When she looked up at him the tightness was gone from his face, but the pain was still there. It seeped into her, merging with her own until she couldn’t even tear them apart anymore. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. This was so hard. How could she look at Ryder every day knowing that just the sight of her face caused him pain, made him feel guilty, made him blame himself just like he blamed himself for what had happened to his mother?
“Oh, honey, no, don’t be sorry, what he did to you was not your fault.”
“It hurts,” she cried, not fighting him when he pulled her back into an embrace. “It hurts because it hurt me, but it hurts so much more because it hurts you as well. I want it to stop, I want it to go away, I want everything to be normal again, but I don’t even know what normal looks like anymore. I don’t want you to blame yourself, I don’t want you to think that anything Alex did was your fault, I just want us to be a normal, happy couple, but I don’t know if we can be.”
His arms tightened reflexively around her. “What are you saying, Abby?”
“I don’t know,” she wept.
“Are you saying that this is over?”
Was she?
Was she at a point where she didn’t know how to move forward?
Abigail felt stuck, trapped in quicksand, it was pulling her down fast and the more she struggled the faster she sank. How could she pull Ryder down with her?
And yet at the same time, how could she live without him?
Was it selfish to ask him to stand by her while she rebuilt her life?
One look up at his anguished face and she knew the answer. Knew it as surely as she knew that this would be the hardest thing she had ever done and the longest, roughest journey she had ever taken.
Dragging in a breath, Abigail prepared herself to say the one word that would change everything, that would dictate both of their futures. “No. I need you, Ryder, I just don’t know that it’s fair to ask you to wait while I sort out this mess Alex created.”
“Fair? Abby, nothing that happened to you was fair, but I love you, and just like I would never have walked away from my mother, I would never walk away from you. We’ll find a way to make it work, we’ll get you back to Dr. Hancock as soon as you heal enough to go, we’ll take our relationship slowly or fast or whatever you want. All I know is that I love you more than anything, and all I need is you.”
Abigail melted against him. This man was her everything, he had saved her life twice, and yeah his decisions to keep his past from her had hurt her deeply, but in the end, he had proven how important she was to him, and she believed him.
“Ryder, in the jungle when you found me the first time, you said to trust you and we both knew I didn’t, at least not with anything other than my life, but I trust you now, with all of me, with my heart,” she told him, tilting her head so her lips could touch his jaw.
His big body shuddered against hers. “Abby, you don’t know how much those words mean to me. I know I hurt you, I know I lied to you and let you down, I know I broke your heart not once but twice, and for you to say that you trust me with your heart, sweetheart, that does crazy things to me. Abs, you think that I saved you, but the truth is your love saved me a long time ago. I feared for so long that with my father’s DNA inside me I would turn out to be like him, but when a sweet, sassy, spunky, strong woman like you fell for me, I realized I was nothing like him and never would be. When you gave me a second chance and told me for the first time that you loved me the guilt I felt over my mother’s death finally stopped choking me. And now, holding you in my arms and hearing you say that after everything we’ve been through that you trust me it heals the last of my broken pieces. You saved me, Abby, not the other way around.”
Her lips were split, her eyes half swollen closed, she had a concussion, cracked ribs, a broken nose and cheekbone, and a broken arm all courtesy of Alex Irwin and his men, but none of that mattered as she wrapped her good arm around Ryder’s waist and touched her mouth to his.
This man had owned her heart since she was a kid, she loved him with every fiber of her being, and finally the stars had all aligned and the universe had stopped frowning down at her, and now he was hers.
Chapter 17
June 30th
8:49 A.M.
Spider ran his hands through his hair as he closed Abigail’s hospital room door behind him. Her doctor had gone in to examine her and hopefully give her the all clear to go home this afternoon.
Home.
With his girl.
They still had some things to work out, practicalities like where they were going to live and how soon they were going to get married, what Abigail’s plans were for the future, and things like that, but the big stuff was out of the way. They were in love, and he had earned Abigail’s trust back, that was all that mattered.
“How is she?” Night asked, storming through the hospital with a box in his hands.
“Yeah, she’s doing okay,” he said vaguely.
“That doesn’t convince me,” Night scowled. “Let me ask again, how is my sister doing?”
“She’s struggling, okay, man? Not physically so much although she’s in a lot of pain and she’s going to be laid up for a while, but psychologically she’s struggling. Finding out everything Alex did to her, it messed her up. She had nightmares last night, once the drugs wore off she struggled to sleep, tossing and turning, then she started screaming.”
He dragged his hands down his face. He was exhausted, he hadn’t left the hospital since Abigail was brought here. Someone had dropped off clean clothes so he’d changed, but he hadn’t showered yet. His CO and his team had come here and they’d debriefed in Abigail’s hospital room because he hadn’t been able to leave her side. Now he just wanted to get her home and let her start healing.
“She going to see the doctor again when she gets home?” Night asked.
“Yes, she knows she needs help and she’d not resisting getting it.”
“Good.” Night nodded like that was a weight off his mind. “You’re not going to bail on her again?”
“No. Never. It was a mistake to let my past keep me afraid of having a future with her, but if she can overcome what Alex did and still look to the future I can do the same. No more letting the past dictate the future, no more being afraid, she knows the truth, and she didn’t run, I should have known that was how she would react from the beginning.” There were enough mistakes made in his past to fill the ocean that he loved, but now he had everything to live for and everything to lose.
“Look, Spider, I know I apologized already, but again, man, I’m really sorry for interfering. I should have made sure I knew why dad didn’t want the two of you together before I got involved.”
The pain in his friend’s face wasn’t what he wanted to see. Night had made a mistake in blindly going along with his father’s wishes without having all the facts, but it was done and over with and Night had lost a lot too because of that decision, there was no need to keep beating a dead horse.
“It’s okay, let’s just move forward, you know I forgave you a long time ago.”
Night gave a tight smile. “I won you over, but I think I have a way to go before I get my sister to forgive me.”