When Caleb trailed off, she didn’t scramble to fill the silence, just rubbed his arm as his gaze went glassy. This was somehow tied to the reason he’d gotten defensive outside Damian’s hotel room and went far deeper than she’d ever dreamed. And still she didn’t fully understand what he was telling her, what it meant to him, why she wanted to pull him into her embrace and hold him for an eternity.
“They told us later that we’d missed the mark,” he continued woodenly. “By about fifty kilometers. Someone scrambled the coordinates. Us. The informant. We’re not sure. We don’t write this stuff down, we memorize it.”
“Of course,” she murmured because he’d paused as if seeking validation.
“It’s hard to reconcile.” He stared out at the buildings across the street, but it was a toss-up whether he really saw them or was watching something flash through his mind. “I’m highly trained to kill enemy combatants. That’s why they sent us into those cesspools, to take out insurgents before they hit our troops on the ground. Being given that kind of power, that kind of advantage, can bring out the worst in you, show you that you’re capable of taking the emotion out of something so sacred as human life in order to protect. And then when you find out you made a mistake and innocent people are dead, emotion is all there is.”
Her throat went tight and hot as she registered the pain in his voice, and inexplicably, tears pricked at her eyelids. He hurt over this, and his anguish clawed at something inside her.
“The key word is mistake,” she whispered and blindly sought his fingers with hers, twining through them to hold on. “It’s a terrible, horrible mistake. But not your fault. You can’t let it weigh you down this much.”
Like she’d done with her own failings? That was precious. But he didn’t need a rundown of her issues right now. He needed her, and she wasn’t taking that away from him.
He laughed without humor. “Care to guess how many variations of that I’ve tried to convince myself of over the past eight months? A million. Five million.”
“You need to try it again until you’re successful,” she suggested, but he shook his head with a ferocity that should have scared her.
“It’s not something I can just forgive myself for. I have to atone for my crimes, shed my own blood, sweat, and tears until I’ve paid for it.”
“Oh, Caleb,” she murmured and stroked his knuckle with a thumb, hoping it was soothing. “How on earth can you ever hope to do that?”
That’s when he turned to face her for the first time since unloading his burdens. His expression was so bleak and yet so resolute and beautiful that her breath caught.
“I’m going to build a town to replace the one I destroyed. This one. Work my fingers to the bone until seventy-five people are happier and healthier than I found them.”
All the dominoes he’d set up since the moment he’d blown into town made complete sense now. He was driven to compensate for his mistakes and determined not to fail, which she got. Boy, did she get it. No wonder he’d been so bent on relocating her shopping center. In the path of that much resolve, she’d never stood a chance. “And you will.”
“It’s not easy to see the path. Some days I feel like I’m wandering around in the desert with no manna in sight.”
He looked so defeated in that moment that she couldn’t help but gather him up in her arms, holding him tight. He hesitated for only a moment before returning the embrace and dang if he didn’t feel good. She rested her head against his chest, ear flat to his T-shirt, and the thump of his strong heart thrilled her.
This is what it would be like to belong to each other for always. Be there in sickness and in health, for better or worse. She could imagine it so easily, and for as long as she could stand it, she let herself pretend that kind of wonderful might be in the cards for them.
“You’re a good man, Caleb Hardy,” she murmured. “Don’t doubt it.”
He pulled back enough to scan her face, his fingers still tangled in her hair. “Not good enough. Not yet.”
Because she’d been so adamant about keeping things surface level between them? Was she somehow a player in his pain?
Frozen, she stared at him, letting her gaze drink in his in an effort to read his ambiguous thoughts. Something profound and meaningful swirled through his depths, things she didn’t want to see or acknowledge. Things she definitely didn’t want to admit her own heart might echo.
They were supposed to be taking this thing slow, working things out internally on both sides. The emotion she could plainly see on his face was not slow.
It couldn’t have been an accident that he’d echoed Damian’s words to her back in the hotel room when she’d said something similar to her fake fiancé. Did Caleb know that Damian had been referring to Havana’s rejection of him? Was Caleb putting himself in the same boat and suffering as a result?
For the first time, she considered that her moratorium on letting a man into her heart was hurting those around her, and she couldn’t even get out from under it long enough to figure out whether this one was worth the risk. Because she knew the moment she did that, there would be no going back. Caleb would fill her up completely on the inside, and she’d be nothing but a hollow husk if—when—he decided to move on.
She could not do it.
With a deliberate step back, she separated from Caleb.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I need to—”
Be somewhere else. Before she had a breakdown. None of this was his fault. But she had a suspicion he’d take it that way, especially when she fled for the relative safety of the room she shared with Aria.
The passage of time ceased to have any meaning as Havana lay curled in a ball under the comforter. It wasn’t a cool night, but she was so chilled that even a comforter full of down neither warmed nor comforted.
How had she gotten to a place where Caleb posed such a danger to her heart? The fake fiancé trick should have worked. And the barrier it had provided should have lasted longer, especially on his side. How could she not have seen that he wasn’t holding her at a distance like she was with him? Or if he had been, he’d definitely stopped at some point. What was she supposed to do with that?