Code Name: Ghost - Sawyer Bennett Page 0,83

while he was gone to Ft. Bragg for training?

Would he miss me after we’d broken up because I couldn’t handle the fear of loving someone like him?

Was it his way of saying we were actually over as of now?

I hadn’t responded because anything I could say would seem trite, given I was the one who made the bold proclamation I couldn’t handle what he did for a living. He’s also the one who said he needed to think things through.

He’s the one who was torn between his job and me.

Admittedly, that stung a bit, but, deep down, I understood it.

I look at his words.

I’ll miss you.

My fingers move across the screen, a panicky feeling overtaking me. Have I lost him already because I unilaterally decided I couldn’t handle the reality of being with him?

My words are short, but true to my heart.

I miss you.

Not past tense. Not a premonition of how the future will unfold.

But how I feel, right now, in this moment.

I miss you.

I wait a few minutes for him to reply, but he doesn’t. It’s late, and there’s a good chance he’s asleep. He would have had an exhausting day.

Or he could be out with the guys, having some beers to celebrate a day of jumping out of planes.

Which is totally cool, too.

The point being, I don’t take his lack of response to mean he’s done with me. Malik isn’t that type of man. If he said he wants some time to think about our future together, it means he’s going to think about it and then we’re going to talk about it.

I put my phone on the table and turn out the light, accepting my future is still very uncertain as of yet.

CHAPTER 27

Malik

When the plane touches down on the runway in Pittsburgh, a curious sensation ripples through me.

A sense of homecoming, and it’s been years since I’ve felt that.

It used to be flying home to visit my folks in Montreal produced that bubbly feeling of excitement, but now it’s the fact Anna lives and makes her home here that has me reveling in it.

Pretty sure the message being spoken through feelings is Anna is my home now.

Kynan helped me to figure it out. Can’t say as I’m surprised as I’ve been told by others he has a known history of meddling in his employees’ love affairs.

It all happened over beers after our first day of jumps in Ft. Bragg. Kynan decided to join our training group, him being former British Special Forces. While he didn’t go out on missions anymore, he wasn’t about to pass up the chance for some thrills, which as owner of the company and the man with congressional connections that made this training mission with government troops possible, it gave him the absolute right to tag along.

Since deciding to toss out concerns over bro-code violations, unwilling to let that stand in the way of my happiness—and, more importantly, of Anna’s—I’d had no qualms with talking about her. So, when Kynan asked me how things were as we’d sat around a large table in some dive bar in Fayetteville drinking beers, I’d told him the truth. “Not good.”

This led into a group discussion between Ladd, Jackson, Bodie, Kynan, and me about what we do for a living and how it affects the ones we love. Bodie’s recently been in the thick of things, having his own brush with death as a POW on a Jameson mission. That was before I joined the company, but it didn’t stress his relationship with his wife, Rachel.

But that’s apples and oranges. Rachel is an agent with Jameson, and she has been on her own hair-raising missions. She’s built for the risk of danger and death because it’s part of her job and her passion.

Anna isn’t built that way.

Bottom line, as my gut was swimming with way too much beer and my head overwhelmed with choices that needed to be made between love and duty, I figured out what I needed to do with Anna.

When I’d sobered up the next day, it still seemed like a great solution Kynan had offered me.

When he got word the negotiations in Colombia were complete and the hostage exchange was a go, I didn’t have a single regret about declining the mission and returning to Pittsburgh to talk to Anna. Kynan ended up going with the men in my place, and I am pushing forward with settling my future happiness.

I have the Uber driver take me to Jameson, since it’s a Thursday