Page 93 of Nothing to Fear

“What’s chaos?”

Gideon chuckled. “Conscious honed awareness of surroundings—the CHAOS game. We’d go to a restaurant. Before we ordered, Ben had Hannah and me close our eyes and answer questions. How many waitresses were inside, if there were any white cars in the parking lot, the location of every exit, to describe the people at the tables around us. That sort of thing.”

Snuggling into his body, she slipped her thigh in between his, tangling their legs. “How long were they a part of your life?”

“Years. When I started high school, Ben encouraged—more like ordered—me to pick a sport and stick with it. He said I had natural athleticism and could parlay it into a scholarship. He was right. About lots of things. In my junior year, Ben got transferred overseas and they moved.”

“Overseas for an insurance job? Hmm. Did you stay in touch?”

“No.” He heard the bitter upsurge of pain in his own voice, and Willow brushed her lips across his sternum. He wrestled between the gloriousness of the present and agonizing disappointment of the past.

Ben and Hannah had given him a home, shown him love, and he’d come to rely on them for support, for his abnormal sense of normalcy. Then they were gone.

“Losing them felt like abandonment.”

The anger had burned him up for years, even though Hannah had reached out with emails he declined to answer out of childish spite.

“My senior year in college, agency recruiters approached me. Their spiel about duty and patriotism, safeguarding the greater good…it all hit home.” Like a bullet to the heart.

There was no way he could’ve said no. He’d been called and he was ready to serve.

“After my time at the Farm, I was at headquarters, Langley. Found out I’d been selected for a deep black program.” Where the CIA trained him to be an assassin. “In the hall, I ran into Ben.”

She shot up, leaning on her forearm. “Were you shocked? Do you think running into him was an accident?”

“Yes and no. He’d just gotten transferred back stateside. When I saw him, everything made sense. Who I’d become, why, how. Pieces of my life, sort of an unsolved puzzle, fell into place. I was grateful to know the truth and for a second chance to have them in my life.”

“Did you ask him if he’d trained you for this?”

“No.” They’d smiled, shaken hands, and shot the breeze in their abnormal everything-was-normal way. “We never said a word about it.”

“Do you still see them? Or your mom?”

“I haven’t spoken to my mom since I left for college. She remarried and gave me the impression it’d be easier for her if I stayed gone.”

The emptiness of how his mother had discarded him never waned, but he no longer wanted it to eat away at him, defining his value.

“I didn’t waste time renewing my friendship with Ben and Hannah.” Friendship was such a shallow word. Family was better, yet still wrong. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told about my childhood or the truth about Ben.”

“You never told your wife?”

“No.” He hadn’t told Kelli so many things, and the stockpile of omissions and lies had doomed their marriage. “She didn’t know how much they meant to me or how they’d saved me. She just saw them as friendly childhood neighbors. Right before I transferred to the Gray Box, I learned Ben died on a mission.”

Shutting his eyes, Gideon wished he’d had more time with him after learning the truth. Not taken for granted that one day, they’d have the conversation instead of pretending there was nothing to discuss.

“I’m sorry, Gideon. Sounds as if he was the closest thing you had to a father.”

Father. Mentor. Friend. The one man who’d taught him how to be strong, the meaning of courage, the importance of sacrifice for the greater good.

“I stay in touch with Hannah. She’s always been a surrogate mom to me. We don’t talk often, and she doesn’t see me nearly as much as she’d like, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“I’d love to meet her and hear stories about you as a child.”

Stark wariness scraped him raw. The comment was premature. Contemplating the future while stuck in the thick of war was tempting fate. But it was a testament to her optimism and faith in him to get them through this alive.

“I can’t think past tomorrow.”

Willow sagged against him, arm slackening over his torso, hand slipping from his body. “I want this. Whatever this is between us.”