Saved by His Submissive (21 page)

His uncle leaned back again. Every inch of the move was a slide of smooth, careful assessment, acting like a Bowie knife to Garrett’s gut.
I’m not some interrogation subject. I’m the guy who grew up worshipping you, damn it, and now you won’t even take off your sunglasses to meet me in the eye.

Still, like an imbecile himself, he waited and hoped that this time would be different. That maybe—

Wyatt would yank off his glasses, like he did now. His uncle would stare at him with pure pride and affection, like he did now.

Garrett dipped his own gaze. He’d dreamt the moment, right? But when he lifted his head again, Wyatt’s pure blue eyes looked back, now attached to a sincere smile.

“We came because I wanted to, Sergeant.” He used the rank with purposeful respect. “Because I needed to see you. To talk to you.”

The confession pushed a weird overload button in his brain. Was this
seriously
happening? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d entertained this fantasy, before finally shoving it down into that dark pocket of his psyche called
better to just forget
.

“Why?” he finally challenged.

“Besides the fact that I’m about twelve months too late on doing it?” Wyatt answered. “Oh, hell. Who am I kidding? Later than that, right? But I started thinking about it in earnest right after they declared Sage K.I.A.” His fingers went white where they still hung on to his glasses. His other hand balled into a fist on top of his thigh. “My God, Garrett. My soul cracked for yours.”

Though a moist twilight breeze blew up off the water, Garrett felt like he’d been thrown into the desert. Heat blasted him, especially north of his neck. He opened his suddenly-parched lips, trying to suck in some air.
Yeah, right. So not happening, man.

“It’s probably best you didn’t come around,” he muttered.

Wyatt’s reaction wasn’t what he expected. Did the man really laugh? No. The sound was more a mocking snarl. “Well, fuck,” he spat. “Didn’t you rattle that off like a damn fine soldier?”

 Garrett sat up straighter, yanked that way by a rod of tension up his spine. “I have no idea what you’re—”

“Of course you don’t, Sergeant.” He didn’t invoke the rank with such reverence this time. “Neither did I, when everything in my world unspooled beyond my control.” He stared at the water again. The line of his jaw hardened into an anvil of antagonism. “So many people reached out to me… Your dad. Your mom. Pastor Dooley. All my goddamn doctors. And at least three head fucking shrinks.”

Garrett interrupted him with a snort. “I
hate
the head fuckers.”

“Yeah, so did I.” Wyatt shook his head. “Even going to see Dooley was preferred torture over them.”

“You mean Drooley?

Wyatt spat the mouthful of beer he’d just gulped. “Holy shit. That’s good.”

“And accurate.”

“Yeah, that too.” The man took in another swig of beer and kept it down this time. When he lowered the bottle, his mouth was re-set into a somber line. “But I shoved them all away, Garrett. I locked myself in a box of mental steel, forging the thing out of my anger, my fear, my goddamn guilt. I was the sole survivor of that attack, yeah? So how could anyone get that? How could anyone understand? How could anyone know what the fuck I was going through? How could any kind of therapy or prayer touch the depth of my shame? Psychology certainly wasn’t set up for my shit.

“And God? Well, in my mind, God had thrown me away, too. He’d intended to take everyone in that explosion, but got his hands full with the load, so he asked himself, which one could he do without for a few more years? Certainly not Mason, who had a wife and two kids at home. And not Searle, who spent her free time on base taking care of the stray dogs in the neighborhood. Looked like it was my pathetic ass.”

Garrett clenched his jaw. The heat engulfed him once more. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to be listening to every word from Wyatt’s mouth, and admitting the same damn thoughts had relentlessly drilled his own mind over the last year. He sure as hell didn’t want to accept the disgusting conclusion to which Wyatt had led them both, and he fought the mental shit bath of putting it into words. But somebody had to be the voice of this truth.
He
had to be that person.

“But you didn’t tell anyone, because that’s not what Special Forces does, right?”

Wyatt said nothing. He didn’t have to. The gripping fist in Garrett’s gut confirmed his call had hit the bull’s-eye. He closed his eyes, trying to process the blow like he had a thousand times before—and failing, just like he had a thousand times before.

“We take the pain, don’t we, Uncle? That’s what we’re trained best for. We take it through boot camp, through Assessment and Selection, through Final Qualification, through every op in every shithole they can throw us into. Then when the agony attacks and the spool starts unraveling, we search the database in our heads, certain we had to have missed the training about this shit—because surely they didn’t just leave it out of the curriculum.”

“And God forbid that we ask anyone what page it’s on.” Wyatt flung his own empty bottle into the trashcan. “Even when the book is open and in front of us.”

Garrett stared down the neck of his beer bottle. He wasn’t certain what to say to that, or how to say it if he did know. Just two hours ago, he’d vowed to Sage that he’d never turn into the man who’d crushed so many fantasies of his youth. But this twist on things was…fucking bizarre. Wyatt himself was telling him exactly how to keep that promise.

It was an act of bravery that hauled the fist from Garrett’s stomach and up into his throat. The man could’ve laid down his life for Garrett with more ease than what he did right now. Opening every inch of one’s heart to another human being was one of the first behaviors they pounded from a guy in Basic, let alone what he went through on the way to Special Forces.

“I saw the book, Garrett,” Wyatt continued. “And I saw
you,
okay? You need to know that. I saw everything, all the havoc my asshole act wreaked on you. I just didn’t—” He leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. His shoulders slumped. “I didn’t know how to climb off that damn pedestal you had me on. I’m—I’m not sure I wanted to. After all, I helped you build the thing. And I’m sorry for all of it, Garrett. I’m so goddamn sorry.”

The knuckles at Garrett’s throat grew brass battering rings. Apparently, his soul knew what to do with them too. The pain barely made breathing possible, let alone speaking. Why was this moment such a torment? He’d wanted nothing more than this from Wyatt for so long, words that hammered down the beginnings of a bridge between them once again. But it had been so long since he’d believed this would ever happen… He’d filled in the cracks in his spirit with the no-fuss mortar that let in no more light, and let out no more feeling. He liked it so much that he piled on years’ worth of the gunk, letting it harden into layers of a warrior they called the Hawk. The guy with the surprise claws. The indispensable killer.

If he believed Wyatt’s words, he’d have to tear off all that mortar. He’d have to look at the cracks again. He’d have to feel them again.

“Fuck.” He muttered it before finishing his beer in one chug. “Why?” he finally growled at his uncle. “Why are you doing this now?”

Wyatt tilted his head again. A broad smile spread across his lips.

“Josie’s pregnant.”

Garrett gaped. Wyatt chuckled at him. “Yeah, that was my reaction at first too. We’re not exactly youngsters, and this was definitely a surprise. A pretty awesome one.” The smile faded but the gentle lines remained on the man’s face. “After the shock wore off, I realized that I couldn’t think of being a proper father to this kid until I set things right by you. When we heard about the miracle of you finding Sage, I knew I’d been given a perfect chance to do that.”

Garrett felt his eyes narrowing. Wyatt had never been this open with him, even on those blissful deployment breaks, and yet an undertone still clung to the man’s voice, a layer of mortar
he
wasn’t peeling off. He issued his reply with an air of careful casual. “A
perfect
chance, eh? Now how did you figure that?”

Another low laugh rumbled from the man. “Son, if burying your woman didn’t deplete the control spool, getting her back surely fucked the thing to hell.” Wyatt’s gaze darkened by a couple of shades. “Like I’ve been saying in my not-so-elegant way, I’ve been there. Maybe not the exact miles your boots have gone, but close enough, Garrett. Close enough.”

Garrett pulled in a deep breath and gazed across the water. The sky was turning lavender now. He thought about getting up and flipping on some lights, but the darkness felt better. Way better. It helped hide things like falling chunks of emotional cement.

“I’m fine.” He forced confidence to the words. “Sage and I…
we’re
fine.”

“Okay. Sure.”

The man’s snicker was unsettling. Screw that. Enraging filled the bill better.  “What now?” Garrett barked.

“Nothing, son. Not a damn thing.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Probably the same reason I don’t believe
you.
” He shook his head. “But you go ahead, Garrett. Keep up with the ‘we’re fine’ line. But repeating it a thousand more times won’t make it true.”

Garrett chucked his new empty at the trash can. Incomplete pass. The bottle shattered on the patio stones.
Perfect.
“Fuck. Off.”

 “Check,” the man replied. “I’ll do that. And you keep up with your ‘fine’ thing. Ordering your woman around like she’s on some weird probation but giving her little reason to feel connected or safe in the prison you’ve confined her in—her own home, at that. Jo and I didn’t notice all the tear streaks on her face when we got here, either. Of course, I won’t bring up how you barely touch her—”

“Shut up.” Garrett surged to his feet. A bitter laugh exploded from him. “You have a couple of big ones in that nut sack, Uncle, coming here and trying to call my shit about ‘connection.’ I’d laugh, but I’m too busy getting over the shock.”

Wyatt tipped back and touched a finger to his lips again. “Don’t forget the energy suck of keeping all those kinky fantasies under control.”

 Garrett froze. The action reflected exactly what the man had done to every blood cell in his body. He glared at Wyatt, but damn it, thanks to the lights he
hadn’t
turned on, his uncle’s face was draped in shadows. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The fucker made him wait through a tortuous silence. The only thing about Wyatt that moved were the flames in his eyes, billowed into a full bonfire now. Ironic, that. The fire didn’t do a damn thing for Garrett’s frozen bloodstream. This really, royally sucked.

“Garrett…I know you were there.” The man finally shifted. As he leaned forward to his knees again, he let out a rough cough. “That night, in the barn…when you saw Josie and me—”

“Fuck.” Garrett clawed at his hair and spun away.

“It wasn’t like I had an ear peeled for you, son. You scrambled outta there with the grace of an ox on an ice rink. Man, I sure hope they gave you dance lessons in training.”

“I can’t believe you’re trying to joke about this.” He veered around and rushed at his uncle. “No, what I really can’t believe is how you never, in twelve years, chose to
really
grow a pair and talk to me about it!”

“Right. That’s such a great conversation starter for post-Drooley Sunday brunch. ‘Hey Garrett, did I ever tell you how your Aunt Josie saved our marriage by suggesting I tie her down, flog her then fuck her until she screamed through four climaxes? Oh, and pass the coleslaw, buddy; thanks.’”

“You lived
next door,
Wyatt.” He spread his arms. “I was fifty steps away!”

“You were also a goddamn pup.”

“No.” He swept an arm back and stabbed a finger at the man. “That’s what you wanted me to be. That’s what you saw because of the fucking pedestal you couldn’t climb down from. I was a young man. And,” –he watched his finger shake—“I was confused.” More mortar tumbled off his heart, this time in chunks. It hurt. Holy hell, it hurt. “I was so fucking confused.”

He dropped his arm. He let his gaze follow that direction too. Wyatt’s continuous regard still weighed on him like a wool blanket. The guy picked
now
to fork over his undivided attention?

At last, his uncle gave a low sigh. “Yeah,” he murmured, “I was confused too.”

Garrett nodded tightly. This transparency had taken twelve years to come, but the man was giving it his all and a little more. On any mission, that was all you could ask of someone.

Garrett turned up the gas-fed flames beneath the rocks in the fire pit. Zeke would be bringing the women home soon, and he knew Sage would be chilled. Her endurance against the Puget Sound moisture had been whittled away by a year in the wild. He paced across the patio and glanced through the living room toward the front door, half from the hope she’d be coming through it and half to buy some time to form a clear thought.

No-go on the Sage appearance. But he did connect with the curiosity that burned at him from Wyatt’s confession. He sat again, voicing his question with more than a little amazement.

“So that’s really what happened?
Josie
was the one who—who saved your marriage?”

Wyatt gave back a slow, sure smile. “Damn straight she did.”

“By offering herself to you.” Garrett felt his brows crunching in incredulity. “By asking you to…”

“Be her Dominant. Yes.”

Garrett emulated his uncle’s pose, settling elbows on his knees. “With all respect, Sir, that’s not the first thing wives usually bring up as a quick fix-it for matrimonial woes.”

“Oh, we were way past the easy repairs, Garrett.” The man’s grin twisted into an uneasy grimace. “Your dad and I started scouting bachelor apartments for me. I even thought of going back into the big green government machine as a trainer, maybe a desk jockey somewhere.”

“That would’ve killed you.”

“I was half dead anyway.” As the man peered into the flames, Garrett noticed things on Wyatt’s face that had never been there before. Deeper grooves around his mouth. Gray tinges in his beard and hair. A well-earned wisdom in his eyes. “My spool was at its end,” the man went on. “I wasn’t super soldier anymore. I wasn’t super
anything
anymore. And when Josie first talked to me about the lifestyle, I have to admit that I wondered who she was, and what she’d done with my wife. Turned out she’d been in some online support groups, and made a friend who swore to her that BDSM was better than Xanax, and a hell of a lot more satisfying.” With that assertion, his lips curved up again. This time, the expression came with a wicked twist. “Turned out she was right.”