She gives a watery laugh. “You’re insane.”
The alleyway has the faint smell of kung pao chicken. There’s a dumpster, and beyond that, a structure made of cardboard boxes and milk crates that probably houses a homeless person. It makes a more appropriate confessional than the church.
It’s the kind of place I lived in until I enlisted.
“You trusted me enough to tell me this. I need to trust you the same way.” I swallow hard. “You need to know the kind of man you’re entrusting your life with.”
She turns to me, her expression earnest. “I can fight, you know. You don’t always have to protect me. And I already figured out that I can write on the run.”
She’s worried about fitting into my life, and the idea cracks the cold metal fortress around my heart. “Listen. I’m not worried about you being strong enough. You’re a goddess.”
Her expression turns abashed. “Then what were you going to tell me?”
“What happened to me after I left my father’s house. Or what I became. It’s not really about the things that were done to me. My father beat me, and it was never really part of me. But after I left, the things I did to survive, they’re burned into my soul.”
“You don’t have to tell me what you did.”
“But I do.” I run a hand over my face. “The truth is it will be a hard road trying to negotiate a peace with the lieutenant colonel. We’ll be hiding until I can work out a strategy. Gather the right leverage. You need to know who you’re hiding with.”
“I already know you.”
“No. You know the man I am now. The soldier.”
Her eyes turn soft. “Who were you then? Before the soldier?”
“I was a whore.” The word comes out hard and flat. There’s no sugarcoating that reality. There’s no pretending it’s anything other than disgusting. “I dealt drugs, but when I couldn’t, when I needed cash, when I needed food, I knew the right street corner. It wasn’t so different than this one. Wait until someone drives by and rolls down the window. Give him a price.”
Her eyes are wide. She doesn’t look horrified, but that’s because she’s busy being shocked out of her mind. I looked up the house where Liam left her. White fence, vegetable garden. It’s an entire world apart from the ramshackle mobile home I grew up. A different planet entirely than the makeshift structure a few yards in front of us. I slept in a place like that. I know how little it does to keep out the cold and rain. I know about the rats and the roaches.
“Oh, Elijah,” she whispers. “No.”
Grief. That’s the first idea that comes into my head. The first stage of grief is denial. What is she grieving, then? Her love for me? Ruined. Our life together? Gone.
“Yes,” I say, my voice grim. There should be no doubt.
“And you feel shame for that. Of course you do,” she says, almost to herself. “Your father failed you. The system failed you, but you blame yourself.”
“My father was a bastard, but he had nothing to do with me after I left.”
“Nothing to do with you? He beat you until you had no other choice but to leave.”
And there is anger. Pretty soon she’ll come to accept the reason we can’t be together. I’m not a man who any woman could love, not when she knows the truth about me.
Her eyes turn fierce. “How dare you.”
Shame thumps hard in my chest. “I should have told you. I know that.”
“Then love me more than that,” she says, mocking me. “Love me enough to ruin my fucking life.”
“That was before you knew. I won’t hold you to that.”
“You’re determined to break my heart.” Tears fill her eyes. “You beautiful, brave, stupid man. You want me to love you? I already do. Telling me something that hurt you in the past will never change that. Telling me what you did to survive? Do you think I’d rather you starved?”
“I starved you,” I tell her, my voice grim. “No food. No water.”
“That’s not precisely true. You offered it. And I turned it down.” She gives me an impish look. “Besides the fact that you only kept me captive overnight.”
“I don’t think many women would be so understanding of being held captive for any time period.”
“Everything you did, everything you survived, it only brought you to me. Understand?” She holds my face the same way I held hers. I can’t tear my gaze away. “I would take away your pain if I could, but the only thing I can do now is promise that you’ll never be alone again.”
There’s a distinct tear. That’s what it feels like in my chest. Something ripping into shreds. That old blanket of shame, perhaps. I make a rough groan and press my lips to hers. It’s a messy kiss. There’s nothing slow or sensual about it. It’s a mashing of lips. A claiming.
“Come on,” I murmur against her lips. “Let’s get your things.”
I start up the SUV again and maneuver into the flow of traffic. One conversation cannot erase a lifetime of shame. One conversation cannot assuage my guilt over derailing her life.
It’s a start.
She’s the one who stepped out of the church. Instead it feels like I’m the one who finally left my self-imposed prison. It feels like I’m the one warmed by sunlight for the first time in years.
It feels like hope.
At least until we step inside her loft.
The lieutenant colonel sits in her favorite armchair for writing. He’s flanked by two men in uniform who look ready to shoot us on sight. The lieutenant colonel smiles. “There you are. You’ve kept me waiting, but I won’t hold that against you. Sit, sit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Holly
It’s easy to think of Elijah North as invincible.
Only when he’s naked and underneath me, brought low by desire, made weak by how much he needs me, can I really see that he’s flesh and blood. A man.
Which means he can be shot. Hurt. Killed. Even as my mind rebels against that idea, my body pumps blood fast and hard. I’m preparing for combat. I may not be a soldier the way that Elijah is, the way these men on either side of the lieutenant colonel are, but I’m a fighter.
“Good afternoon,” Elijah says, his voice casual and sardonic, as if he isn’t surprised. The only thing that betrays his shock is his stillness. “Sir.”
“I see you haven’t lost your manners. Though I think we should disarm you to make sure.”
There’s a moment of taut silence. Then Elijah moves with deliberate slowness, taking a gun from his ankle holster and a knife from his pocket. He sets them down on the foyer table alongside a vase of fake calla lilies.
“One more,” the lieutenant colonel says, and Elijah produces another compact gun.
He sets it down and stands with his hands at his side. I have to peer around him to see the lieutenant colonel, and I realize that he’s blocking me with his body. He’s using himself as a shield to protect me in case someone starts shooting. And I’m close enough to the door that maybe I could even escape, however unlikely.
If I were willing to leave him behind.