get you back was to trade Beckham for you. Only it didn’t work out like he’d planned. The FBI found Beckham, and she was hurt. Badly. I’d decided we needed to go to the hospital to offer moral support for Troup, but what I didn’t know was that Toot was behind the abduction of Beckham. When I got to the parking lot, Trouper then decided to beat the holy hell out of your man until he stopped fighting back. Fast forward a few months, Trouper went to jail and your man found out that he’s paralyzed from mid-hip down.”
Cannel took a giant step back.
“Toot,” she breathed. “Is that true?”
“I’d do anything for you, Cannel. Even trade someone else for you. I just wanted you back.” Toot sounded desperate now.
He should be.
Even I could see that Cannel was no longer on his side.
Even with how non-descriptive Kansas was, how he’d only skimmed the top of the surface of things that had happened after Beckham was abducted, I could tell that she’d already chosen.
“I’ll ride home with you but only as far as my parents in Alabama. I’m sorry, Toot, but I don’t think that I can be with you anymore. Not after having to deal with my own hell for the last year. I can’t… I can’t believe that you would put some other woman into that position. Even for a half a moment,” she whispered.
Then she was walking toward Traci.
Traci pulled Cannel into her arms, and together they got into the car.
Toot looked pissed as hell.
I turned my back on all of them and walked back into the house, taking my wife with me.
But, just before I could close the door, Toot yelled out.
“You ruined my life, asshole!” Toot yelled. “She was only at that store because of you! She just had to go get you an engagement present. Fuck you!”
I turned stiffly in the doorway, my body vibrating with rage.
“If we’re playing the blame game,” I said. “Maybe you should think about the fact that I almost lost not only my wife, but my unborn child.”
Toot blanched.
“What?” he asked.
“My girl was pregnant when you took her to that hellhole,” I said. “Do you want to know what sex trafficking places do to women that are pregnant?”
Toot swallowed. “I didn’t know.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s not an excuse.”
With that, I tossed Kansas a glare, clearly telling him to get Toot the hell away from me and walked back into the house.
“I don’t see how the hell Toot can still be in the Air Force,” Six said. “I mean, didn’t he do something just as bad, if not worse, than Trouper?”
“Because Toot has a lot of fuckin’ money,” Beckham grumbled as she walked over to the couch and sat down, causing Sin to bounce next to her.
I grinned when he tossed her an amused glance.
He moved over, allowing me room to sit beside her.
“Meaning he was able to afford a really good lawyer. And since the undercover operation is still going strong there, they were able to keep a lot of it quiet since Toot could be a great person to testify against the outfit if they ever found the men responsible for abducting all those women off base,” Beckham explained.
Six sighed. “Well, that just fucking sucks. But at least you have your life back now. Everything worked out in the end. Even if it took you a couple of rocky months to get to that point.”
She had a point.
The last year had been a struggle, but in the end, I was free. I had a wife and a child. I had everything that I would ever need.
There was no room left for complaints on my end.
As long as I had Beckham and Hiro, everything else was an added extra bonus.
“I’m tired.” Beckham yawned. “Let’s go home and get our baby, then go to bed.”
I’d never heard a better suggestion in my life.
EPILOGUE
Here coffee, coffee, coffee.
-Coffee Cup
BECKHAM
Three years later
Heart in my throat, I stood at the chain-link fence and stared through the holes at my man that was about to get into the cockpit of a very fast, very terrifyingly new jet.
A year and a half ago, Trouper and I had been in the middle of discussing whether or not to have a second child when he’d gotten a phone call from Kansas. Kansas had explained that there was a company looking for pilots to test out their ‘new birds.’
Trouper had hung up with Kansas, determined not to bother