“You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  Saint leans in, his tan skin in stark contrast to the bright marble countertops he’s resting his hands against. Then again, everything is a stark contrast in my condo. There is no color. The only time that I see color in this place is when Olivia and Riley are here.

  I glance away from Saint to where Riley left her American Girl Doll. Complete with a mini fucking suitcase that had exploded all over the corner of the room. I haven’t moved it in over a week, not since their last time here after I surprised them with our night out at the circus. There hasn’t been much time for my two worlds to learn how to coexist lately. The one where I’m a ghost not sure how to tangle with the one that makes me feel as if I have a reason to breathe again. I’ve been struggling on how to handle my feelings for Olivia for a while now. The only thing I know with certainty is that this is something I’m not willing to give up. Which is what brought this conversation to a head when the guys got here for a briefing on our targets.

  “I think that you’re using your cock and not being logical about what’ll happen here. You think it’ll end well when you tell her that you got close to make sure you had the best chances to kill the kid’s father? I bet she’ll love that. She let that kid into your home and you’re using her to kill her father.”

  “Hey, man. You know he’s not using her. That’s not fair,” Evan, always the fucking peacekeeper, disagrees.

  I groan in my throat a sound of pure threat. “Fucking watch it, Saint.”

  “I’m not going to fucking watch it, Drew. We all gave up a lot to be in the shoes we’re in. You’re jeopardizing it all just to get some pussy.”

  It takes every ounce of calm I can muster not to come over the island between us and strangle this fuck.

  “You think this is about getting my dick wet?”

  “What else is it? You get close to her, helps she’s a hot piece and all, and you just happen to be where you need to be in order to take out Ray. You get the target and you get off the whole time. Doing that makes you reckless.”

  I cross my arms and level Saint with a cold glare.

  He matches me and leans back in the barstool he’s been sitting at for the past hour, in my kitchen, and throws that shit back at me.

  I see Evan and Hunt shift uncomfortably, both of them silent after Saint said his peace.

  “You got anything else to say, brother?” I grunt, not entirely in control of my anger.

  “Said it all.”

  “Said too fucking much,” I snap back.

  He tosses his arms in the air and stands from the island and I hear the barstool crash on to the floor behind him. The sound echoing around the silent condo like a gunshot.

  “What the fuck do you think will happen here? You going to let her know that you’re a dead man who spent over twenty years killing people? How about, you going to give her a chance to freak the fuck out after she finds out and leads the very people you died to protect your family from right to your doorstep—or worse, theirs. You know damn well what happens when they find out that you aren’t dead. That family you’ve spent all these years being dead for will become pawns. Oh, never mind, that’ll make good bedtime stories for the little one while you’re fucking her aunt, won’t it?”

  “Out of line,” Hunt adds, sounding bored.

  “Damn well not out of line and you know it,” Saint shoots back. “You aren’t the only one that has a stake in this game. I have people I ‘died’ to protect, too.”

  “There isn’t a single chance of that happening and you fucking know it.”

  “Do I?”

  “Every one of those people who could have hurt my family has been dead a long time. I made sure of it when the man I had sitting on my family told me he hadn’t seen anyone in years. I stay gone because they’re better off without me. And you fucking know nothing I do would jeopardize the people you left behind.”

  “Reckless.”

  “She makes me feel alive, brother,” I add, tone still hard and spitting nails, but of all the things I can tell him to make him understand what Olivia makes me feel, that’s it. That’s all he’ll ever understand. Because we’ve all been living and breathing as ghosts, not feeling a fucking thing since the day we became the men we are right now. “Not only does she make me feel alive, but that little girl gives me a sense of purpose that is more than just killing motherfuckers that make the world better when they are leaving this earth. I’ve lived feeling, seeing, tasting, nothing. Not a fucking thing. Look around you, Saint. I live in a box with no feeling. I’ve been existing, waiting for my real death. I’ve lost everything and never allowed myself to think that I could have more in this life. I was reckless and brought this to myself back then, but I’ll never make the mistake of being that way again. I left to protect those that I love. Do you not think that, by finding someone who made all of that seem like it was worth even more, that I shouldn’t hold the fuck on?”

  Evan clears his throat and I move my eyes to him. He gets it. He’s always been the one preaching that we didn’t just leave our lives to protect those we love. He always swore there was a bigger picture to the sacrifices we made. He fucking gets it.

  My eyes travel over to Hunt, seeing the normally unruffled man staring at me with so much written on his face, I don’t know how I missed it before. He holds himself with an air of detachment, but not because he’s unaffected … but because he wants this. He wants what I’m feeling with Olivia. He wants to feel alive again.

  “No shit?” he asks while my attention is on him.

  “Heart started beating again the night I asked her to call me Coop in bed.”

  “You dumb fuck.”

  I snap my eyes back to Saint, leveling him with the coldest of glares.

  “You’re going to get us and everyone we left behind killed.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What do you think will happen the second she slips and calls you that when you aren’t in private? You know just as well as the rest of us, if the right person hears and sees your ugly mug, there will be no going back. And the second they start digging into you, they start looking into us. The only reason we’ve been successful in staying fucking dead is because we keep ourselves in the shadows without attachments!”

  “You think I would be that reckless with you three? Let alone the people who I loved and left? LET ALONE with Olivia and Riley!” I roar the last part, feeling all of the rage and pent-up frustration I’ve felt since we started this conversation rushes to the surface.

  “I think you got a taste of sweet pussy and can’t think straight.”

  I’m around the island with his neck in my hand, his back against the wall, and my face breathing down on his. He matches me almost inch for inch, but I have him on build. He won’t get the best of me until I want him to move. So I hold his gaze, both of us with anger and frustration riding the surface of our skin like a cloak.

  “I got a taste of fucking life again,” I level out in a deadly calm. “I got a taste of a future that made my heart come back online for it. I held that woman in my arms while she drooled on my chest, her girl on my other side with her little feet digging their way into my gut, and I felt like I had finally found the reason that I gave up everything. It, for the first time in my life, didn’t feel like I had sacrificed everything the day I left my home. It felt like I had been given a second chance, one that meant I did the right thing all those years ago when I let the people who meant the world to me believe I had died. It wasn’t for just them, it was because she was waiting for me. You tell me how that isn’t thinking straight?”

  The heat in his eyes simmers and he just looks at me.

  “That woman wouldn’t so much as blink if I asked her to do that in private only. You know damn well she’s a good woman. And if you would think about why you’re really acting like this, you know you would do the same thing if you found someone who gave you the gift of life after being a dead man for so long.”

  I let him go and turn back to face the others. Both of them showing nothing but understanding in what I just shared.

  “You ready to hear what I know about Ray now?”

  “Dick,” Saint mumbles, fixing his sweatshirt. “You have to push me against the hard-ass wall?”

  “You have to be a fucking asshole about something that you didn’t even take the time to ask about?”

  He holds up his hands.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but you can’t blame me for questioning this. You’ve shown no interest in any woman since we started this unit.”

  “She isn’t just any woman. Not sure what else I can give you to make you realize that.”

  “Man, you know we were told this was okay when they set us up here. Encouraged even,” Evan states to Saint.

  “Said we would hide better with a family,” Hunt adds with a scoff.

  “Yet none of you mother fuckers have a family and we’re hiding just fine.”

  “Doesn’t mean we haven’t wanted one, brother,” Evan continues. “Just because you’re scared of finding more doesn’t mean we haven’t been waiting for the moment when we find someone worth living again for.”

  “Shit,” Saint breathes, shame written all over his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  Evan shrugs, but the pain is slashed on his face. He doesn’t talk about it a lot, but his chance to disappear came when a car accident stole his wife and child at the same time he

  “died.” He left behind a large family who felt that loss a lot harder because it wasn’t just him.

  “Long time ago,” he mutters, looking down at his hands.

  “Still sorry.”

  “Can we talk about Ray?” Evan asks, clearly done with this conversation.

  I move back to the other side of the island and toss them each over a folder. It’s not thick, but it contains what we’ve been waiting for.

  “Surveillance footage of Ray Graves leaving Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a week ago. Confirmed from both facial recognition software and voice confirmation during his chat with the gate agent. From what we could gather, he was coming from a flight leaving Charles de Gaulle Airport, but he hasn’t been staying in Paris or our contacts would have picked him up on CCTV already. Best we can tell is he’s been jumping around Europe for the past month so much that we lost track of him. Staying under the radar well enough not to get picked up on camera. Mafia’s after that fuck, so it’s not us he’s hiding from. He has no idea we’re after him. But, it’s clear he’s trying to get back to get the money that he knows Olivia and Riley have, that will clear the path for him to start funneling guns back into the states and we can’t let that happen. Last shipment ended up in a mass casualty gang war in Chicago.”

  “What’s the plan when he makes contact on US soil?”

  “The flight he boarded landed in Rome. He caught his tail ten minutes into his travel from the airport. We’re watching, but the thought is that he’s making his way back to Boston with a few distraction flights. I suspect he’s looking for a private charter at this point. His money might be running out, but it’s not all gone yet. He needs to get here, undetected, in order to make his move and get what he needs from Olivia.”

  “And,” Hunt starts with a deep breath. “What exactly do you think he plans on doing with Olivia?”

  I lean on the counter and look at each of the men who have made up my team. Men who I trust with my life, and in turn Olivia and Riley’s. Men who I’m proud to have been living the life of dead men with.

  “I think he’s planning on taking Riley and forcing Olivia’s hand with a ransom demand.”

  Equal heated words are grumbled on under of their breaths.

  “Not anything we can do other than stick close. One of you at the shop every day. I’ll stick close to Olivia and Riley. We do what we need to do to get Ray, and I do what I need to do to make sure the girls who restarted my heart aren’t harmed.”

  We continue to make small talk for a bit, catching up on sports and the women who Hunt and Saint met at the bar the other night that turned their backs into a mess of scratch marks. Those two, not sure why, but enjoy sharing way too much. It isn’t until I’m shutting the door on them that I realize what felt so wrong about my space this morning. Something that I didn’t notice because I was too busy focusing on Riley’s doll shit in the corner to see anything else.

  I see it now though.

  And it sends a chill through my veins.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I mutter, walking over to the bookshelves.

  Right there in the center, where it’s stayed for over twenty years, is the jar that meant the world to me: both the old and new me. The jar that I watched my family cry over as one of the most loving men I ever knew mourned his friend … me.

  Only this isn’t that jar.

  That jar is moved a little farther back, but not to hide it. No, it was moved back so that another could take its place. Identical in every way. Only perfect and new, not handled with so many touches and too many years of deep rooted sadness.

  Tentative steps take me to the shelf and I see the folded piece of paper in the space behind it, tucked between the old and new jar.

  If you weren’t so handsome, I would kill you for real.

  Tomorrow. 2:00 pm, I’ll be at your door.

  Don’t think of locking me out either, you hunk. You think Sway didn’t learn a thing or two from you brooding alphas?

  2:00 pm, Zeke Cooper.

  You’ve got a lot to explain.

  And I have a lot to get off my fabulous chest.

  Secret’s safe with me, for now. I’ll see how I feel after you explain your actions.

  Tata for now,

  Sway

  “Fuck,” I hiss, my eyes burning at Sway’s words.

  Only he could put so much flamboyance into a letter like this. I know, if he knows I’m here, that he can’t be feeling as carefree as it sounds. I just have to figure out what the hell he does knows and who he’s told. How the fuck could he have even seen me to find me? He would have to know someone in my building to get in, but if he’s learned from my old brothers, he could have scaled the fucking wall and no one would have noticed.

  I picture Sway, short and round in his crossdressing ways, scaling my high-rise with his platform heels. His long blond wig dancing in the Boston breeze. Glitter blowing in the air as it passes him.

  I check the clock and realize I have an hour before I come face-to-face with my past.

  The guys were right to feel fear over what could happen if me being alive got out. I just have to pray that Sway will handle it well and understand why I did what I did.

  Because if he doesn’t, not only will I lose what I’m building with Olivia and Riley, but everyone I loved and lost will be in danger.

  “Fuck,” I echo, feeling like the weight of the world is on my shoulders.

  That’s when I recognize the emotion weighing me down the heaviest. One I haven’t felt since I “died.”

  Fear.

  “How to Breathe” by Matthew Mayfield

  The heavy tick of the clock speeding the seconds closer to two o’clock are heavy in my empty condo. Each tick, each tock. They all sound like gunshots. I stand here, holding the note that Sway had left in one hand hung loosely at my side. A complete contradiction to the tenseness that has solidified my whole body. If it wasn’t for the sound of my breathing, I would think I had truly died. Not even my heartbeat is allowed to race, held captive in the paralyzing fear that has a stranglehold on me.

  He never should have been able to find me.

  None of them should have ever been able to find me.

  I was careful. I moved in a way that each step was planned and each second was calculated. I knew what was coming before I moved. Always. It’s how I’ve stayed alive in my death.

  I changed the way I looked in such an extreme way, you would have thought that I had surgery. The only thing that was left from the man I had been was my eyes, which I wore contacts to change the color of, and my smile. Something that I hadn’t done in so long. Still rusty, but each time I gave that to Olivia and Riley, it becomes easier to recall.

  If there ever was a man who would be able to spot me just by my gait though, it would be goddamn him.

  Sway.

  Dilbert Harrison, the third.

  Hands down, one of the best men I’ve ever known.

  He was one of the first—and only—men who I had encountered in my life that had no qualms about flirting with me. It never bothered me. I thought it was hilarious. That was, when he wasn’t tossing glitter around like a goddamn fairy. Right before I “died,” I asked him about it. All he said was, when he was forced to suppress who he really was, he used art—and glitter—to experience his happiness. He was a gay man, in the Deep South, with two southern Baptist preachers for parents. He was never allowed to be him and as a young kid, glitter gave him that. And his glitter gave me and my brothers that. I’ll never forget the day he painted the sidewalk outside the office park his salon and the office our security firm were in. Not a single person questioned him … much. He was right though, it brought a smile every time I walked over it. He also had a fondness of keeping glitter in his skintight pants and tossing it on us as we walked by. Even though it took weeks to get that shit off, he did what he meant to and cleared any negative moods that we were in.

  That’s what compelled me to take the jar all those years ago.

  Not only did I desperately need that happiness to carry me through my life as a ghost, but it was my lifeline that tethered me to the life I left behind.

  And fuck me, I’ve missed that man.

  With a heavy sigh and even heavier steps, I place the note back where I found it. One finger touches the glass of my new mason jar of happiness, and then I turn to walk over to the wet bar. I skip the glass completely and take a long pull from the bottle of Jack. The burn claiming my throat not even registering. My mind too busy spinning on the past. I haven’t let myself think of them often. It hurt too much. But now, with ten minutes before Sway gets here, I’m powerless to do anything but think of them. I can’t help it.