Dare Me (Take Me 2)

And yet… There was something burning within her that made her close to revealing all, but which continued to hold her back.

“Nik?” Damen quietly prompted, concern etched on his devilishly handsome face, pain in his gorgeous blue eyes.

Ah, that was it.

Oh, my God.

There it was—she suddenly knew what made her reticent.

The pain in his gorgeous blue eyes.

The pain he felt for her…on her behalf. Always.

“Jesus, Damen,” she whispered as tears instantly pooled in her own eyes and crested the rims, rolling along her cheeks. “Everything about me devastates you.”

“Nik,” he repeated. And gave a slight shake of his head—as though to deny her statement. Unconvincingly.

“You listen and you empathize and you internalize and…” She drew in a long, albeit quavering, breath. “You agonize. Over everything I share with you.”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know,” he softly, though vehemently, told her. “All of your past experiences, good, bad, horrific… They’re a part of you, Nik. In some ways, they define and shape you. In other ways… They push you and compel you to strive for something different—to thrive in a different capacity. All of it is fascinating and disconcerting at the same time, yes. But Nikki…”

His hands very gently, very tenderly cupped her wet cheeks.

He stared into her misty eyes and said, “There is such an amazing breadth and depth of emotion within you that it makes me fully comprehend how your marriage was so solid, so cohesive, so—”

“Don’t say perfect,” she whispered. “Because there’s no such thing. Every relationship has its bumps and bruises.”

“One of yours was Conner’s career.” He didn’t pose that as a question, because he’d already discerned this to be true, by way of her own confessions.

“I admired him and I loved that he lived for saving others,” she said. “But I worried about him incessantly. I just never told anyone.”

“Including Conner?”

“Especially Conner.”

“Because he might sacrifice his talent for search and rescue—for saving lives—in order to help you sleep better at night?”

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation. “And as we once discussed, you and I… That would make me greedy and selfish....” She sighed, despondently. “A monster, even.”

“None of which is fact,” he hastily asserted. “You’re human. You deserve to have all of these emotions, Nikki. Regardless of how you perceive them, how you process them…or not.”

“It is my goal to process,” she said. “It’s just not always easy to accomplish that goal.”

“I get that. One-thousand percent.”

Damen’s head bent to hers. He kissed her forehead. Then his hands fell away and he sat back in his seat. Raked a hand through his hair.

Nikki dug a tissue out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes. She was silent beside him for several minutes.

Then she sniffled before saying, “Well, that lovely Christmas conversation took a wayward turn.” More tears trickled down her face. She fought to compose herself.

Damen flashed a look her way. “You have to know there is absolutely nothing you can’t tell me. Ever.”

He looked straight ahead again, as they approached the impenetrable-looking gates of what she assumed was the QTango ops campus.

She grabbed another tissue and her makeup compact and freshened herself before she spoke.

She needed the extra time, honestly.