The Renegade
Chapter 7

Sawyer was in completely uncharted territory. More specifically, he was naked in Jo’s bed, his body loose, his stomach full, and his chest loaded with emotions he had no idea how to name. After the first round of mind-scrambling s*x, they’d eventually gotten semi-dressed and returned to the kitchen. There, he’d discovered that the dinner she’d made was just as delicious warmed up as it had been the first time she’d served it, that she looked adorable in her oversized sweater and matching knit shorts, and that she loved olives so much, she’d stolen them right off his plate. Although neither of them acknowledged the detour they’d taken to her bedroom that had kept them from finishing their meal the first time, their conversation came just as easily as it had all week. By the time Sawyer had snagged the tomatoes off her plate (turnabout, and all), helped her tidy the kitchen, then taken her back to bed for a second, slower round of s*x that had somehow been even better than the first, he’d come to a startling realization.

Jo was here for two more weeks. She clearly had a job opportunity in front of her that was both big enough to alter her career and make her doubt herself all in one go. She was cautious—not without reason, but still. She probably didn’t want anything other than a casual extended hookup while she was here in Remington.

Goddamned inconvenient, then, for him to discover that he hadn’t just wanted her, but he really f*****g liked her.

“Hey,” Jo said, her voice half-sleepy and fully hot. “You okay?” She paused to bite her l*p, and sweet baby Jesus, was she trying to end him? “Is this weird? The staying the night thing, I mean.”

Sawyer shook his head. “No,” he said. She hadn’t technically asked him to stay, but it was well past midnight at this point, and he definitely didn’t want to leave. “It’s not weird at all.” A thought occurred to him then, making his oh-shit meter spike. “Unless you don’t want me to?”

Jo laughed. “Are you kidding? I definitely want you to,” she said without pretense. “But if that’s not it, then what’s the matter? You’re awfully quiet.”

He knew he could dodge around the question. Tell her he was tired, or that it was nothing, or make up some story to avoid the feelings that were churning around in his rib cage. Hell, he really should.

But life was short, and happiness came at a premium. Taking it, especially when it was right there in front of him and so damn beautiful that it ached?

That was something he’d sworn he’d never pass up, and it wasn’t a promise he ever intended to break.

So Sawyer said, “My mom wasn’t really in the picture when I was growing up, so my old man raised me on his own. He’s a good father—better than most, actually. But it was just me and him, and most of that time, he was working. He had to, I know. There were bills to pay, and running your own bar isn’t a nine-to-five. But I always kind of felt…I don’t know, a little lonely, I guess.”

“That makes sense,” Jo said. The quiet that ensued gave him the room to keep going, and hell if he didn’t take it.

“I enlisted in the Marines the week I graduated from high school. I wanted to serve, and I knew they’d pay for college as I went, which was great, because we didn’t have the money for me to go without taking out a huge loan. At the time, I thought those were the only two reasons I chose the military, but now, in hindsight, I know I was also looking for a second family.” Anton, Mikey B., Pax, Daniela—God, they’d all been more than unit-mates. They’d been his brothers and sisters.

He pulled in a breath, trying to let it steady what would come next, but Christ, this never got easier. “I did three tours, with time home in between. The military’s not too interested in burning people out,” he said, the words falling softly in the shadows. “I was active a lot of the time I was stateside, doing training and working on my degree. But I never questioned that I’d go back for as many tours as I could. By then, I had a pretty wide skillset, and that sort of experience is valuable on certain operations.”

Of course, he couldn’t tell her anything more specific than that. God knew it was an understatement the size of a small town. Only personnel with the highest-level security clearances had been briefed about some of the things he’d been trained in and all of the things that his unit had done. Including his last op.

“Were you with the same people the whole time?” Jo asked, and he nodded.

“Mostly. Some people do one tour and they’re done, others opt for different deployments if they can get them,” Sawyer said. “But there was a small group of us who ended up together all the time. We were really close. And since we’d had a lot of training and were used to being in different locales, by the third tour, we were being sent out on some pretty covert ops.”

“You mean dangerous,” Jo said. Since Sawyer couldn’t really answer, he didn’t, but she read between the lines well enough. “God, that must have been terrifying.”

“In a way. But we were a unit. A family. It’s a lot like how your sister relies on Maxwell when they work together, I’d guess. The shit may be hitting the fan, but you know you can put your life in your teammates’ hands and it’ll be okay. We were well-trained for combat situations. For all situations, really.”

The irony of it slapped Sawyer in the face. For a whole excruciating year, he had questioned the validity of that claim. Was there something he’d missed that day? Something one of them could’ve done that would have changed the trajectory of events? If Anton, who was notoriously slower than the rest of them because of his two hundred-sixty-pound linebacker frame, had been on point instead of Mikey? If Daniela had been on everyone’s six instead of Sawyer? Or Pax?

But he knew now that those questions had no answers. Nothing would change what had happened, no matter how much he’d bargained with God at one time for that not to be true, and as hard as it was to talk about his past, he needed Jo to know.

So he kept going, pushing the words past his thumping pulse. “A couple of years ago, we were on an op. It was far from home, but nothing we hadn’t done hundreds of times before. We got to a certain point where the terrain made it impossible to keep our cover. We didn’t usually put much distance between us, but we couldn’t risk being seen. I’d been on our six, so the rest of my unit advanced while I stayed farther behind to make sure we had a safe exit path if we needed it, and also to keep watching their backs.”

As if she could sense what was coming, Jo slid her hand over his chest, propping herself on her other forearm to look at him. “Sawyer, I know I asked what was on your mind, but we don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

He shook his head, wanting to get the words out. Needing to. “They were about three hundred yards away when one of them tripped an IED. There was a split second where I saw the flash of light before I realized what it meant,” Sawyer said, and Christ, how that moment had lasted both forever and not long enough for him to do anything other than scream. “The heat and noise were unreal. I was blown completely off my feet.”

“Oh, my God,” Jo whispered, her eyes wide in the shadows. “That’s how you got hurt.”

Sawyer nodded. “I hit my head on the ground when I landed.” Okay, so it was a massive understatement, but there was no reason to scare her with words like communicated skull fracture and cranial blunt force trauma. “My helmet gave me some protection. To be honest, I probably would’ve been killed if I hadn’t been wearing it. Something like a third of people with severe head injuries die. Still, even with my TBI, I ended up being the lucky one.”

Jo tightened her hand over his. “I’m so sorry, Sawyer. I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have been.”

“Three of my unit-mates were killed instantly in the blast,” he said quietly, holding onto her hand like it was a lifeline, letting her presence ease the breath jammed to his lungs. “The fourth, Pax, was seriously injured. The blast took out both of his legs, one above the knee. I stabilized him as best I could and radioed for an emergency evac, but it was bad. We both knew it.”

Jo’s hand stayed steady even as the pulse at her wrist quickened beneath Sawyer’s grasp, and the steadiness let him get the rest out. “Pax made me swear that if I made it out of there, I’d live enough life for all of them. That I wouldn’t be afraid to grab every chance that was in front of me and run with it, and that I’d never waste a single opportunity.”

“And you promised,” Jo said.

“It was the last thing he ever heard,” Sawyer said. “I swore, right then and there, that I would do right by my unit-mates. I’d live not just my life, but the ones they’d never get, too. It took a year of so many hospitals, MRIs, and medical tests that my file is the size of a dictionary. I finally ended up here in Remington because they have one of the best hospitals on the East Coast, but when I got here, I was in pretty rough shape, both physically and emotionally. I didn’t think I had it in me to do the work to heal.”

“Oh, Sawyer, I’m so sorry.”

Bolstered by her steady presence, he nodded. “Thanks. I ended up going to a Marine PTSD group therapy session—mandatory, because I probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise—and that’s where I met Gamble. We talked, and after a few more sessions, I started to realize I owed it to myself and to my unit-mates to do the hard work of healing. I did every kind of therapy that exists. Physical, occupational, psychological—it was painful and soul-crushing and I wanted to give up every f*****g day. But I couldn’t. I’d promised Pax I’d live my life with no regrets. I had to heal, no matter how much it hurt.”

Understanding dawned on Jo’s pretty face. “That’s why you’re not afraid to go big all the time.”

And here it was. The thing he needed her to know. The risk he had to take. “I don’t know what this thing between us is, or what it’ll bring. But here’s what I do know. The idea of spending the night here with you is the opposite of weird. Impulsive or not, I’m pretty f*****g crazy about you, Jo. I don’t want to go home. I want to be right here, with you. I want this.” He brushed a k**s over her mouth. “No matter what it is, for as long as you want it, too.”

For a minute, she said nothing. Then she broke into a smile so pure and so utterly beautiful that it knocked right into him.

“I suppose that’s a good thing,” Jo murmured, returning his k**s with a slow press of her lips. “Because as crazy as it is, I don’t want you to go home, either.”

And as she settled in beside him and they both drifted toward sleep, Sawyer realized that telling Jo about his past and seizing the present moment hadn’t been a risk at all.

It had been a beginning.

* * *

Jo brushed her teeth,made a pot of coffee, and waited for the other shoe to drop on her head like an anvil. Not only had she and Sawyer had toe-curling s*x (twice!), but he’d trusted her enough to tell her about his past. Jo’s heart had ached as he’d told her about the attack where he’d been so seriously injured, then nearly broken outright as he’d confided he’d been the only one to survive. If anyone had told her, even a couple of weeks ago, that she’d meet a guy who would reveal such a personal part of himself with her after only five dates, she’d have said it was too much, too fast. But nothing about Sawyer felt anything other than just right. His devil-may-care outlook made perfect, heartbreaking sense now. He was living his life to the fullest not just because it was what he wanted, but also because he’d sworn to honor the people he’d considered family.

Frankie was right. Sawyer was a good man. A man who had held her as they’d fallen asleep. A man who wanted to spend the next two weeks with her, no matter where that led them.

A man who was standing, shirtless and beautiful, in the doorway to her kitchen, and oh, Jo was in deep, deep trouble.

“Hi!” she chirped, cringing inwardly at her far-too-happy-for-the-morning tone. Ugh, she was going to bungle this. She had no idea how to handle even regular mornings-after, let alone ones after a night like they’d just shared.

Sawyer? Apparently knew exactly how to handle them, because he simply smiled and breezed into her kitchen, wrapping an arm around her to brush a quick k**s over her mouth. “Hi. Thanks for the spare toothbrush.”

Jo had learned—yes, the hard way—to always keep an extra toothbrush in her purse in case of emergency auditions. “Oh. Sure. Do you want some coffee?”

“Please.”

She turned to grab a mug from the cupboard above the coffeepot, her movements growing easier. This was just Sawyer. Same as always, even though the whole shirtless-and-barefoot-in-jeans thing was more than slightly killing her. “There’s milk in the fridge, and sugar right there on the counter,” she said, passing him the now-full mug.

“Ah, no, this is perfect. Thanks.”

Before she could ask him what time his shift started at the Crooked Angel, her cell phone rang, and shit. Shit!

“I’m so sorry,” she said, scrambling to grab it from the counter. “I totally forgot I have a morning video chat with my daughter. I really can’t—”

“No, no, take it. I’ll go back to your bedroom to give you some privacy,” Sawyer said, moving toward the door.

“You don’t have to.” The words were out before she could stop them, but she didn’t try to pull them back. “It’s fine. Really. I won’t be long.”

Sitting in one of the chairs at the small kitchen table, Jo propped her phone against her mug and hit the button to answer the call. “Hey, butter bean.”

Mikayla’s face appeared, making her heart squeeze. “Hi, Mommy! Were you sleeping? You took a long time to answer.”

“Nope,” Jo said, willing her face not to flush. “Just making sure I had a good spot to chat with you. Did you eat breakfast?”

“Yes. Daddy made pancakes and bacon and eggs.”

Jo’s brows lifted. “That sounds fancy.”

“He had a sleepover with a new friend, so we needed a lot,” Mikayla said, and theeeeeere it was. “But Daddy made me a Mickey Mouse pancake. I ate the whole thing.”

“It sounds delicious,” Jo said. She spent a few minutes asking Mikayla about school, listening to her chatter away about the local book fair and her last swim lesson. Although Jo was focused on Mikayla, she couldn’t miss Sawyer on the periphery, patiently drinking his coffee and scrolling his phone on the other side of her kitchen. After a few more minutes, Derek popped onto the screen to say hello to Jo and gently tell Mikayla it was time for school. Jo said goodbye to both of them, blowing k****s at Mikayla and promising to talk to her again tomorrow.

“Sorry,” she said, dipping her chin as she flipped her now-dark cell phone face down on the table.

Sawyer waved her off. “Please don’t ever apologize for talking to your daughter, Jo. She’s the most important person in your life.”

“She is.” Jo smiled warmly. “Mickey Mouse pancakes and all.”

“Gotta be honest, I work in the restaurant industry and I didn’t know that was a thing.” Sawyer laughed, coming over to sit across from her. “Pretty brilliant.”

“Ah, you learn all sorts of things as a parent. Most of them very strange and not very useful as a whole.”

Sawyer lifted a brow at her in challenge. “You knew that a pacifier would make Kellan and Isabella’s baby stop crying.”

She lifted a brow right back. “I can also sing every song on the Moana soundtrack, know how to get peanut butter out of pigtails, and can successfully change a diaper one-handed.”

“Damn. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or turned on.”

Jo threw her head back and laughed for a solid five seconds before she realized Sawyer might not have been kidding. “Seriously? You heard me say diaper, right?”

“That’s not the part I’m talking about,” Sawyer said, playfully rolling his eyes. “But come on. That’s some pretty high-level ability. Smarts and skill? Definitely hot.”

“Clearly, you’ve never seen the sleep-deprived parent of a teething toddler,” she joked.

Sawyer shrugged. “No, but I kind of hope to be that parent someday.”

Jo’s coffee mug hit the table with a thunk. “You want kids?”

“You look surprised.”

“Well, maybe, yeah. It’s not necessarily something you hear a lot of twenty-six-year-old ex-military badasses say.” For God’s sake, she hadn’t even given kids a whole truckload of thought until those two pink lines had shown up on that pregnancy test.

“Maybe not,” Sawyer agreed. “And I’m not saying I want kids right this instant. But someday, yeah. Having kids is something I definitely want to do.”

Jo thought about Frankie’s boyfriend, Shawn, and what a great dad he was to Isla, and how amazing both Gamble and Kellan were with their infant sons. Was it really that big of a surprise that Sawyer wanted kids someday?

“Well, I kind of got thrown into the deep end when it came to becoming a parent, and I respect the fact that it’s not for everyone,” Jo said. “A lot of people don’t want kids, and that’s totally okay. But for me? I couldn’t imagine not being Mikayla’s mom or not having her in my life.”

“She sounds like a great kid,” Sawyer said. “She’s definitely got a great mom.”

His eyes glinted, his mouth curving into a smile that turned her panties into dust. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

Sawyer stood, taking her hands and gently pulling her to her feet. Jo wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her body melting against his as he kissed her neck. “Even if it’s true?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered, her sigh becoming a gasp as he kissed lower, then dropped to his knees.

“Good. Because as far as you’re concerned, I want to be everywhere. And I’m going to start right here.”