I relaxed into his embrace. “Not too long. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Babe.” His chin dragged along the side of my neck. “If you can’t sleep, you wake me. I’ll help you get back to sleep. You talk to me about what’s on your mind that’s keeping you awake, and if that doesn’t work, then I can get creative.”
That last part brought a smile to my face.
Lifting his head, he rested his chin atop mine. “What’s on your mind?”
“A lot of things.”
“Tell me.”
I sighed. “Cole, it’s late. You have to work in the morning. You should be asleep.”
“Yeah, I got to work, but my girl is standing in front of a window in the middle of the night watching the snow with her mind most likely full of terrible shit,” he said. “And that’s more important than getting a full night’s sleep.”
My girl. Those two words. I loved the sound of them. They also made me think of what Agent Myers had said. “Do you think it’s . . . weird that we’re . . .”
“We’re what?”
“That we’re here right now. That ten years have passed and we’re this close after a handful of days?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. “It’s uncommon. Doesn’t mean it’s weird. But you know what it does mean?”
I leaned my head back against his chest. “What?”
“What I said before. We’re lucky.”
I liked the sound of that better than the weird part. “I’m not sure we’re so lucky right now.”
“We will be.” Lowering his head, he kissed my cheek. “We will get through this.”
He’d said that with such confidence, I almost had to believe him. The only hang-up was that I knew life didn’t care about how much confidence you had or how badly you wanted to believe in something.
“Did someone say something that’s got you asking a question like that?” Cole asked.
I raised a brow, wondering if he’d developed some kind of mind-reading ability. “That agent—Agent Myers said something.”
He cursed under his breath. “He’s a dick and doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.”
“You two don’t get along, do you?”
“Not particularly.” His arms tightened around me and then he loosened them, sliding his hands to my hips. He turned me around so I was facing him. “He used to work in my department. When I was a new recruit, we had a case that came across our desk because the perp had gang ties. Was just a kid, only sixteen, but already deep in the streets,” he explained. “But the crime he’d committed had nothing to do with the gangs or running drugs. He’d shot his father.”
“God,” I whispered.
“He’d shot his father because that bastard was beating the shit out of him and his mom,” Cole added, and that was even worse to hear. “Myers didn’t give two shits that it was an act of desperation. Don’t get me wrong, not like I’m saying violence is the answer to violence, but you can understand how someone eventually snaps. Everything is black and white with Myers, but the world doesn’t operate that way. We didn’t see eye to eye on that case.”
I cocked my head to the side. “What happened to the boy?”
“Went to prison.” He took my hand. “Got life.”
My brows knitted. “You didn’t think he deserved that?”
One shoulder rose. “The kid was a product of a shitty home and streets that suck them in. He grew up in an environment where violence is answered with more violence. Where a bullet to the chest is the end-all. That’s all the kid knew. Sometimes people do wrong and they need to be punished for it, but there are times when you can understand what drove their actions.”
“True,” I murmured. “You see a lot of stuff that isn’t black and white, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.” Cole led me over to the couch and when he sat down, he pulled me into his lap so I was sitting sideways. “But most of the time it is black and white.” He paused. “You up thinking and not sleeping because of Myers?”
I had a feeling that if I said yes, it wouldn’t end well, and the truth was, it wasn’t just because of Myers. “Do you think it was a mistake that I came home?”
“Hell no.” Not a moment of hesitation.
I smiled as I placed my hands on his chest. “Mom said something like that. She meant it from a good place and a bad one—a bad one full of worry. She’s scared for me.”
“Sasha . . .”
Fear trickled into my blood like drops of ice. “What if me coming home caused this?”
“Babe.” He grasped my cheeks as his eyes came to mine. “Nothing you’ve done has caused this. You aren’t responsible for what is happening.”
I gripped his shoulders. “I get what you’re saying, but indirectly—”
“Indirectly or directly, you’re not responsible.” He slid his hands back and his fingers gathered my hair back from my face. “You’ve already given up ten years of your life to that bastard.”
“I—”
“You know you did,” he stated firmly, and damn it, he was right. “And you’re not going to give up more of life to some nameless, faceless monster. No more.”
God, what he said was so damn true.
“I can’t . . . I can’t help but feel like we’re on the verge of repeating history,” I whispered, giving words to the fear that had been building inside me. “That it’s going to happen all over again.”
“It’s not,” he was quick to respond. “The past is not going to repeat itself. There is no way I’m going to let that happen.”
I wanted to ask how he thought he could stop it, but there wasn’t going to be an answer. There couldn’t be.
“You belong home,” he said, guiding my head toward his. “You belong here, with me, like you should’ve been this whole time.”
Some of the pressure in my chest eased off. “Yeah,” I whispered as I sifted my fingers through the short, soft strands of hair at the base of his neck.
“Sleepy?” he asked.
“No.” I lifted my chin. “I’m thinking about the whole get-creative part you mentioned earlier? I’m really interested in that.”
His eyes took on a hooded, heavy quality. “I’m always interested in that.”
I pressed my forehead against his. “What exactly would those things entail?”
“I could tell you.” His hands dropped to my hips and then suddenly I was in the air. Cole lifted me up as he rose, and my legs circled his waist out of instinct. “But I prefer to show you.”
Holding on, I laughed softly. “I think I like the idea of you showing me.”
“Good, because that’s what you’re going to get.”