Vaughn sat back, groaning a little as he stretched out his legs. He dragged the bag of snacks from the truck stop between them, found a bottle of water, passed it to her, then grabbed one for himself.
“There was this one morning during BUD/S—that’s the training program for SEALs,” he explained after taking a drink when she opened her mouth to ask what it was. “It’s, in a word, brutal. The instructors take you to your limit and then give you a big fucking shove past it. So this one morning, we drag ourselves to breakfast, and we’re all starving, miles beyond exhausted, and aching in places we didn’t know we could ache. Most of the guys just shoveled in their food on autopilot, probably not even tasting it. But me?” He laughed with the memory. “I was so tired I was delirious, and this stubbornness kicked in. I wasn’t going to eat a bite without my Tabasco sauce. And with the instructors ragging my ass the entire way, I dragged myself to my bunk for the bottle. That was when Quinn started calling me Tabasco, and the nickname’s stuck ever since. There are a few guys on the teams who probably don’t even know my real name.”
It was impossible not to hear the nostalgia in his voice. “You miss it.”
He opened his mouth as if to protest, but he closed it again without uttering a sound and stared into the flames. “Yeah. I do. A lot.” He glanced over, and his lips twisted in a self-depreciating smile before he took another gulp from his water. “Not being on the teams…it feels like….like I’ve had a leg knocked out from under me while I’m standing on stilts.” He offered her a bag of pistachios.
She waved it away. “What do you mean?”
“Hell. I don’t know.” He sat in silence for a few seconds, cracking open the nuts, tossing the shells into the flames. “I told you about how my parents were killed in a gas station robbery gone bad when I was eleven…”
“I remember,” she said softly. She didn’t remember the whole story, but she did recall the complete heartbreak in his voice as he’d related it. She remembered her heart cracking open just like one of his pistachios. She remembered soothing him the only way she’d known how…with her body.
“Yeah, well.” He tossed another shell into the fire. “I always had my brothers, and they always had my back, but…I struggled without my parents. For years, I was so angry and probably depressed. After high school, Greer wanted us all to join the military so we could pay for college. Greer and Reece went into the Army. Cam, Air Force. Jude, Marines. And I chose the Navy without really putting much thought into it. Figured I’d do my four and get out…but I found my place there. And then when I joined the SEALs, I found a second family and a steadier support system than my brothers were able to give. It was exactly what I needed.”
She glanced away because the love she saw in his eyes when he spoke of his two families was so intense, so genuine, it hurt. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to have so many people to love and so many people to love you in return. She couldn’t imagine what it felt like to experience emotions as deeply as Vaughn did, and it astounded her that this hard man was willing to open himself up and bare his heart like he was now.
“I lived on the streets for a while,” she blurted almost before she’d made the decision to tell him. But it was out now, so she sucked in a fortifying breath and forged ahead. “That’s the closest I’ve come to camping.”
“Oh, vixen,” he whispered, not looking at her, still staring into the fire. “It’s not even close to the same.”
“Good.” She attempted a laugh, but it came out all wobbly. “Because it’s not something I ever care to repeat.” She followed his gaze, watched the mesmerizing twists of orange and yellow playing over the wood, and tried not to relive those horrible months. Alone. Scared. Hungry. Cold.
She swallowed the lump rising in her throat. “After I dropped my real identity and before I assumed Violet Smith’s…I was nobody. I had no name, no home. Definitely no family or support system. It was terrifying.”
“But you survived.”
She lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “It’s what I do. Survive.” But she didn’t live, and it was starting to get to her. She wanted more than mere existence.
Vaughn said nothing for a long time. “Are you ready to tell me your real name now?”
She wanted to. She even opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her tongue would not form the name. Too many years on the run had trained her to push it out, push it away, pretend she’d never been that person. At this point, she wasn’t even sure her birth name was her real name anymore.
The silence stretched too long, broken only by the crackling flames.
Vaughn shook his head and grabbed another handful of pistachios from the bag. “I’ll take that as a no.”
She thought of Marcus’s text. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
“I don’t want to find out. I want you to tell me.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.