He paused and I could guess what was coming next.

“But as a father who loves his daughter—and you really cannot understand until it happens to you—if you hurt her in this, and break her heart, I am coming after you, Blackstone, and I’ll have forgotten we were ever friends.”

I grinned in my chair, glad that this conversation was out of the way. “Fair enough, Tom Bennett. I can live with those terms.”

We spoke a bit more and I got the full backstory on the Oakleys of San Francisco. I arranged for us to talk again soon, to keep him abreast of any new developments, and ended the call.

I stayed at my desk for a bit, wrote up some notes, and sent some emails before shutting down my laptop. As I turned out the light, Simba fluttered madly from the aquarium glowing behind my desk. I went back and tossed him a treat before heading out to the balcony to sit for a while.

I passed the bedroom and heard nothing but silence. I wanted Brynne to sleep well. No more nightmares for my girl. She’d been through enough for a lifetime already.

The night sky held millions of stars tonight. It wasn’t often they were so sparkly and I realized it’d been a long time since I had sat out here. I lit up another cig. This one was a throwaway though. If I smoked outside then nobody had to know about it. I shouldn’t smoke inside with Brynne here anyway.

I crossed my feet up on the ottoman and leaned back into the lounger. I let my mind wander into thoughts of today and all that had happened. I thought about Brynne’s tragic story and just how things had altered now. For both of us. Yeah…our times of darkness had been like a parallel universe. She’d been seventeen and I’d been twenty-five. Both of us in a very bad place. I felt more connected to her than ever, sitting out here alone, dragging spiced tobacco into my lungs.

I used to smoke Dunhills. It was my brand of choice and top of the line. I like fine things so they were no surprise. But that all changed after Afghanistan. Lots of things changed after that place. I absorbed the nicotine my body craved and looked up at the myriad of stars shining overhead.

…Every guard smoked clove tobacco. Every last motherfucking rebel had one of those lovely, imperfect handrolleds hanging off his lips as they went about their tasks of beatings and mind f**ks. And the smell? Like pure ambrosia. I dreamed in smokes in the first days of my capture. I dreamed about the sweet scent of clove mixed with tobacco until I was sure I would die before I ever tasted one. The beatings and interrogations started later. I don’t think they knew what they had captured at the first. All in good time though, and they did figure it out eventually. The Afghans wanted to use me to negotiate the release of their own. I got that much from their nearly insensible ranting. Was totally out of my hands though. Government policy is no negotiation with terrorists so I knew they would be disappointed. And I knew they would take out their frustrations on me. Which they did. I often wondered if they knew how close I’d come to breaking in the beginning. I had terrible guilt for knowing the truth, and felt great relief I’d never had to choose, but there were some interrogations (if you could call them such) where I would have sung like a canary in a coal mine if they’d offered me one of those beautiful, sweet, clove handrolleds to smoke. It was the very first thing I asked for when I walked out of that rubble pile. The US Marine who got to me first, said I was in shock. I was…and I wasn’t, I suppose. I think he was in shock that anyone alive came out of what was left of my prison after they bombed it to shit (which I thanked him nicely for). But really I was in shock because I knew in that instant that the fates had changed for me. I had finally found some luck. Or luck had finally found me. Ethan Blackstone was a lucky, lucky man—

A shadow moved the faint light behind me and caught my attention. I turned my head. My heart lurched inside my chest to see Brynne standing just on the other side of the sliding glass watching me. We stared at each other for a beat or two until she slid open the door and stepped out.

“You’re up,” I said.

“You’re out here smoking,” she said.

I set the ciggie in the ashtray and held my arms open to her. “You caught me.”

She came right over, looking decadently tousled from sleep in a light blue t-shirt and a pair of my silk boxers. And nothing underneath them. I tugged her down to me and she smiled a little, folding her long legs on either side of mine, straddling my lap and holding my face in her two hands.

“You are so busted, Blackstone.” Her eyes moved infinitesimally, trying to read me. I knew that’s what she was doing and I so wished I could know what she was really thinking. Just the fact that she had crawled up on my lap and held my face thrilled me, but seeing her relaxed and happy after waking in the night, pleased me more.

“Mmmmm, I know how you can punish me if you want,” I told her.

She snuggled against me and I drew my arms around her. “What were you thinking about? You looked very far away, sneaking your cigarette out here in the dark.”

I spoke into her hair and moved my hand up and down her back. “I was thinking about…luck. Being lucky. Having some.” It was the truth and the reason I still breathed even if I couldn’t share that part with her yet. I wanted to, but didn’t know how to even begin that journey with Brynne. She didn’t need more painful shit piled on top of what she already had to carry around.

“And are you? Lucky?”

“I didn’t used to be. But then my luck changed for the better one day. I took the gift handed me and started playing cards.”

She traced over my chest with her fingers very softly, probably unaware of how much she got to me.

“You won a lot of tournaments. My dad told me that’s how he met you.”

I nodded against her head, my lips still on her hair. “I liked your dad very much when we first met. I still do. I talked to him tonight.”

Her hand on my chest stilled for a moment but then resumed the soft rubbing. “And how did that go?”

“It went just about like I imagined it would. We both said what we needed to say and got down to brass tacks. He knows about us. I told him. He wants the same as me—to keep you safe and happy.”

“I do feel safe with you…I always have. And I know my dad respects you very much. He told me how he had to push you to take me on.” She made a sound against me, her mouth right over my pectoral. A nice sound; soft and pretty, and one that got me very hard. “I just wish he had told me what was happening with you.” She paused and then whispered longingly, “I have to know what’s going on, Ethan. I can’t ever go back to being the unaware victim. Secrets will destroy me—I just can’t handle them now. I’ll always have to know everything. Waking up like that and finding myself on that table, not knowing who or what—I can’t—”