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On some level he was glad. It meant it wasn’t just him losing it today.
“Why did you? What made you think that hunting me down was a good idea?”
For a moment she looked more lost, and Blue had no idea why he had the urge to reach out to her then. He repressed it. Hard.
“Because,” she said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Because you’re... you.”
Blue sighed. “Let me guess. Your brother lives some soft, sad life somewhere, and he likes to get off thinking back on his glory days in high school like every other douchebag with a soft, sad life. And he thinks I owe himsomething because back when we were teenagers, he wasn’t a complete dick to me. Is that why you’re here? Your brother thinks that all these years later I’m his pet commando because we were lab partners for five minutes one time?”
Everly rocked back on her heels then, and suddenly she didn’t seem quite as lost. But the strangest thing was that he did, with the way her green gaze met his and held, as direct as a touch, when he had no intention of letting her touch him. That way lay nothing but madness, he could tell. She had that look.
To say nothing of her connection to all that unfortunate history he wanted to forget.
“Jason is a pediatric surgeon who does Ironman Triathlons in his spare time,” she said after a slight pause. She didn’t bring up the oatmeal cookies her mother didn’t bake. Or the fact that Blue kept reading her wrong, because he wanted her to be dismissible. He really, really wanted it. “I don’t think he’s sad, but what would I know? I’m his sister, and he lives across the country. He doesn’t tell me all his stuff.”
“I’m sure he’s a terrific guy.” Blue glared at her, and she still didn’t crumple, and that meant either she really was a suicidal psycho—though, as much as he wanted to, he didn’t get that vibe from her—or she was an even bigger problem than he wanted to face. “Maybe if I’d thrown a few footballs around on summer evenings, I’d be a terrific guy, too, but that ship sailed a long time ago. And I mean that literally. I was in the navy.”
This time when Everly frowned at him, it was more than a head trip. The breeze picked up her hair, and he could feel it brush against his arm below the sleeve of hisT-shirt. And the way she looked at him made something inside him kick, hard.
It wasn’t pity. He wouldn’t have taken that well.
But he thought maybe this was worse. It looked a whole lot like compassion.
“You’re a hero, Blue,” she said quietly, but with conviction. As if that were an undisputed fact instead of a complex he was working to eradicate. And more to the point, a lie. “That was why Jason told me to find you.”
Then she reached over and made everything much, much worse by putting her hand on Blue’s arm.
He didn’t want this. The shock of connection that slammed through him, like he’d never had a woman before. That sympathetic gleam in her eyes. The fact that she didn’t justneedhim butknewhim—or some old version of him he hadn’t consideredhimin years.
He didn’t want any of this.
Blue didn’t know why the fact that she’d known him when he was scrawny and weak was so powerful. She should have been nothing to him except the memory of a pink bike outside a dismal house he’d never considered his home in the first place. He didn’t know why she got to him at all. Or why her hand on his arm seemed to burn its way through him, like she was leaving new scars on his battered skin. And then lighting him up, deeper still.
He didn’t like it. Any part of it.
“Please, Blue,” Everly said softly, as if she trusted him on a personal level. Not just for his skills and abilities. When she had no reason whatsoever to do something so foolish. “Will you help me?”
He knew he was a goner when he didn’t fight it. When he only looked down at her as if he really was the heroher brother imagined he was. Blue knew better. If he was any kind of hero, he wouldn’t be here. He’d be done. He’d be kicked back somewhere, trailing movie stars and collecting cash, instead of paying more penance in Alaska Force.
Heroes didn’t need another mission. Heroes had nothing to prove.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t play the part for a little girl who’d gone and grown up pretty, and looked at him as if he could move the whole mountain that loomed behind them if he chose.
He’d never so badly wanted to be someone he wasn’t. Not even when he was seventeen and still believed he could live up to the legend of his long-lost father. Not even when he’d been that deluded.
“I’ll help you,” he told her, just to see her green eyes light up.
And regretted it the minute he said it, because Templeton was right. Everly Campbell got under his skin.
The smart move would be to send this woman back into whatever mess she’d made to handle it on her own, because no matter what it was, it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the things he’d done.
But while Blue might not have been a hero, he was a man who kept his promises.
If she could be saved, he told himself, he’d save her. For that scrawny kid she remembered who’d never managed to save himself or anyone else. Blue, on the other hand, was a lost cause. Some men had been born damned, and he was one of them, no matter how many Everly Campbells he tried to save.