Her eyes met mine for a brief second, and she smiled shyly before turning her attention back to Hadley. “You think you could check over an essay for me really quickly before the boys start drinking and duty calls?” she chuckled softly, but tension pulled across my shoulders.
Skylar was unashamed of her job here. She held her head high and knew her place, and you would also never mistake her for a woman who just wanted to get her claws into a brother. She was always the first to offer to help out when many of the other girls would just laze around and do as little as possible.
“Sure,” Hadley replied happily before looking over her shoulder at Leo. “Can you watch Macy for a little bit?”
The corner of his mouth pulled up, and he nodded. “No problem, I’ll run diversion if the boys come searching for you,” he said to Skylar with a smirk.
Skylar giggled, the sound soft and sultry, making my stomach twist. “Thanks, Leo, it shouldn’t take too long.”
Just as I thought she was about to turn and walk away, she stepped forward and leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to Macy’s cheek, her face just a breath from my chest. I inhaled, her scent sweet and fresh like a spring breeze in a field of flowers. I couldn’t tell if it was perfume or maybe her shampoo because it was so subtle, but it was enough to have me leaning forward as she pulled back, searching for more.
She looked up at me with a cheeky grin on her face and nodded to Macy. “Looks like she’s found a comfortable place to sleep.” Looking down, I found the four-year-old snoring softly against my chest, a small amount of drool leaking from her mouth onto my cut.
When I looked up again, the girls were gone, and my best friend was staring at me with a smug smirk. “You got a thing for Sky?”
I snorted, hooking my other arm under Macy and boosting her a little higher. The kid was getting heavy. “I don’t have athingfor anyone. You of all people should know that.”
I didn’t get to know women, I got what I needed and walked away. It was one of the reasons I didn’t use the club girls. It was too personal for me, having them constantly in your space all the time. Attachments, whether small or large, weren’t something I needed, and I also didn’t want to deal with being psychoanalyzed.
“She’s cute… just saying, Knight,” Leo said with a shrug, but I saw the look in his eye.Hopeful.
My body unconsciously shuddered at the use of my surname. During deployment, that was what we were known by, but I wasn’t that fucking man anymore. For a second, I felt my lungs seize. Another reminder, a trigger they called it.
Don’t freak out.
Just fucking breathe.
“Next time, don’t sayJamison,” I growled, my jaw clenched tight as I tried to breathe through the pain that was stabbing into my temple.
“Come on, man,” Leo groaned as he followed me over to the bar, his child like a dead weight in my arms. Macy was growing fast. I hadn’t been lying when I said I wanted to be around more to watch her grow up. When Leo’s wife died and left him suddenly as a single father, it was Macy that brought him back when I felt like I was suddenly losing the only other person on my team who had managed to survive the accident.
The little girl had no idea just how important she was, how much she had impacted his life and mine too.
Leo had been my rock for a long time, my best friend, the one who knew how much I struggled with memories and moments where I felt like I was back there. While he managed to make it out of that situation almost unscathed, the occasional nightmare haunting him, the survivor guilt that I harbored was second to fucking none.
Why the hell was I left breathing?
There were people there with kids they would never see grow up. Families that relied on them to put food on the table, and keep a roof over their heads.
Yet, I was the one chosen to walk out of that accident with my life.
When Hadley had experienced the same thing after Slider’s death, I’d told her it was because she had a purpose. For her, I knew it was because Leo never would have made it if he had lost another woman he loved and Macy needed her daddy.
For me, though, I had to wonder whether it was really true.
Was there a reason I was still here?
Because at this point, it seemed like the universe may have just slipped and pointed at the wrong person.