him, not sure how he could envy any part of the fucked-up position I found myself in. Yes, I wanted Sunny, but I wasn’t right for her. That kid sure as hell never asked to have me as a father.

“I fucking hated that I wasn’t there for Lulu when she was having Josh. I wish we could’ve just been a normal couple, that I’d got to watch her get round and soft with my kid, that I’d been there to get her whatever weird shit she craved in the middle of the night, that I was there to get her off when her hormones went fucking haywire.” He cursed under his breath. “I can’t wait to knock her up again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. We weren’t exactly the kind of guys that had a lot of deep and meaningful conversations. “Not sure she wants that from me,” I muttered. “Not sure I’m the right man to give it to her, either.” Turned out I could get deep after all.

“Do you want to be?” he asked.

More than anything. But that didn’t change who I was, what I’d done. I was still the same man I was when I got home from Afghanistan. “Yeah,” I heard myself say, despite the all the crap going on in my head.

“Then show her.”

I didn’t know if I could. I hadn’t wanted much of anything for a long time, hadn’t fought for anything that mattered to me because nothing had. I’d gone through the motions. Ate, slept—when I could—and worked. Then I’d met Sunny and for the first time in over a year there was something to live one more night for. Every time I walked out of her room, I told myself it was the last, but then she was all I could think about, and I knew I was going back. Every day I went out to work, I had a reason to not run into a shower of bullets, not caring if I got out or not, to make sure I was alive come nightfall because I had somewhere to be.

Sunny did that.

I hadn’t decided if it was a good thing or not. My weakness for her, taking what she gave me, enjoying what she gave me, felt like a middle finger aimed right at the men I lost that day. And I was still struggling to get my head around it. Around all of it.

We didn’t talk after that. Hunter drove me back to the agency, and we got back to work, trying to track the fucker who’d hurt Sunny.

Later that night, as I got into my car and headed for home, knowing that Sunny would be there when I walked in the door, that emotion came over me again, the one I hadn’t felt in a fucking long time.

Happiness.

I hated myself for it.