Chapter 22

Gabe wasn’t sure which was worse. That he did want to stay, though he knew he couldn’t, or that she could see it on him. That desperate film Evan had always called trying too hard. As if he could erase what he really was.

What are you, really?

But a Navy SEAL knew how to handle the onslaught of fear and pain and memories. He knew how to still himself, compartmentalize all those jangling feelings into boxes. Boxes he could bury and set aside so the mission could be accomplished without outside forces risking the outcome.

There was no place for the past, certainly no place for this overwhelming warmth of feeling wanting to spill out of him. There was only his mission: extricate himself from this dangerous predicament. She was the enemy, and he had to escape her.

“If I wanted to stay, I would,” he said flatly.

He couldn’t have been more caught off guard by the bright pop of laughter that echoed out of her mouth. His jaw even dropped a little bit as he stared at her. Laughing. Laughing.

“Would you?”

“Yes, I would,” he replied through gritted teeth. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her reaction to be. Amusement was not it.

But that was just another lie to himself. He’d expected her to pale. To be hurt. He’d expected her to back off. Maybe some small, stupid part of him had hoped she might plead with him. Beg him to stay, beg him to care.

That hope was a terrible, terrible trap. He didn’t want her to plead or beg, because that would be its own trap.

He was screwed, and it had to stop. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He’d learned his lessons. He’d fought in a war. He was a part of Revival, and he wouldn’t fall for the trap of loving someone again.

“I don’t know what you want from me.” Because this was about her, not him. She had gotten something wrong, didn’t understand things.

She laughed again, but it ended sounding sad. She looked at him, shiny, blue eyes and the kind of pleading he’d craved for too long. It froze him to his core. That she might finally be someone who could—

No. No, he couldn’t let himself believe that and survive. He’d survived plenty, but not that.

“I told you. I want you to stay.” She stepped forward, reaching out and unzipping his coat. “I want you to stay here. With me.”

“If this is about sex, just because I leave doesn’t mean our deal has to end right this second. Christmas. Christmas was the deal.”

“Don’t do that,” she whispered.

But, of course, he had to do it. “If it’s about the questions, go ahead. Ask me a million. But no matter what you say or do or ask, I’m not spending another night here.”

She pushed the sides of his coat apart and then pressed a palm to his chest. There was no way she didn’t feel the way his heart galloped out of control.

“What are you so afraid of?”

He tried to remind himself she wanted to rearrange him until he was some fixed, healed thing. He’d never be that. He hadn’t been that when he’d joined the navy. It was too late. He’d gone too far. She wanted the challenge. It wasn’t about him. It was about him being messed up.

He knew it wasn’t true, because he saw the way she loved her son, loved her friends. Still, he tried to convince himself. Lie to himself. Anything to protect himself. “I’m not afraid.”

“It’s one of my questions, so you can’t lie to me.” She used her other hand to cup his jaw, and he held himself as stiff and cold as he could against all that warmth.

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but I think you’ve…you’ve got it all twisted.”

“But you don’t?”

“I know what and who I am.” He reached up to pull her hand off his face. It was so much harder than it should have been, but he managed. He managed to pull it away from his cheek, to drop her delicate wrist.

“But what do you want, Gabe? What does it matter who and what you are if you don’t want anything? Aren’t working for anything?” She pressed her dropped palm next to the one against his chest, as if she were trying to give him CPR.

As though he were dead and needed to be revived.

What did he want? He didn’t want to tell her he didn’t know. That he’d learned to stop wanting things. Stop trying for things. He hadn’t even wanted the SEALs, not for him. All he’d hoped was prove to Evan that he was better than him. Not some morally bankrupt liar who manipulated the weak and vulnerable, but a man who saved them, protected them. A hero.

He’d gotten a certain amount of satisfaction out of that. It had suited him, military life. He’d started to believe he could make life on his own terms.

Then, boom.

Three strikes and a man was out, and he didn’t plan on getting out. No, he’d done his time, survived his explosions. Monica wouldn’t be another one. He couldn’t stomach the thought. If not for her, for the kid and…

“Are you going to get out of my way, or do I have to make you?” he demanded.

“Do you want to know what I want, Gabe?”

“No.”

She just smiled, smiled big and broad as if he’d said, Yes, please. God, tell me every last wish or want, and I’ll make them all come true.

“I want it all,” she said, her hands still there against his chest, pushing as if she could push him into wanting this. “All of you. Us. I want you to come to Denver with me to pick up Colin. I want you to eat dinner with my family, and then I want us to come home and be with our family here. I want you. You in my life. In Colin’s life. I want to be with you.”

Boom. Boom. Boom.

I either call the police or you join the army voluntarily.

Geiger is dead.

I’m sorry, I can’t clear you for active duty.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

She wanted to be with him? Under no circumstances could he ever let that happen. “No, you don’t.”

She laughed again, but this one was harsher. “I love when men tell me what I want or don’t. Women are such lucky creatures that way, always being told what we feel isn’t quite right because the men don’t see it that way.”

“Well, this is fun and all, but I’m going.” He moved to step around her, but she only moved with him.

“No, you aren’t. You’re listening.”

“Pass.” He didn’t want to forcibly move her, mostly because he was afraid if he so much as nudged her, he’d want to hold on, fall at her feet, beg her to take this panicked, squeezing horror away.

“You’ll listen to me. You’ll listen to me ask the tough questions, and you’ll listen to me push you when you’re being a concrete wall of… I was going to say stupidity, but you aren’t stupid. You’re afraid. I can’t begrudge you that. Fear—”

“I have faced far worse than you, Monica Finley.”

“Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly.” She swallowed, as if just by knowing he’d faced horrors, she felt some echoes of them. “You’ve seen things that would make me weep, that would cut the legs out from under me, and you have survived all those things because you had to. Because you learned to disengage, to compartmentalize and put it away. But life, real, nonmilitary life, doesn’t work that way. You have to engage. You have to… No, that isn’t even right. You don’t have to. Everything is a choice.”

“My choice is getting out of here. I won’t say it again.” If in any world he could have predicted her next words, he wouldn’t have given the warning. He would have pushed her out of the way and walked straight out, ears plugged and words ignored. But he had no idea and absolutely no warning.

“I love you.”

He opened his mouth to tell her she didn’t. She couldn’t. No sound came out. Her mouth kept moving as if she was speaking, but for a few moments, he only heard the roar of his own heart, some pounding, deafening thing that matched the horrific, splitting pain in his chest.

Boom.

* * *

Monica let out a shaky breath. She wanted to laugh. Hysterically. There’d been no forethought. Those three words needed more buildup, more…tact. She’d meant to lay a foundation. She’d meant to get a ball rolling.

Instead, she’d blurted out an avalanche, and he stood there looking horrified. Assaulted, maybe. Buried under a sudden metric ton of snow and rock.

But it was true. She loved him, and boy, did Gabe need to hear that. Monica might not be particularly fond of this horrible, naked, vulnerable feeling, but she also understood it was a step. Because whether he reciprocated or accepted or anything remotely positive, those were her feelings.

Love. So much love for him, and so much hope for them. Her mother had taught her something about the resilience of love, the hope of it. It would be some kind of insult not to believe in it here and now. No matter how vulnerable she felt, the way it twisted inside of her so she felt sick to her stomach, she knew Gabe needed this and deserved it.

Love. Her love. Even at her pride’s expense. “I know that isn’t what you want to hear.”

Still, he didn’t say anything. She wasn’t even sure he heard her. She’d dealt with enough men in trauma situations to know sometimes they went somewhere else when facing something hard. She’d seen waking nightmares, fugue states, total shutdowns.

She wasn’t sure what Gabe’s was—maybe all three. It wasn’t exactly clear to her why something good would make him shut down, but she supposed it all connected to his fear.

But there was no going back. No pretending. There was only a future she could see, a man she loved, and even though he was so…hurt, broken, she was so very sure he felt the same. He just needed more time to work through it.

Talking. Time. Love. Those were the only true things that could heal, so she had to believe and trust in them.

“Gabe?”

“I don’t…” He shook his head, and some of that shock cleared. Unfortunately, it cleared into that blank, dead thing he did so well.

Her stomach sank even as she reminded herself to hold on to hope. Patience. She reached out, and he all but scrambled backward. In any other circumstance, she might have found that funny, that she could cause an ex–Navy SEAL to scramble.

But it only sliced at her in this moment, all the ways people had failed him. All the ways love had failed him. She wouldn’t, and her love wouldn’t. If she could reach him.

“I take it that was a bit of a surprise. I mean, I was surprised at how… I didn’t expect it to happen, certainly. But it did. Do you want me to tell you why?”

His eyes widened in horror. “No. God, no.”

“Then maybe that’s what you need to hear.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, his voice rough. “I don’t know what you’re thinking.”

“I just told you.”

He inhaled, held it for a second, and then it was as if a switch had been flipped. He was done stuttering. Done faltering. He opened his mouth to speak, but she couldn’t let him.

“I know you’ve got a ways to go. Some demons to face, maybe. Scars to heal, certainly, but I think you love me too, or at least…you could. So I don’t want you to say something you’ll regret,” she said all in a quick rush.

“No, I won’t regret anything I say,” he returned flatly, and his gaze was on hers, dark and empty and the thing she didn’t want to see at all.

Certain.

“Ask me what kind of trouble I got in that my stepfather had the pull to threaten me with jail or demand I join the army.”

“W-What?”

“Your question,” he said, calm and blank. “Ask me: What prompted jail or the military?”

There was no way she wanted to know this. Whatever it was, he was using it as a weapon, and she had to remind herself that’s all it would be. No matter what he said. No matter how awful. It wouldn’t be a lie, because Gabe wouldn’t lie. But that didn’t make whatever came next the truth.

“All right,” she said, trying to find her own calm. “What happened that gave Evan the opportunity to manipulate you that way?”

“He found me with his daughter.”

“Gabe, I hardly think—”

“I was seventeen. She was thirteen.”

Monica swallowed. Not a truth, she reminded herself, even as her stomach felt hollowed out with a pounding panic that made her think she might throw up.

“She was naked.”

She tried to suck in a breath, because with breathing, she could focus. Not a truth. Not a truth. He’d phrased that all very carefully, hadn’t he? With his daughter. Ages. That didn’t mean…

No, it didn’t mean. She raised her chin, leveled him with her best neutral-therapist expression. “Were you?”

“What?”

“Were you naked?”

His jaw hardened, his eyes narrowing. But after so many ticking seconds, he shook his head.

Relief coursed through her. “Were you touching her? Did you ever touch her while she was naked?”

Again, he paused, looking more and more furious. “No,” he ground out. “I had just walked in the room, but—”

“So you walked in the room. She was naked. Were you physically attracted to her? Did you want to have sex with her? Did you—”

He turned away. “Stop.”

“You brought this up, so I’d say they’re fair questions. Was there ever touching? Heavy pet—”

“She was my sister!” he exploded. “She was four when my mother married Evan. Four and sweet and… I used to sing her lullabies when she had bad dreams. I was her brother in every way that should ever count. But Evan used her. He twisted her to think there was something more or different, so she… She was too young to know what she was doing, to know Evan was using her.” He breathed heavily now, chest heaving, fists clenching, and it physically hurt to watch him work through all that. Lock it down, put it away, erase all those explosive feelings inside of him until she couldn’t see them.

But they were still there. They’d always be there.

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to stop loving you?” she asked quietly.

“You wouldn’t, would you?” he murmured, not looking at her but some spot on the wall behind her. She should have been ecstatic at his words, but something in his expression only made her feel uneasy. Then he was advancing on her, and she felt herself scrambling back because there was a menace in his gaze she didn’t understand. Didn’t think she ever would.

“You’d love me no matter what. Understand. Absolve. You would stand by me, no matter the cost.”

“I would,” she whispered.

“With a few exceptions.”

“N—”

“Colin. Your job. You see, I know what it’s like to play second fiddle to other things. Always. She loved him better. Everyone loved him better, bigger, and he sucked it all up until there was nothing left for me.”

“Evan isn’t here.”

“No, but he’s here.” Gabe patted his chest, and she wanted to argue with him. “He warped me, shaped me. I am who I am because of him.”

“You are who you are in spite of that monster.”

“You’d like to think that. Hell, I’d like to think that.” He looked down at her, and she realized now why she couldn’t figure out this expression. It was too many things: fury and pain, blankness and calm certainty. His eyes glittered, but his mouth was relaxed in surety. “You’re right, you know. I do.”

“You…you do what?”

“I love you.”

“Gabe.” His name whooshed out of her, and she moved for him, but he held out a hand, and that bubble of hope burst. Quick and painful.

“But I don’t want this. You or love or a life with your kid. I don’t want it. I don’t want to love you, and I really don’t want you to love me. I want nothing to do with your future. I won’t be that little boy again, and love would make me.”

“No, it—”

“Yes, it would.” He was so calm. So sure. Any mixed emotions had disappeared, and there was only this aura of…leadership, almost. Like a man who’d given an order to blow up a village and simply knew it was the right thing to do. “You asked me what I want. I don’t want this.”

She reached out for something solid and found the door behind her. Somehow, she was still standing even though he’d ripped the floor out from under her. She tried to breathe past the shock of pain, the horrible realization that he’d found a way to undermine everything she’d thought, been sure of.

She could fight his refusals. She could even fight his insistence she didn’t love him or he didn’t love her. She knew the truth. He’d never convince her otherwise.

But him admitting he loved her and saying he didn’t want it? She had no words for that. No way to fight the crushing blow it was. She couldn’t make him want anything. He had to make that choice on his own, with absolutely no help from her.

“Goodbye, Monica,” he muttered.

Then, he finally got what he’d wanted this whole time. She moved out of the way of the door, and he walked out of it.