You Only Love Twice Read Free

fade. She wanted to do nothing more than lie down and utterly fade away.
Maybe if she didn’t eat, didn’t drink anything, she could see him again.
    She didn’t reply to Ten, simply stared at the wall.
    “Everyone’s leaving. I thought you might want to come out
and say good-bye.”
    She hadn’t wanted them to come over anyway, so she figured
the hoard of visiting vultures could find their way out on their own. They had
been Jamie’s co-workers, people who knew their dad, but she hated them. She
hated everyone.
    “Don’t do this to me.”
    She ignored him.
    “Goddamn it, Phoebe. Don’t you dare fucking do this to him.”
    Her eyes came open as if of their own accord. Ten had said
“him” and her body responded. “I’m not doing anything.”
    The words came out on a growl. She was resentful. He
shouldn’t be here. He’d only been Jamie’s brother. He hadn’t been his wife, his
lover. Ten hadn’t been trying to have Jamie’s baby.
    “You’re fucking giving up, Phoebe.” She could practically
feel Ten’s will as he paced across the floor. Ten’s cowboy boots thudded along
the hand-scraped hardwoods as he continued to move. Ten always had trouble
staying still. He paced when he was anxious. He’d been really anxious since
that moment that they’d heard Jamie had been captured by jihadists .
Ten had spent months trying to find him, months in the deserts of Iraq. And
then more time trying to find his body because the fuckers had moved them,
likely hoping their bodies would never be found , that
the families would never be able to give them a proper burial.
    The jihadists caught Jamie with an Army unit after their
convoy had been hit by an IED. Jamie had been working
on tracking a terrorist sect using a group of Army grunts as cover.
    It hadn’t been cover enough.
    Her precious husband had been brutally
killed along with every single one of his teammates.
    All except for one. When Ten had finally found the place
where Jamie had been held and murdered, there had only
been one of the soldiers left. Jesse Murdoch. Why had he survived when her husband had been murdered ?
    Did it even matter since he was gone? It was so much easier
to lie here. She didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to drink. She’d even stopped
hurting. Her body was utterly numb.
    She didn’t move, didn’t react because it didn’t matter.
    “Phoebe?”
    She wanted him to go away. If she ignored him, maybe he
would leave. It hadn’t been real until she’d gotten Jamie’s body back. For a
year, she’d been able to pretend that he was simply on another job. The whole
time they’d been married, they had both worked for the Agency. They often spent
more time apart than together, so it was easy to fool herself. It had only been
very recently that they had talked about getting out, settling down and
starting a family. Even after they had the intelligence that stated he ’d been captured , she’d been able to pretend that Jamie
would be home as soon as the Agency could arrange it.
    But the world was changing and the jihadists were more
serious. It wasn’t about ransom money now. It was about ideals, and they
recruited more and more soldiers when they killed Westerners.
    Ten had been the one to ID Jamie’s body.
    Why had Jesse Murdoch survived? Some people thought he sold
the rest of them out. Had he sold Jamie out?
    She hoped Jesse Murdoch died a rough death.
    “Goddamn it, look at me. You are not this sad sack bitch who
simply fades away because something bad happens.”
    That got her sitting up. “Something bad?”
    Ten was a son of bitch who always played things down.
Always. He’d done it since they were kids. He’d done it when their father had a
heart attack and died. She wasn’t about to let him do it now.
    He leaned in. “Yeah. Do you think this is what Jamie would
want for you? Do you think he would want you to lay here and die because you
wouldn’t get up and fucking fight?”
    “Fight? Who do you want me to fight,