Midnight Rising(63)

She hadn’t wanted him to join in the first place. She’d never understood his need to do some good, his need to be useful. More than once, she’d asked him why she wasn’t enough for him. Why loving her, making her happy, couldn’t be enough. He had wanted both, but even she had been able to see that he wanted the Order more.



Rio could still recall one night, strolling in a city park with Eva, taking pictures of her on a little bridge over the river. She’d told him that night how she wanted him to leave the Order and give her a baby. Demands he couldn’t—or, rather, wouldn’t—comply with.



Give it time, he’d told her. The warriors had been putting out fires with a small surge in Rogue activity in the region, so he’d told her to be patient. Once things settled down, maybe they could think about a family.



Looking back, he wasn’t sure he’d meant it. Eva hadn’t believed him; he’d seen that in her eyes, even then. Hell, maybe it had been at that very moment she’d decided to take matters into her own hands.



He had let Eva down and he knew it. But she had paid him back in spades. Her betrayal had rattled him on a soul-deep level. It had made him question everything, including why the hell he should be taking up precious space in this world.



When Dylan kissed him—when she looked at him full in the face and her eyes reflected back only honesty—Rio could believe, at least for a moment, that he wasn’t just a pitiful waste of air and space. When he’d looked into Dylan’s eyes and felt her hand cradling his scars, he could believe life might actually be worth living after all.



And he was a selfish bastard for thinking that he had anything to offer a woman like her. He’d already destroyed one woman’s life, and nearly his own; he wasn’t about to take a second chance with Dylan’s life.



Rio narrowed his gaze on the target down the way and forced an iron steadiness into his hold on the gun. He pulled the trigger, felt the familiar kick of his weapon as the Beretta discharged and a bullet went blasting into the smallest center ring of the target’s bull’s-eye.



“Good to see you haven’t lost a bit of your aim. Still dead-on like always.”



Rio set the weapon down on the shelf in front of him. When he turned around it was to find Nikolai standing behind him, his broad back leaned up against the wall. Rio had known he wasn’t alone here; he’d heard Niko and the three other unmated warriors talking on the far end of the facility as they cleaned their weapons and rehashed their late-night prowl of the human after-hours club.



“How was the hunting topside?”



Niko shrugged. “A lot of the usual.”



“Hot babes without enough sense to run when they see you coming?” Rio asked, a tentative stab at breaking the ice that was present between them since his arrival at the compound.



To his relief, Niko chuckled. “Nothing wrong with loose and easy when it comes to women, my man. Maybe next time you should hang with us. I can hook you up with something sweet and nasty.” Twin dimples notched his lean cheeks. “You know, if you’re not planning to off yourself or anything in the meantime. You dumb bastard.”



It was said without venom, only the solemn knowledge of a friend concerned about one of his own.



“I’ll let you know,” Rio said, and he could tell by Nikolai’s narrowed look that the warrior understood he wasn’t talking about the prospect of getting a little action topside.



Niko’s voice dropped to a confidential tone. “You can’t let her win, you know? ’Cause that’s what giving up is. Yeah, she screwed you over, and I’m not saying you need to forgive and forget because frankly I don’t think I could if I were you. But you’re still here. So fuck her ,” Niko said harshly. “Fuck Eva. And fuck the bomb that went off in that warehouse. Because you, my friend, are still here.”



Rio scoffed, but it was a weak sound in his tight throat. He tried to clear the obstruction, feeling awkward as hell for caring that someone cared about him. “Damn, amigo. Just how much Oprah have you been watching since I’ve been gone? Because coming from you, that was really touching.”



Niko chortled. “On second thought, forget all that shit I just said. Fuck you too.”



Rio laughed, the first real laugh to come out of his mouth…Jesus, in about a full year’s time.



“Hey, Niko.” Kade came strolling up from the other end of the facility, the Alaskan’s black spiky hair and sharp silver eyes giving him a wild, wolflike look. “I’m turning in. Tonight if we run into that other Rogue out of the Darkhavens, don’t forget you promised he was mine.”