Issuing a burning-hot sigh, she reached for his arm.
This time he let her touch him. She swung him back to face her. Their gazes connected.
Tears swam in his dark eyes. “I have sons.”
She nodded, a cry breaking from her.
“Jesus Christ, Rose.” He caught her up and squashed her hard against his chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the tears flow.
* * * * *
Oz couldn’t fight back the constant roll of goosebumps over his skin. From the moment Rose said the word boys, he’d known. Deep down, he knew everything before she even confessed to it.
She trembled against him, and that only cut him more. He’d failed her—failed them all. Years lost, never regained.
He wanted to smash shit. And leap for joy.
She tipped her head back and he saw the truth spilling down her cheeks in tracks of tears. “Their names are Nicholas and Alexander. I call them Nick and Alex.”
His chest heaved with a sob he never released and hadn’t experienced since the time when he realized he had control over his emotions and could hide away everything behind a steel door.
My hardness has lost me so much. My sons…Rose.
He might have known true happiness with her. Coming home to help the boys with their schoolwork and taking my wife to bed each night. Goddammit.
Since parting from her, he knew without question that he had to get her back.
He grabbed her face and kissed her—hard. She met the thrust of his tongue with a soft cry and stroked him back. The force of the kiss coupled with knowing her eighteen-year-long secret had his chest about to explode with emotion.
“Fuck, Rose. Fuck. I need you. I never stopped loving you, not one time since I left you in that garden.”
A sob broke from her, and he threaded his fingers into her loose hair. He gently guided her down on the bed and leaned over her, staring into her eyes. “I mean it, sweetheart. I’m an idiot and an asshole. I don’t deserve…” He struggled a moment, and then burst out, “I don’t deserve anything at all. But I want you. And our…sons.” He broke.
She threw her arms around his neck and yanked him down. The mix of guilt and joy couldn’t be put into words, so he didn’t try. She held him for a long minute while he regained his control.
Thumbing a tear from his cheek, she searched his face. “I’m so sorry too. I should have told you years ago.”
“All my fault. I didn’t give you any reason to believe I cared, when all I fucking did was care. I had to leave you or ruin you.”
Surprise hit her eyes. “Ruin me? How?”
“I couldn’t show my feelings, especially back then. I would have been so hard and unyielding toward you that it would have killed any love between us.”
“I love you. I never stopped.”
He closed his eyes on her admission. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t know how.”
She bracketed his face with her hands and forced him to look at her. God, it hurt knowing what he’d left her to deal with all these years alone.
“Tell me. Tell me everything,” he rasped out.
She nodded. “I can show you too. Oh. No, I can’t. I don’t have a phone anymore.”
“But the boys…they’re almost men now.” His throat closed on the words.
“Yes. Seventeen. Born a month early. I didn’t have enough room to carry both to full term. They were big babies—each six pounds.”
He skimmed a hand down her body to rest over her abdomen. “I never got to see you full of my children. God, Rose.” He nearly succumbed to full on tears but held back.
She covered his hand with her own. “I have pictures, at home. I can show you. And if you have a laptop or maybe even a phone, I can show you how to find them.”
He sat up quickly and pulled out his phone. Without bothering to hide his action, he swiped his wrist across the device, which unlocked it to anything in the world he needed.
“Where?” he asked her.
“I have a photo cloud.”
He followed her instructions to enter the storage space. As soon as the first image of teenage boys, tall and straight and proud, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, popped onto the screen, Oz had to pinch the bridge of his nose to stave off uncontrollable tears.
“They’re in uniform.”
“They attend a military school in Virginia, bound for basic training after graduation this summer.”
“My God,” he whispered. As he stared at their faces, he saw himself in them, as well as Rose.
She leaned over his shoulder, watching as he flipped through several more photos. When he reached one of the boys with birthday cakes in front of them, lit up with candles, he could barely restrain himself.
“I missed everything.”
She sniffed. “I’m sorry. I should have forced you to listen.”
“No. I was so stubborn. But why did you hide them away, Rose? Does your father hate me so much that he would try to keep them from me?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t know who their father is.”
He searched her face and saw the truth standing in her beautiful eyes. “Why? How?”
“I knew he’d come after you, and I couldn’t let that happen. I never confessed who the father was, and he said then the father didn’t deserve to ever find evidence of their existence, and he used his clearances and all his power to lock up every bit of information. Birth records, school history, everything.”
“And the school? What do they believe?”
“They won’t go against his orders to keep things hushed up. But they believe the twins are his nephews.”
He covered his face with a hand, ingesting all of this. “I don’t know what to say to any of this.”
“You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to search further. And you don’t have to do anything in regards to raising them. They don’t know anything about you, and it can remain that way.”
He doubled over and dropped his head into his hands. Rose rested a hand on his spine, but he didn’t want the kind of comfort she offered. He didn’t want her to let him off the hook so easy.
“I missed eighteen years. I missed the delivery room. I missed all those birthdays and Christmas mornings. I missed every broken bone and trip to the emergency room.”
She didn’t respond.
“How can you even claim to love me after what I’ve done to you?” He pushed upward and stared at her. He stood at a crossroads—to leave The Guard, which he’d built into the organization it was today and pick up life with Rose and finally father his children—or to walk away from her and continue in the world he’d created.
One look into Rose’s eyes told him the answer.
“My God, Rose. I love you so goddamn much.” He cupped her delicate chin and dropped his forehead against hers.
“I can’t believe after all these years I’m finally hearing those words.” Her tone echoed with wonder.
“I’m an idiot for holding it back. I don’t know how we fit any of this together and make it work, but I can’t let you go now.” He had to get her alone, away from this house and someplace he could love her properly and make her scream out his name until next Tuesday.
He brushed his lips over hers and skimmed her cheekbone with the back of his knuckles. “Let’s leave this place.”