“Is it normal that it feels like the past seventeen years never happened?” She paused. “No, that’s not right. The past seventeen years definitely happened. And much of it has been good—for both of us. But it hit me that you’ve slipped back into my life, not as if you’d never been missing, but…” She inhaled, then let the breath out slowly. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I guess, well, until a few days ago, we hadn’t spoken in years, but it doesn’tfeelthat way. It feels like you’ve always been there. Thatwe’vealways been there. Even when we haven’t.”
Collin tipped his head and studied her.
“I guess it’s one of those friendships that we pick up where we left off?” she continued. “Only that doesn’t seem right either.” And it didn’t. They were both different people than they’d been as teenagers. And yet… She took a deep breath, remembering the kiss, the way he reached for her hand, the scorching looks he sent her. She didn’t think too much about the words that came out next. “Now that you’re back, I can’t imagine you not being a part of my life again, but it’s almost…suspicious hownaturalit feels. And I can’t tell if that’s because of who we were to each other, or if it’s because of who weshould beto each other.”
His nearly black gaze hadn’t shifted so much as a millimeter.
“I freaked you out, didn’t I?” she asked, forcing a tiny smile.
“You didn’t freak me out.”
Her eyes searched his.
“You’re braver than I am,” he said.
She scoffed quietly. “Says the man who hunted terrorists and really, really bad guys. And gals,” she said, repeating his words from earlier.
The left side of his mouth ticked up into the ghost of a smile. “I don’t know,” he said. Now she cocked her head in question. “I don’t know the answer to the question you asked. Is it what we were or what we should be that makes this”—he waved between them—“seem so easy? So right?” He hesitated. “I trusted you back then in a way I trusted no one else. And despite the years and lives we’ve led between then and now, that trust is still there. I don’t understand it, I don’t know why. I only know that it is.”
“And that makes you suspicious, too,” she said.
He nodded. “Of me, though. Not of you,” he clarified. He opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again. “Our past, the present, and any potential future is all twisted up inside me. And my need, my confusion, my…circumstances feel like a burden you shouldn’t carry.”
Her brows dropped. “Burden?”
He dipped his head and ran his fingers through his hair as he turned toward the fire. She couldn’t tell if he was thinking or opting not to answer, so she waited. A few minutes passed before he jammed his hands on his hips and lowered his head. His shoulders rose on an inhale and his head lifted, though he didn’t turn toward her.
“You are the only woman, only person, I’ve ever trusted with every part of me. With the parts of me that my father and his fucked-up life stole.” He paused. “That’s a weight I don’t want to put on you.”
She understood the words, but it took a moment for the meaning to sink in. When it did, disbelief, pain, and anger tore through her. Anger at Roger and everything he’d done to his son, pain on Collin’s behalf for what he’d experienced, for the betrayal of his parent. And disbelief that…
“I’m the only woman you’ve ever trusted enough to be intimate with,” she said, still processing that reality as the words came out.
A log shifted in the fireplace; Collin inhaled. A beat later, he faced her, a sad smile playing on his lips. “The nickname Monk didn’t come from nowhere.”
Her heart shattered for him.
“While I was in the military, I moved around a lot, deployed, all those things. It didn’t leave a lot of opportunity to build the kind of trust I apparently need. And by the time we settled in Mystery Lake, I’d sort of gotten used to it not being a part of my life, I guess. I mean, I’ve been with women before. It wasn’t like I never hooked up. But…”
“But you didn’t let them touch you, please you,” she said. As teenagers, he’d always focused more on her pleasure than his. She’d appreciated it, of course, but she’d wanted him to experience the same. They’d been together months before he let her touch him, let her take him in her hand, in her mouth, then eventually into her body.
He didn’t so much nod as sort of bob his head at her comment.
She needed time to let what he’d told her sink in, but she didn’t hold back asking, “Why would that be a burden to me?”
“You don’t think carrying the weight of my seventeen years of celibacy would be a burden?” he asked, crossing his arms. “Or the fact that you’re the only woman in my life who seems to be able to fill that need?” He paused, his chest rising and falling in rapid, but smooth, breaths. “My insecurities, my past, my scars…they’re mine to carry, Helia, not yours. And no, I don’t think it’s fair to ask you to hold them, too.”
The decision not to argue with him came easily. His reasoning might be grounded in truth, but it was flawed in execution. He wouldn’t hear that now, though, if she pointed it out. If she pointed out that her choices were her own, and what she should or shouldn’t carry, her decision.
No, instead, she focused on the man in front of her. The man whose shoulders were so tense he probably had the beginnings of a headache. The man whose arms were crossed, not in defiance but in protection. The man who stood rigid and still, waiting for a battle.
Well, he wasn’t going to get one from her.
She crossed the short distance between them, his eyes tracking her every step. Reaching up with both hands, she gently pulled his free from where they’d been tucked under his elbows. Closing that final distance between them, she pressed her body to his, resting her cheek on his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist.
She didn’t have any answers as to whether they would or should become anything more than friends. But if anyone needed a hug, it was Collin. Collin and every facet he held inside him—the scarred boy, the fierce soldier, the friend, the brother, the man.
“Helia,” he said, his voice a harsh, cracked whisper.
