Shield (Greenstone Security 2)

I froze. Even my heart stopped beating. Every inch of me was suspended in time, in the moment following those words. The ones I’d thought maybe could’ve been true when I’d had too much pink wine and watched too many Julia Roberts movies. The ones I taunted myself with, with their impossibility of coming out of Luke’s mouth.

Sure, whatever we’d had, whatever Fuck-Up that was us that hinted at feelings—I wasn’t that much of an idiot. I knew he felt something crazy and intense for me in order to explain everything over the years. But I hadn’t dared to let myself actually believe it was the ultimate crazy and intense thing.

Love.

“What did you just say?” I choked out.

He held my eyes, continuing to stroke my face. “You know what I said, Rosie. You know what it is between us. We’ve been tangled up in each other for two decades, coiled into the core parts of each other. I can’t get you out. Sometimes, I’ve wanted to. Not for me, but for you. Because I was convinced that all there was for us was pain. And I didn’t want more pain for you. Nothing more than life had already dealt you. But now I’m convinced of another thing. We have more than pain. And I sure as fuck don’t want you out of me. Not in this lifetime or the next.”

I blinked at him. At his words. The freedom with which he said them. Though, by the sounds of it, they’d been caged for twenty years, so maybe freedom wasn’t the right word.

I didn’t feel free right then. I’d imagined I would. When what had been unspoken between us all this time was finally uttered. I thought it’d be some kind of release of all of this pressure. It wasn’t. It somehow created more of it, tightened the chains around me so I could hardly breathe.

Fear almost paralyzed me.

The only thing worse than loving someone you couldn’t have was having someone you were scared to love. Scared because of what you knew it would do.

Destroy everything.

“I know you love me too,” Luke demanded my attention. “Get yourself the fuck out of your head. Stop trying to create reasons why this isn’t going to work. We’ve had enough of them. We can do this, babe. After this long, we have to do this.”

“No,” I whispered. “We can’t. After this long, after everything, it’s too much. There’s too much pain.” I sucked in a harsh breath. “Loving you has been pain, ever since the start. Since I was five years old. Don’t you get that?”

His eyes danced with regret. “Yeah, babe, I get that. I’ve been livin’ that pain too. The only thing worse than that is living another fuckin’ second of what I had to get through this year. And the years before it.”

That was it. The words that I was thinking, but with more shape and definition and sense. That’s what we were—pain, together and apart. But all we’d known was apart, and that was the worst kind of pain. So why was I fighting for more of that? I’d tried my entire adult life to get rid of him from under my skin.

I’d failed.

The pain didn’t lessen over time, as so many fucking inspirational idiots liked to preach. It was worse. Every year, every moment I wasn’t with Luke, it was worse. My life was bursting with chaos, with love, with life, with death. It was happy. But it wasn’t full.

And I’d been stopping myself.

For what?

A reel of everything in the past played on a rewind. The dead bodies Luke created and buried for me. The ones I created, stamped on his soul and conscience.

“We were bad,” I whispered. To my horror, my voice was shaking like the rest of me. I never even trembled when facing rapists, human traffickers, drug lords. But there I was in front of the man I loved, and I was terrified.

“Yeah,” he rasped back, never letting my eyes go. It was only fair, I guessed, since he’d never let my heart go either. “But I’m no good anymore. I’m ready for bad now. I’ve been ready my whole life, just pretending to be good, trying to fit into a life that never quite fit. It took me a long time to realize that. So we’ve got a lot of making up to do. Half a lifetime, to be exact.”

“It’s not going to be that easy,” I said, instead of doing what I wanted and sinking into him and letting us take care of each other. “There’s still so much shit. So much fight.”

He stroked my face. “You’re so eager for it, the battle. It’s your default,” he murmured, his thumb tracing the outline of my lips. It was strange and beautiful, the ease with which he was touching me, like he’d been doing it forever, not four hours. “You’re fighting right now.”