“Ah, another woman you’ve ruined for any other man,” I said, saluting him with my bottle of water.
“I take that as a compliment.” He leaned over the table, resting his elbows on the dark, polished wood.
“Don’t.”
“This…guy offered me a technicality, to take a temporary disability. It would allow me to keep everything army-wise the same without actually showing up. I could go back whenever I wanted if I just signed a set of papers that started with a one-year enrollment and could be renewed up to five. He completely worked the system, doing whatever he could to give me an easy way back in.”
“And you accepted.” I couldn’t even look at those eyes. The minute I did, he’d convince me he was staying, when all evidence proved to the contrary.
“I declined.”
My eyes shot up to his.
“But the night I realized I could put Maisie and Colt on my insurance, I knew I had to sign it. It was the only way to get them covered at 100 percent.”
“When did you do it?”
“The morning I went to see Jeff. It was exactly one day before the offer expired.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” A tiny bit of my suspicion faded.
“Because I knew you hated everything that we did, the lives we led. That you’d see me signing those papers as my getaway car for when I was done playing house here in Telluride. Am I right?” He leaned back and lifted his eyebrow in question.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “Can’t blame me, though, can you? Guys like Ryan, and you…and…” Chaos. “You all have the constant need for the rush. Ryan told me once that the time he felt most alive was in the middle of a gunfight. That everything in those moments happened in vivid color, and the rest of his life faded a little because of it.”
Beckett played with the brim of his hat and nodded slowly. “Yeah, that can happen. Once you have that level of adrenaline rushing through your system, that heightened sense of life and death, the normal day-to-day stuff feels like it’s just a little below. Like life is the monorail at Disney, and combat is the roller coaster—the highs, the dramatic lows, the twists and turns. Except sometimes people die on the coaster, and it makes you feel even luckier to get off, and a hell of a lot guiltier.”
“Then why wouldn’t I expect you to go back to that? If we’re the monorail, you’ve got to be bored, and if you’re not, then you’re going to be.”
“Because I love you.” He said it with such incredible certainty, the way someone said the world was round or the oceans were deep. His love was a foregone conclusion. “Because kissing you, making love with you? When we’re together, you eclipse all of that. It’s not even in the background, it just doesn’t exist. Combat never bothered me before because I had nothing to lose. No one loved me, and I cared only about Ryan and Havoc. I couldn’t leave you. I couldn’t go across the world and worry about you, about the kids. I couldn’t go into combat with the same effectiveness because I’d know that if I died, you’d be alone. Get it?”
“I’m your kryptonite.” That didn’t sound so flattering.
“No, you gave me something to lose. Other married guys, they’re okay, but maybe it’s because they didn’t come from such messed-up childhoods. Love for them was the monorail. You are the first person I’ve ever loved, and the first woman who has ever loved me. You’re the roller coaster.”
Well, if that didn’t just pop a pin into my anger bubble and burst it.
“You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you. But we were getting so close back then, and I wanted you so badly that I didn’t want to risk it.” He sat up straight and took my hand, looking into my eyes with such an intense expression on his face that chills ran down my spine. “If I ever hide something from you, it’s because I’m terrified to risk losing you. That whole roller-coaster thing? I’ve never felt like this. Never had my heart leave my body and belong to someone else. I don’t know how to have a relationship, and I’m bound to screw this one up.”
I brushed my thumb over the underside of his wrist. “You’re doing fine. We’re doing fine. Come to think of it, this is my longest relationship, too. Just don’t keep things from me, okay? I can always deal with the truth, and lies…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Lies are my hard limit. I have to be able to trust you.”
And I still did, even though he’d hidden this detail from me.
“There are things about me that would change the way you look at me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He was so certain.
“Try me.”
The muscle in his jaw flexed, and he looked like he just might—
“How did you know about my commanding officer?”
Or not.
Disappointment flooded my stomach. “The insurance company called. They’re sending someone out on Monday to interview us.”
“What? Why?”
“I guess the amount of Maisie’s bills tripped some internal alarm with her recent enrollment. They’re investigating us for insurance fraud.”
His eyes closed slowly, and his head rolled back. “That’s just fantastic.”
“Beckett…”
He pushed back from the table and took his hat, tugging it on. “I think I’m going to sleep at my place tonight. It’s not you, just the rescue, and I need…”
“Did you find the little girl?” I asked, shame lowering my voice because I hadn’t thought to ask before now, too consumed with my own drama.
“Yeah. She should make it, but it was close.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then I’m glad you went in.”
How different this conversation was from the one we’d had a few hours before when he’d left.
“Me, too.”
“Stay. Please stay,” I asked softly. “I know sometimes you get nightmares after you do rescues. I can handle it.” If I wanted any future with this man, I had to prove to him that I wouldn’t turn away when he showed the parts he purposely kept hidden. “I told you, there’s nothing that would make me look at you differently.”
“I killed a child.”
He said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him, but I knew he wouldn’t repeat it even if I asked. So I sat as still as possible and simply watched his face.
“It was a bullet ricochet. She was ten. I killed her, and our objective wasn’t even at the location we’d had intel for. I killed a child. Still want to sleep next to me?”
“Yes,” I answered quickly, tears prickling at my eyes.
“You don’t mean that. She had brown hair and light brown eyes. She’d seen us coming and was trying to get her little brother out of the way.” He gripped the back of his chair. “I still hear her mother screaming.”
“That’s why you go for every child rescue, no matter what.”
He nodded.
Maybe it was part of the reason he was so determined to save Maisie, too.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Don’t ever say that to me again,” he snapped. “I pulled that trigger. I knew the risks. I killed that child. Every time you see me with Maisie or with Colt, think about that, and then you decide how much you really want to know about how I’ve spent the last decade.”
My heart broke for him, for that little girl and her mother. For the brother she’d tried to pull out of the way. For the guilt Beckett carried. I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t scare me. That I knew who he was down to his soul, and he was a phenomenal man. But the look on his face told me that wasn’t an option tonight—he wasn’t ready for anyone’s absolution.
In case no one ever told you—you’re worthy. Of love. Of family. Of home.
Ryan’s words from his last letter to Beckett hit me. He was the only person who might have known Beckett better than I did, and I had a feeling that while I knew all the beautiful sides of Beckett, Ryan had known the shadowed ones.
I stood and held out my hand, waiting for him to make his decision.