“And now? After all this time?”
He leans back, and I miss the heat of having him close to me. He takes a deep breath, studying me while he does.
“The men who I had gained a big spotlight from, they were part of an even bigger network. I couldn’t. Not for too many years. By the time I had made sure they were no longer able to hurt them, it had been damn near fifteen years. After that long? How do I walk back into that life, into the shoes of a man who they have spent over two decades mourning!”
“I guess by taking one step at a time.”
“Olivia, I have a grown-ass man son. What kind of fucked-up shit would he have to deal with because of me popping up in his life and saying surprise, not really dead after all?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go about it quite so dramatically. Maybe start with your brother and then … I guess then you just take one step at a time.”
“And if I go back and just bring more danger to their door?”
“And if you go back and just bring love and healing?”
“I’m not the man they knew anymore.”
“They likely aren’t the same people you left behind, either.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“This is your family, Zachariah Cooper.” He jerks when I use his real name, but I can tell it wasn’t because of something negative. I’m speaking to him … the real “Drew” I’ve seen this whole time, just didn’t understand what I was seeing glimpses of. I’m speaking to him, and he’s hearing me. “These are the people who made you who you are and then stayed with you from a distance while you made yourself all over again … alone, but never really when the memory of that kind of love is with you. I promise you, and I don’t need to know these people personally, a loved one would do anything to have someone they lost back. It doesn’t matter what the how’s are or what the whys may be. You take what they have to give and you let them heal while they heal you.”
“How are you not pissed I kept something this big from you?”
“You didn’t keep it from me because you were trying to hurt me. You don’t just wake up after all this time and spill to the woman you are with. The one you just really started something with. Trust comes with time, and I’m thankful that you feel like you can trust me enough now to share your pain with me. I’m not mad, honey. Gosh no. My heart hurts for what you have lost and lived without, but it doesn’t have to continue to cause you pain.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do.”
“That simple?”
I give him a small smile. His eyes watch my lips move.
“There’s more,” he tells me after holding my gaze for a couple of minutes. “You know I work for the government, but it’s more complicated than that. The reason they’re safe is because I made it so none of those men would ever touch them. That side of me? It changed me just as much as living as a dead man for all these years has. Please don’t ask me to explain the details of the job because I can’t, and it’s not to keep things from you; it’s to keep you safe from that world.”
“You kill people,” I softly say, watching those beautiful blue eyes flash brightly when I guess correctly. “These people, the ones that give you orders … are they safe?”
“Some might say that they’re the safest men on the planet. They’re good, but they’re dangerous to the underbelly scum. I’ve done my part, though. I’m done.”
“Done?”
“Two nights ago, I made sure that the last three men who could hurt my family just for knowing who I am are gone. The team? Saint, Evan, and Hunt? I need to ensure they know what’s going on and will continue. Fieldwork, though? Done. I can’t be a ghost when I know what I know now.”
We’re both quiet for a second. I can tell something is still on his mind, but I don’t press him on it. Tonight has been a night of revelations, and he’s fragile enough. I’m sure whatever else there is for him to tell me will come in time.
“I can’t go back to that life alone. I need you,” he softly says.
“You have me.”
“I still don’t understand why you aren’t mad.”
I move, shifting so that I’m on his lap.
“You don’t get mad because someone needed to learn how to let go of pain first in order to let you in. You don’t get mad at the person you’re with, especially when it’s very clear that it wasn’t done in malice or to deceive, but because it was the life you lived long before you met me. I had to earn your trust, and I would never be mad because you needed that before you gave me all of you.” I stop talking, mulling over the rest before I give it to him. The heck with it. “You damn sure don’t get mad when the person you love is hurting. You stay by their side and help however you can to heal that pain.”
“Cuz I Love You” by Lizzo
“You damn sure don’t get mad when the person you love is hurting. You stay by their side and help however you can to heal that pain.”
Her words ping around in my mind, this woman … she never gives me what I expect. The women that I knew in the past, they would have lost their shit if I had kept this from them. Something this huge … a second life, a kid … but her? I had expected her to run. To take that beauty that I found with her, my second chance at a real life, and never look back. My turbulent thoughts are doused just as quickly as they came, though, my heart pounding uncontrollably in my chest as I realize what else she said while I had been too focused on the rest to process.
“What did you say?”
“Which part?”
I hold her gaze. I see her lip quirk up at the corner in the most adorable way. How can she make me feel this good after what I’ve been feeling since Sway’s visit?
I know how.
Hearing her repeat it though is something I need more at this moment than anything else.
“You love me?”
She blushes, and damn if I don’t feel that right in my gut. She brought me back to life, and every second I’m in her presence, I’m reminded that life is worth living. Hell, she makes me want to live. To fight my way through this pain and find a way to face what I need to in order to have that sweet life she promises me with each adoring gaze.
“Are you going to say it again?” I ask when she doesn’t speak.
“This moment isn’t about me, honey.” Her soft voice is a balm to my turbulent soul. “Right now, it’s about making sure you’re okay. Only then will I give you an answer.”
I sigh. Well played. Well played, indeed.
“I don’t know how to go back, Liv,” I tell her after a breath of silence, having to work real hard not to push her on those three words. “If they don’t forgive me … God, I don’t know if I’ll survive that.”
She exhales and gets closer, shifting so she can rest her head on my chest and curl in close. There isn’t a part of her that isn’t touching me.
I love this.
I need this.
“You go back, and you give them the gift of you. The pain will be calmed by the joy they feel by the miracle of seeing you in the flesh before them. You aren’t the only one who’s lost something. They all lost you. In their shoes, even in this little time that I’ve had you? Nothing and no reason would stop me from accepting the gift of you back with open arms.”