Shades of Gray

CHAPTER 23

IT was two in the morning and P.J. was wide awake, her leg throbbing. She’d refused another dose of painkiller because she’d wanted to evaluate exactly what she was dealing with.

Though just a flesh wound, her leg still protested if she put any weight on it. She had a limited amount of time in which to heal because she wasn’t staying behind while her team went to Jakarta. The truth was, she didn’t want them involved even if they were determined to be. She didn’t want her sins to be their own.

She pushed herself awkwardly from the bed and eased her feet to the floor. She had no hope of sleeping. She’d been out most of the day, aided by the pain medication Donovan had administered. She imagined the rest of the crew was sleeping soundly.

Donovan had arranged for the jet to take off early the next morning. After a quick glance at the clock, she knew it was pointless to even try to go back to sleep. She only had three hours before they moved out again.

The little cottage that Donovan and Cole had finagled was barely big enough to fit two people, much less her entire team plus Donovan. They’d insisted she take the bedroom, and Cole had carried her from the front sitting room where she’d spent some of the afternoon on the couch and put her on the double bed.

If she’d had more courage, she would have invited Cole to share the comfort of the bed with her. He looked haggard and worn down. But she couldn’t make the words come out.

Tentatively she took a step, bracing herself for the pain that shot up her leg and into her belly. She waited several long seconds as she sucked in breath after breath in an attempt to steady herself.

She needed the bathroom in the worst way, and she wasn’t about to call for one of the guys to help her with that particular necessity.

The few feet to the bathroom took an eternity. At the door, she paused and glanced into the living room to see the guys draped all over the furniture. They looked horribly uncomfortable. Steele and Cole were lying on the floor with their backpacks shoved under their necks to cushion their heads.

Feeling about a hundred years old, she shuffled into the bathroom to do her business.

It took longer than she’d have liked. She examined the bulky bandages on her right thigh. She’d been lucky. The bullet could have shattered her femur or worse, hit her femoral artery and she could have bled out in minutes. As it was, it passed through a chunk of flesh less than half an inch from her bone.

Push past the pain.

It was a mantra that had been effective for the last six months. At times it was the only thing that kept her going.

Clad in her underwear and a clean T-shirt, she pulled the shirt farther down her legs before she opened the bathroom door. As she stepped into the hall, she came face-to-face with Cole.

He was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, one leg pulled up so that his foot rested flat against the wall.

“You should have called for me,” he said tersely. “You don’t need to be up walking around. You’ll tear the stitches.”

“I’m fine,” she said, even as she gingerly took another step.

“The hell you are. Every step you take, you go even paler, and your forehead is so clammy I can see it from here.”

Without saying anything further, he pushed off the wall and wrapped a supporting arm around her.

“Wrap your arm around me and hold on. Put most of your weight on me.”

Relieved he hadn’t picked her up and carried her, she did as he instructed and limped forward into the bedroom. At least he seemed open to her trying to get around on her own. Or mostly on her own anyway.

When they got to the bed, he helped her sit on the edge and then he plumped all the pillows so she could scoot back and sit up in bed in comfort.

After she got situated, he sat on the edge of the bed facing her. He pulled one knee up and rested his forearm across his leg as he studied her.

“How are you feeling?”

The way he said it told her he wasn’t asking about her leg. She expelled a long sigh.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I haven’t allowed myself to feel anything for the last six months. But when I knelt there in the dirt with Nelson’s blood on my hands, I thought to myself you should be jubilant. You should feel vindicated. Justice has been served and he’ll never hurt another woman or child again.”

Cole slid his hand gently over hers, lacing their fingers together. Just that simple gesture chased some of the lingering sickness from the pit of her stomach.

“Instead I just felt . . . sick. It all came rushing back at me, and I’ve tried so hard not to remember. I swear it was like he’d raped me all over again. Isn’t that stupid?”

She tried to laugh but it came out more as a sob.

“God, I had him at my mercy and all I could think was that it was like being raped all over again because that’s all I could remember. Him on top of me. Him overpowering me and all the hatred and revulsion I experienced.”

Cole squeezed her hand, but his hand shook against hers, giving her a hint of the emotion running through him.

“It’s not stupid, baby. Nothing you feel is stupid. It’s how you feel, so that makes it legitimate. Do you understand what I’m saying? I won’t let you beat yourself up for being human. What happened to you wasn’t just a simple injury in the course of a mission. It was something no person should ever have to endure. You can’t just shrug that off and pretend it didn’t happen. Sometime, someway, you have to deal with it, and I don’t think you have yet. I know you haven’t,” he added softly.

“I hate it,” she whispered. “Oh God, Cole, I hated feeling that helpless. Not even when all the shit went down with my S.W.A.T. team did I feel helpless. I felt angry. I was pissed. I was disappointed. But what I did was my choice. I didn’t have my choices taken away from me.”

Cole leaned forward, pressed his lips to her forehead and left them there. She leaned into him, closing her eyes as they sat in silence for a long moment. Just him being there was enough. He didn’t have to offer her platitudes.

When he pulled away, there was a hardness in his eyes that told her the gloves were about to come off. She nearly breathed a sigh of relief, because it was getting too heavy. She much preferred his anger to the overwhelming worry in his gaze.

“Why did you run, P.J.? Do you have any idea what that did to me? To us? The team? When Steele told me what you’d done, I felt like someone had sucker punched me. The other guys were just as bewildered. We aren’t your goddamn S.W.A.T. team. We aren’t dumping you when things get sticky.”

The very real anger and frustration in his voice made her feel shame. There was nowhere for her to go to hide from the look in his eyes or the way he stared so intently at her.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. And at the time it had been true. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I was sick to my soul and all I could think about was revenge. I was consumed with hatred and shame. God, do you have any idea how it feels to be totally helpless while someone holds you down and degrades you? I felt like those bastards had taken my very soul.”

Cole’s jaw tightened. “Yeah, I do know. Maybe not on the same level, but goddamn it, I know what it feels like to be helpless. I had to sit there and listen to the whole goddamn thing, P.J. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. To have to sit there while someone I care about was savaged? It makes me sick to even think about.”

She paused and looked up, her jaw going slack as she processed his words. Some of her shock must have shown on her face.

“Yeah, that’s right, P.J. I care. I care a whole hell of a lot.”

She didn’t know what to say or how to react, because they both knew he wasn’t talking about caring on a more casual level. Like the way Dolphin or Baker or Renshaw cared about her. This was something much deeper, and it scared the hell out of her.

Unable to do anything else, she gripped the hand holding hers and squeezed, hoping the gesture conveyed what she wasn’t able to put to words.

He leaned forward, tense and hesitant. His free hand went to her face, brushing aside her hair, and then he simply kissed her.

It wasn’t the burning, scorching-the-sheets kind of kiss that they’d shared that night so many months earlier. There was no impatience and no demand. It wasn’t even sexual. The touch was so exquisitely gentle that it made her want to cry.

He had a way of getting to her. Past her barriers. And there he was, at the very heart of her before she even realized he’d slipped past.

When he drew away, he rotated so that he could climb onto the bed beside her. Then he simply pulled her against his chest, holding her with both arms.

“Rest and let me hold you,” he said in a quiet voice. “Just you and me, P.J. Don’t think about the past or the future. Just focus on right now, you getting better, and let yourself lean on me.”

She rested her head on his chest and stretched her injured leg down the length of his. He was warm and solid and it felt so very good to give in and allow him to shoulder her fears just for a little while.

It took some time to muster the courage to ask the question burning her tongue. She opened her mouth several times and ended up closing it when her nerve fled.

“You care about me . . . even after what happened?”

At first she wasn’t sure he heard her muffled whisper. Then she realized he was merely collecting himself before answering. His voice was chock-full of emotion. He sounded angry, but not at her. The words came as though he struggled to get them out there without losing his composure.

“I don’t give a damn about what happened other than the fact that those sons of bitches hurt you. They put their hands on you. What happened changes nothing about my feelings for you. If anything the fact that you’re coming out of this so strong makes me respect your strength even more, and I already had a healthy dose of admiration for your ability to kick some serious ass.”

She pushed upward, placing her hand in the hollow of his chest as she looked him in the eye. “I have scars, Cole. They aren’t pretty. You saw where he cut me. There are scars in each of those places. And they’re not going away.”

He touched her chin with the tip of his finger and then kissed her almost as if he couldn’t resist. Then he let his hand slide down until his palm rested over her heart.

“I’m more concerned about the scars here,” he said, pressing inward on her chest. Then he lifted his hand to her temple and tapped gently. “And in here.”

He kissed her again, this time on the forehead.

“The physical scars don’t change who you are, P.J. The emotional ones do. Those are the ones I want to help you with. I don’t give a damn that your body has a few more scars. Hell, I’m riddled with them and you didn’t seem to mind.”

Her cheeks tightened and heat rose up her neck.

He picked up her hand, the one resting on his chest, and he laced their fingers together, holding their hands between them.

“I’ll wait as long as it takes, P.J. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Whatever it takes for you to heal physically and emotionally. Just know that I’m not going anywhere, and it’s time for you to stop running.”

She snuggled back into his embrace, nuzzling her cheek against his chest as she processed the words that still floated around her mind. Such beautiful words, and she knew he meant them. Cole wasn’t the type to bullshit. He was lighthearted and fun when the occasion called for it, but at the end of the day, he was a straight shooter. He was blunt and spoke his mind.

And now that he had spoken precisely what was on his mind, she was blown away by the implications.

Here was a man who admitted he had feelings for her. Not only that, but he was also willing to wait for as long as it took her to get her head on straight and heal from the trauma she’d endured.

Hell, even more than that, he was risking his life, his reputation and his career in order to help her seek justice.

He was helping her find a way to murder another individual.

She winced at the thought of taking him down with her. She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear it if the team was dragged through the mud with her.

She closed her eyes, secure in the knowledge that she was safe. Cole was here, surrounding her. Offering her unconditional support.

He’d been up front with her. Had told her what was in his heart. Now she had to figure out what was in her own heart and sort out her muddled feelings for a man who infuriated and enticed her in equal measure.

The future was a very scary prospect when she didn’t even know if she had a present. What scared her the most, though, was the very real possibility of screwing up a relationship with someone she genuinely cared about before it even got off the ground.

Cole deserved someone who could give him one hundred percent. Someone who could give herself without any reservations. He was a good man. Loyal. Fiercely protective. A man any woman would be lucky to have.

She could see herself as that woman, and maybe that was what scared her most of all.

And it wasn’t as simple as deciding they fit and then living happily ever after. They had their team to consider. They had dozens of young girls depending on them. They couldn’t afford to fuck it all up because their emotions got in the way.

As much as she wanted to be selfish and let tomorrow take care of itself, she knew she had to remain objective and make the mission her priority. For her own sanity as much as for the protection of those precious little girls.