Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” I insist.
“Wasn’t there another way?” she blurts, her voice trembling with emotion. “Couldn’t you have shot his leg or his arm?”
My hands fall away from her. “He had a gun to the head of the princess I was escorting to another country. He’d killed three of our men. And I had no idea who was left that was on my side. No. It was him or me and the princess, and she was an innocent, Ana.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t know how to do this, Luke.” She opens her eyes. “I don’t know how to be without you, but I don’t know how to be with you, either. It feels wrong. You killed Kasey.”
Realization washes over me as sure as the water pounding at my back. “Is that why you’re in the shower? To wash me off of you, Ana? You feel dirty now?” Suddenly needing the hell out of this shower, I turn to exit.
She catches my arm. “No. God, no. I thought I was going to cry. I felt like a silly fool. I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“That’s not how we operate, Ana. You don’t have to be a soldier with me. You know that. That’s not us.”
“We aren’t us right now, Luke.”
“That wasn’t my choice, Ana.”
“I know that. I know I handled my side of things horribly. I didn’t mean to shoot you. I swear to you. I would have died with you if you had died. And I was an idiot. I shot his hand. I know better. He could have killed us both. And I know that’s your point with Kasey. He could have shot you and the princess, but that doesn’t change my guilt. I don’t know how to be without you. I don’t know how to be with you. But I missed you, Luke.”
I draw her to me, and stroke wet hair from her face. “Let’s get out of the shower and talk.”
“I need to wash and dry my hair. What if we suddenly have to go? But that’s not an excuse to avoid talking. I want to talk. I do.”
“You want space.”
“No. Stay in here with me.” She steps into me and wraps her arms around me. “Just be here with me. Let me feel us again.”
“Except we don’t exist anymore. Remember?”
“Not knowing how to fix us doesn’t mean I don’t want to fix us, Luke.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, but I won’t lie and tell you that doesn’t terrify me more than any enemy I ever faced.”
That reply tells me everything I don’t want to know. She’s not ever going to be able to live with me and the truth. We have now. We have no future. And I’m not sure what to do with that. I’m not sure how to change that. I’m not sure she really wants me to try.
Chapter Forty
LUCIFER
I make Ana get dressed and I do the same. Naked isn’t exactly a direct path to conversation, not after two years apart. And dressing does not mean in a nightgown or some shit like that, either. Once I’ve nixed that idea, she dresses in baggy sweats and a tank top, and if she’d paired that with a bra and her nipples weren’t puckered beneath the cotton, I’d be a little less distracted. I pull on jeans and a T-shirt. My nipples don’t pucker, but my cock damn sure is ready to go again.
That fucker.
Conversation first. Naked next.
The problem is that the barriers between us aren’t about sex. They’re about life. The one we once shared together.
I sit on the chair where we’d had sex earlier, which isn’t necessarily the best location for this conversation, but then neither is the bed. She sits on the ottoman by the fire and gets right to the point. “Just because I don’t think you really understand this, and I’m not sure how you could, I never stopped loving you.”
It’s a good start, if it didn’t feel like it has about ten “buts” attached. “I never stopped loving you, but that isn’t the real issue here, now is it?”
“No,” she agrees. “Obviously not. And it’s not even just about you killing Kasey. To be fair to you, at least to some degree, it’s also how I handled it.”
“Death is unfair, Ana. So is life sometimes.”
“I did try and call you,” she says once again. “You wanted to know when. Not long after the funeral.”
That’s better than a year later, I think, right about the time I accepted a dangerous overseas mission, the one where I met Adam. “And if I would have answered, would it have changed anything?”
“You wouldn’t have spent two years thinking I shot you on purpose.”
She’s not wrong, but I’m not sure that would have changed much. “When you said you shouldn’t have shot Trevor’s hand, did you know he was dirty?”