“If we ever have the honor of experiencing that together again, I want you to know I’ll be there for you from the very first minute you know.”
“Stone– ”
“I remembered.”
Her head lifted off his chest, and she gently moved away. “What do you mean?”
“I remembered everything, Mae. It was like lightning entered my body and everything from the morning I was shot just slammed into me.”
“Everything?” Her voice shook and the first tear fell from her eye.
“Yes. I’ve been trying… I don’t know how to say it. To tell you how sorry I am. I shouldn’t have hid things from you. But I did. I hid everything from the most important people in my life.” His throat pulled painfully at the admission.
“Tell me now,” she whispered.
“Someone was sending me messages. Threatening me. The team. Telling me justice was coming for me. And they threatened you. The only thing I could think to do to keep you safe was to distance myself. I was wrong. So wrong. And everything that has happened is all my fault. I should have leaned on the team. I shouldn’t have let the messages mess with my mind and bring up all the guilt I’d been holding on to. Christopherwas only able to hurt us, to hurt you, because I let him through in my weakness.”
Mae nodded, the gesture landing against Stone like a punch to the gut.
“I’m so sorry for what I did, Mae. What I stayed quiet about. If I had just opened up, I might not have had that nightmare. I wouldn’t have needed to keep you safe from me.” Stone cleared his throat, trying to clean the wobble from his voice. But it was no use. Because the sorrow from the pain he caused her overwhelmed everything. “You mean everything to me. Youareeverything to me. There isn’t a day… Christ, there isn’t a single minute, where I don’t want you by my side. I don’t know if it was the head injury, or the gunshot wounds, the surgery… whatever it was, it woke back up the real me. The one who was lost beneath the guilt and the trauma. I never want to hurt you.”
“I’m scared.” Her voice was so small, so fragile, he barely recognized it. And he knew. He’d done that to her.
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
Stone sucked in a sharp breath.
“Not the way you think. I know you would do anything within your power to protect me physically, but you broke my heart into a million pieces. You were my everything. We hid from Hawk, but I knew you would get there. You would choose me. The last few months, before all this happened, we were so happy. And then it all just went away. But when you woke up, you were back to that moment, in love with me as if nothing had happened.” Mae sniffled, pulling in a sharp breath as she wiped away the tear that fell down her cheek. “I haven’t had two seconds since I was on my knees, begging you to pick me, to figure out how to put the pieces together. I shoved down every last broken shard of my heart to help youheal and now I’m trapped in the shadows of all that hurt and pain that I tried so hard to ignore.”
“I know, baby. I’m so sorry. That’s not the first time I’ve said it, and it won’t be the last. I’ll say it every day. I’ll say it every hour if I have to. And even if there is one day, somewhere down the line, where you do forgive me, I’ll still think it. Because I can never take that hurt back. I can never go back to that night to pull you up off the floor, and hold you in my arms.” Mae reached up and captured the tear tracking down his face with her thumb. “I’m the one who will beg for your forgiveness. Now. Always. I want you here. Can you do that? Can you give me the opportunity to make things right?”
“I want to be here tonight.” She snuggled down further on his chest, letting her fingers run over the red raised scar on his chest. “But I won’t stay tomorrow.”
“You could.”
“No. I can’t. Because we’re both emotional right now. We have now both thought we were going to lose the other person, forever. And that gave you clarity, but I also can’t trust that this isn’t just another trauma response. It’s not healthy. And until I know that you mean what you just said, until I know that you really will work on fixing what happened in the past, then I can’t just move on.”
“You can’t forgive me.” No. No, no, no. Everything inside him was screaming to make it right. To fix everything he’d messed up. To kiss every inch of her and hold her for however long it took for his love to soak deep into her heart and stitch back together every broken piece.
“I love you,” Mae whispered. “I think I always will. But I have to know that you love me. Not that the guilt of what happened is forcing you to do what’s right in your mind. Not that the weight of what we lost, and of what we’ve been through, is making you think that the only answer is for us to be together.”
“So… we have tonight? And then what?” he asked.
“We have tonight. And then I move back home.”
Stone nodded. At least she would be just upstairs. With her brother. Safe. And still close by. “I’ll do my best to give you space, but it’s going to be hard not to bump into each other when you’re just upstairs and we work at the same place.”
Mae sighed, her shoulders falling against his hold.
“Mae?”
“I… I’m not staying here. I’m going home. To my family.” Her eyes closed, more tears slipping through her lashes.
“But we’re your family,” he whispered.
“You were…”
