“Jesus, I just now saw what I did to you…to us.” He choked on the words, a rush of dizzying emotions racing through him. He felt her pulling her hand from his, and he snapped up his head. Two tears drifted from her eyes, trailing down her cheeks. He swallowed hard and rasped, “I don’t want to keep making you cry, Sloan. I’m a worthless bastard. I don’t deserve you. I really don’t.”
“Well,” she whispered unsteadily, “you’re not a bastard, Dan. Are you wounded by your childhood? Most definitely. But you’re a kind, good-hearted person, too. At Bagram, at least once a month, you worked with charities to take clothing, shoes, medicine, and food to the Afghan people in their villages. A bastard is only concerned about himself. You’ve always been a giver, not a taker. That was one of the many reasons why I fell in love with you.”
“Cap taught me to share. He taught me that it was the team that counted, and it could provide safety if I surrendered over to that team.” Dan lifted his short, spiky lashes, studying the calmness and peace he felt around Sloan. “I guess, in my own twisted way, I saw you as my team member. I always looked forward to seeing you. There was never a time after coming off a mission that I wasn’t jogging over to your B-hut to see you. I didn’t care if we had sex or not, to tell you the truth. What I wanted and craved was your smile, your laughter, how you saw the world because it was so different from mine. You always made me feel better. Whole.”
“What we had was one-of-a-kind. I’ve had enough experiences to know that. I loved just sharing time and space with you. I didn’t care where I was at as long as I was with you, Dan.”
“I’ve screwed this up so badly for both of us. I threw you away. I threw the best person I’ve ever had in my life, away.”
She released his hand and pulled her knees up, studying him in the silence. “I thought,” she whispered brokenly, “that I was over you, or I’d never have taken this mission. I know how much I’d loved you at Bagram. And it took me years to mend my heart after you left.” She shook her head. How do you stop loving another person? Sloan had no idea.
Dan sat there staring at her. He cast a look around, seeing the gulls trolling the coastline, looking for food and fish in the small waves washing upon the golden sands. The breeze was heated and smelled of salt water.
Moving next to her, he slid his arm around her shoulders, expecting her to jerk away. But the moment his arm went around her, she moaned his name and buried her face against his neck. Her hair smelled of salt brine, her skin warm from the sun, and he inhaled her as if it would be the last breath he ever took before he died.
*
Sloan didn’t know how long Dan held her. Eventually, she unclasped her hands from around her knees and slowly allowed them to curve against his thighs. She wanted him so badly—wanted what they had before—but there was a chasm between them, and she knew her heart couldn’t take him walking away from her again. And yet, he made her hope…made her believe that they might be able to mend their relationship back together. She didn’t make the mistake of thinking Dan loved her. Dan didn’t know what love was. How could he?
“I don’t want this to end, Sloan,” he said gruffly. “I’ve just found you again. I can’t conceive a life without you.” He threaded her hair through his fingers, his palm coming to rest against her nape. “I don’t know where to begin again, but I want to try and win you back. Do you want to give it another try with me?” he asked, fearing her answer.
Easing slowly out of his arms, Sloan sat up, legs still resting against his, wanting to maintain contact with him. “Ever since I came here and saw you, I kept seeing our past with one another.” It hurt to speak, her mouth dry. She reached for a bottle of water nearby and opened it, swallowing deeply. Holding it in her hands, she continued, “I’m afraid of you walking out on me again.” She wasn’t going to be less than honest with him. “How can you guarantee me that you won’t?”
“I promise,” he quavered, emotions coloring his deep tone, “I will work to earn your trust again if you’ll give me one last chance. I’m just beginning to realize how much I’ve hurt you, baby, and I can never forgive myself. You were so perfect for me, and I was too stupid to realize it. I was pushed by my past, controlled by it, and now that I know this I won’t allow it to walk between us again. I swear it, Sloan. You’ve got to believe me.”
Barely opening her eyes, studying him through her thick lashes, she winced outwardly, seeing the raw look of so many emotions writhing through Dan. She saw he meant his words. “There’s so much to discuss, Dan. I can’t give you a simple yes or no to your question. I loved you. I gave you everything I had. And when you walked away, I felt as if I was torn in half.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “I still don’t feel whole. That’s the terrible truth. I’m not sure I can allow myself to love you again. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” he offered hoarsely, pulling her hand from between her breasts, and holding it in his. “I have a long way to go to prove to you I’m worthy of being loved by you again. I know it’s not going to be easy. I understand how badly I’ve hurt you and I swear, I’ll do everything in my power to heal the wound I created between us.”
“I want to believe you, Dan. I really do.”
“Then, that’s enough for me, Sloan. This isn’t going to happen overnight, and I think we both realize that.”
“I do,” she said, giving him a searching look. “Don’t press me. I won’t be able to handle it.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed somberly. “You come to me then on your own time, and tell me just how far you want to go. I’ll respect those boundaries. I promise you that.”
“I have to have time. And space. I need to get used to having you back in my life in a personal way. I’m here to protect you. I can’t be torn apart by my job and what you might want from me personally.”
“I understand. Your job comes first. Always.”
“Okay,” she said, allowing her head to fall forward, feeling exhausted. “I can’t promise you anything, Dan.”
“I don’t want your promises. You’ll show me like you always did before. That’s good enough for me.”
Dan reached out, slowly moving his fingers across her knee. “I’m starting on a clean slate with you. Whatever you or I want to talk about, we’ll discuss. You no longer have to hold back. You’re complex to me, Sloan. I like hearing and seeing how you view your world because it’s vastly different from my own.”
“My dad always said I was the thinker in the family,” she admitted, smiling a little.
“Who did you get that from?”
“My mom. She was born on an Oregon cattle ranch and was a rancher’s daughter. She became an accountant in Baker, Oregon, met my dad at a barn raising dance, and married him. I came along a year later. My mom always had a deep mind. She taught me to look at life in patterns. She said everyone had them. They just had to recognize them, was all.”
“Well, I sure stumbled onto my pattern today.” Dan cocked his head, giving her a look of apology. “Did you see this pattern I was repeating, Sloan?”
Nodding, she said, “When you started talking about your mom, I saw it immediately, and then I realized you’d repeated the pattern with me. I was hoping you’d see it and you did.”
“So? I’m not completely hopeless?” he teased, giving her a boyish smile, hungrily absorbing her into himself.
“Oh,” Sloan said, smiling a little, “you were never hopeless, Dan. Maddening at times because I had to stop myself so much and not break one of those rules of yours.”
“Those rules are gone, baby. It’s just you and me now.”
That endearment flowed powerfully through her. The way Dan said it. She felt it physically, and her whole body reacted as if ten-thousand bolts of electricity had just sizzled through it.
“This is going to be harder than I thought.”
Dan glanced down between his thighs. “Yeah,” he said with a chuckle, trying to not embarrass her any further with her pun, “you said a mouthful.”