“You’re a very special woman, Skylar,” he said, weariness creeping into his voice.
“Go to Honor, Hancock,” Donovan said quietly. “Your head isn’t in the game right now. You need to reassure yourself she’s okay. We’ll keep you in the loop. We aren’t benching you, though God knows you’re in no shape to be doing anything but lying in a hospital bed, but if it were Eve or any of our wives, we wouldn’t stand down even if we were at death’s door. You have my word, you will know everything.”
“The very last thing she needs is to wake up and see me,” Hancock said bleakly. “I won’t hurt her any more than I already have.”
“She’s out,” Conrad said. “She’s not going to come around anytime soon. Stop torturing yourself. You and I both know this wasn’t your fault.”
“The hell it wasn’t,” Hancock said in a savage tone that made the others flinch at the raw pain in his voice.
Conrad was wrong and Hancock knew it. It was his fault. He’d betrayed her and he’d failed her and that was unforgivable. But he took Conrad at his word that he’d sedated Honor so she wouldn’t waken until she was in a safe place, and he needed to see her. To touch her even though he didn’t deserve either. But he had to know just how badly Maksimov had hurt her.
He nodded curtly and then quietly slipped into the tiny bedroom where Honor was huddled on the bed. Even unconscious, she was in a protective ball, curled into herself, so vulnerable looking that his grief was a tangible ache in his chest.
He loved her. He fucking adored her. He’d never loved anyone except his foster family, Eddie and Caroline Sinclair, the parents he never had. And his brothers, Raid and Ryker, and his precious baby sister, whom he’d also let down. It seemed he was forever hurting the people who mattered most to him. How could he ever look Big Eddie Sinclair in the face again after all he’d done? Before, he’d always known that his actions were a necessary evil.
But Honor was something he’d been utterly unprepared for. She’d slipped past his carefully erected barriers and somehow she’d become a living, breathing part of him. His other half. Now he understood what drove the Kellys in their absolute protection of their women, their wives. Because he felt it himself. But the Kellys hadn’t done to their women what Hancock had done to Honor, what he’d planned to do in the beginning with no regret or remorse.
Now, those were two emotions he’d keenly feel the rest of his life.
He slid onto the bed, moving inch by inch closer to her so he could smell her, feel her heat, touch her. It seemed an eternity before he finally had her nestled in his arms, and then he finally allowed himself to relax.
He buried his face in her matted hair, uncaring of the scent of dirt and blood. And then he wept. He wept for all he’d been given and for what he’d so callously discarded and betrayed. What was now lost to him forever.
Honor had changed him. She’d changed him on a fundamental level and though she now hated him, he would live the kind of life going forward that she would have wanted him to. He wanted to be the man she’d thought him to be. The only person who’d ever seen past the darkness that was ever present in his soul. He was done with Titan. Done with fighting for the greater good. He was finished being a man who didn’t even look at himself in the mirror because he no longer recognized the man staring back at him.
She’d given him the gift of herself, the very best part of him, and he’d thrown it away. All for the greater good.
CHAPTER 38