Licensed to Kill

Chapter 10

The warm mug in my cold hands coupled with the hot coffee I was gulping down felt like a blanket of comfort wrapping around my overexerted body.

Dallas sat in a chair a few feet from me while I tiredly lounged cross-legged on the bed. I'd been eyeing him for the last hour since I'd finally stopped crying. He'd gone to make me some coffee in the other room while I'd cleaned up. My nose was still stuffy and my eyes were bloodshot, though. I looked like a train wreck. Dallas, on the other hand, still looked as dashing as ever.

I studied him, every feature, from the neatness of his haircut to the scuffmarks on his boots. He'd barely changed since the last time I'd seen him. He was four years older, sure, but his eyes were still as hypnotizing, if not more. His smile was still as breathtaking. I had yet to hear him laugh, but I was certain it was still that same melodic sound that could bring angels to their knees.

There were minimal differences in his appearance. His hair was cut shorter than I remembered. His muscles were more defined under his tight black shirt. What I remembered to be a shoulder tattoo that you could just see the edges of peeking out from his sleeve had been added onto. The black designs now reached down to his forearm and there was something incredibly alluring about that. Overall, the most noticeable change in Dallas was not in the way he looked, but the hardness in his once jovial eyes, and I wondered how rough the last four years had been on him. Had he been as heartbroken and plagued by nightmares as I was?

"Feeling any better?" He finally broke the near-deafening silence that'd encompassed the room for well over an hour, as it seemed that neither of us knew what to say to the other.

I met his gaze and managed a nod, though my still-racing heart would've probably said otherwise. I just couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that both I.D.A. and A.R.T. would lie to me about Dallas's death. What reason could they have possibly had to put me through that literal living hell?

"Want some more?" He gestured to my half-empty mug and I shook my head.

"I don't want coffee, Dallas," I finally spoke, my voice sounding shaky and hoarse from crying for so long. "I want answers."

He breathed out long and heavy like he'd been holding in air for hours. His eyes were tired and pained, and I could tell it was fucking him up to see me again, too.

"I know you do," he said in a regretful tone and scooted his chair closer to where I sat. "Tell me what you want to know, Tali."

I wanted to know everything. But I didn't know where to begin in the mile-long list of questions that'd been brewing in my head since I'd woken up.

"Where have you been the last four years?" I decided to ask first.

I set my mug down on the nightstand and pulled a pillow into my lap, hugging it against my stomach where I was starting to feel an ache.

"I'm still with I.D.A." Dallas said, leaning back in his seat and stretching his legs out.

He watched me with cold, hard eyes, and I knew he was studying every detail of me the way I had been studying him.

"In Washington?" I scoffed, shocked at the thought that we could've crossed paths a million times and I'd never known.

He shook his head. "No. They more or less banished me from working in the States after... you know. I was transferred to the Israeli division near the embassy and I've been working there and in Melbourne and various European cities since."

"Do you know why A.R.T. told me you were dead?" I asked pointedly, biting at my tongue in anger.

How could Dallas be so fucking calm about this conversation? My blood was already starting to boil and we'd barely begun talking.