Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

But more, I wondered how that might spill into the here and now.

What he might be capable of.

Who was the man currently wrapped around me? The one who held me like a hedge of safety? A shield? Hope in the bleakness that had dimmed both our lives?

“I see a man who’s held me from the moment I met him. A man so devastatingly gorgeous he tripped up my feet and set my heart on fire. Made it burn for the first time in years. In a way it never had.”

Against better judgement, I let that confession out.

Possession left him on a grunt, and he curled his arms tighter around me as my whispered words filled the atmosphere, “I see a man who holds the power to spark to life what once was dead. I see a father. I see a protector. I see a warrior. I see someone who is good and kind when he has no idea that he is. I see a kind of beauty I’ve never recognized before.”

Every muscle in his towering frame flexed.

Peril and perfection.

“Eden,” he muttered.

We were rocking. Swaying and drifting. Our limbs tangled as we fell into a slow slide of sensation.

Still, I pushed, giving him more of my truth the way he’d given his. “I also see my heart shattered all over the place if I let this go much farther. I see your fear, Trent, and I see what it’s become. It’s become savagery. A threat of devastation.”

The man exhaled, those arms unwavering. “Always been that, Eden, from day one. That’s what it’s been. Savagery and devastation. Only thing that ever softened it was Gage.” He pressed his nose to the back of my neck, running it up the length until it was buried in my hair. “And you. You are the only thing that could make this evil heart go soft, and that’s probably the most dangerous part of all. Fact you make me want to let my guard down. Give in when I’ve been given one thing to live for. Don’t know how to live for two.”

Despair wound with his admission, his voice cracking with an old grief that he would forever possess.

I wanted to wrap him up. Tell him we could try. That we could be good together.

That maybe if we just met in the middle…

“It would never work.” He gruffed it like he was answering a question I’d asked aloud.

“I know,” I whispered. “There are things I want for my life that I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

Love and life and stability.

I didn’t need a white-picket fence, but I wanted a family.

A home.

Children to fill it.

To be cherished, loved, and a priority to a man who crawled into bed with me night after night.

It seemed like a no brainer with Gage built in, but that vein of scars might have cut too deep. And with the little he’d exposed about his childhood growing up, I didn’t get the sense he’d had the healthiest of experiences.

And more than that, I wanted—I needed—safety. For my children to have it.

Gage filled my mind. Those eyes and those cheeks and his sweet words. My heart felt like it would implode with my love for him. This protectiveness zapping me straight through.

And somehow, I knew—trusted with every part of me—this man would do everything to protect him.

“And still, look at your face. Those eyes watching me like they know me,” he rasped against my flesh. Everything beat. Pounded and shook.

“I don’t know how to look away,” I whispered.

“View ain’t pretty, Kitten.”

“You’re wrong. It’s stunning.”

He gave a harsh shake of his head. “Nah. My view is much better.”

His lips brushed along the slope of my neck. My knees nearly buckled. “It’s torment getting a peek at Heaven from the vantage of Hell. Maybe that’s the real meaning of eternal punishment.”

My brow furrowed. “Is that really what you think? That you’re condemned?”

A low grumble of disbelief rumbled in his throat, and his hand glided up my neck, fingers digging into the tight twist of my hair. “If there is an afterlife? Believe me, baby, I know exactly where I’m going.”

My chest ached. “I don’t believe that.”

“Because you believe in what’s not there.”

Wow. That hurt.

“You believe in me,” he clarified.

My eyes were pinned on his through the mirror. “Don’t you think it’s time someone did?”

The twitch of a smile kissed the edge of his sinful mouth. “There we go, trying to figure out how this would work. How two opposites could be when we know we don’t fit.”

“It’d be fun trying.” My voice was the tendril of a plea as I repeated the same thing he’d said to me the first time he’d followed me home.

Although this—it no longer felt like a mistake.

He let go of a rough, jagged chuckle.

Warmth and light.

It flooded me.

Filled me full.

And he didn’t even know.