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eyes.”
    “Drugs?” Nowhere in those fucking reports had anyone
     mentioned drugs. Alea would never have done that of her own free will. She was
     so proud and seemingly in control. So…fuck. Her captors had drugged her. Hell,
     just how much of her soul had they taken?
    “Shit. I’d hoped Tal would have let you in on that since
     you’re her bodyguard.” Cole groaned a little. “I’m going to get my ass kicked,
     but Tal, Rafe, and Kade are treating her with kid gloves. She’s drifting. I
     know they think they’re sheltering her, but someone has to push that girl to
     open up. Look, I understand the impulse to stay out of things. I really do, but
     if there’s one thing I’ve learned about getting people to heal…sometimes you
     gotta give them a shove. You can’t just hope people will change all by
     themselves. If you care about Alea, you have to pry her open, man. She’s not
     made of glass. That woman fought like hell in that brothel. She fought to get
     off the drugs. Maybe she just needs a little help from someone to help her
     fight for her future.”
    Wouldn’t he love to be that someone? “Man, she’d just fight
     me, too.”
    Lan stared at her openly now, not even trying to disguise
     his longing. He didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought. He was in love
     with that woman. She would never love him back. They came from different
     worlds. She was a princess, and he had no idea who his father was.
    But maybe sometimes love wasn’t about getting what he
     wanted. Maybe sacrifice was really at the heart of it. If he pushed her, fought
     for her, maybe she could tear down that tough-girl mask and find a way to be
     happy—even if it wasn’t with him, Dane, and Coop.
    “I don’t think you’ll have to fight her too hard. Just push
     a little every day. Talk to her. Don’t let up and don’t let her force you to
     the side. I know how this goes. Jessa tried her hardest to shove us out of her
     life. She said some horrible things to me. It hurt, but then I realized she was
     both lashing out and testing us. Burke and I had hurt her when we’d left her
     alone. She had to push until she realized we weren’t going to disappear again,
     no matter what. Nothing she could say or do was going to throw us out of her
     life. Alea might have the same M.O.”
    “We’ve never been with Alea.”
    “We?”
    Lan felt himself flush. Damn
     it . “We all have feelings for her, me, Dane, and Coop. We thought we could
     pursue her together, but she wasn’t interested in us, either together or
     apart.”
    “Or she’s scared that none of you can accept what she’s been
     through.”
    “She survived. That’s the only thing that matters. Why
     wouldn’t we accept that?”
    “Survival is a funny thing, man, and you damn well know it.
     When you’re down in the trenches all that matters is living, but it’s not so
     simple once you return to the real world. People judge you. You measure what
     you did to live against conventional social mores…and suddenly what once seemed
     like a simple choice is murky and gray.”
    He knew exactly what Cole was talking about.
    “That’s when you have to deal with the reality that you
     lived and some didn’t,” Cole went on. “That’s when you have to accept who the
     fuck you really are.”
    He hadn’t thought about it that way before. Alea was a
     survivor, but she had a heart. How guilty did she feel for getting out alive
     when others hadn’t? How ashamed was she by whatever she’d had to do in order to
     live? She’d been through a war of sorts, and he had no idea how much of herself
     she’d lost along the way.
    The fact that Alea had survived and could function now
     proved how strong she was. She deserved better than to be treated like some
     fragile doll who couldn’t make a decision about her own life. Despite what all
     the other guys thought, she could handle the truth. Being in control of her
     future might even help her heal from the