All four men looked up to see Bailey standing there, her mouth set in a hard line, her eyes sharp as she glanced around the room at them. She must have been listening at the door. Aaron hadn’t told her about this meeting, so he had no idea how she’d found out about it, but it was clear from the look on her face that she wasn’t going to leave.
“Bailey, what are you doing here?” Xavier asked, sounding annoyed. “Aaron was supposed to tell you—”
“I did,” Aaron fired back. Bailey narrowed her eyes at him. In all fairness, their conversation had been cut off before they could come to any conclusions about what they were going to do. Asmuch as he wished he could have convinced her, as soon as she had planted her lips on his, he had known he was done for.
“You need a woman for this job,” she replied. “I’m a woman. And I know what I’m doing. I know what we need to get out of her to get the warrant—”
“How long have you been listening in?” Lawson demanded, but she ignored him, not taking her eyes off Aaron.
“I can do this,” she murmured to him, her voice almost pleading, as though she was begging him to see her as strong and capable. He felt a tug in his chest, but he pushed it down. He couldn’t let his emotions get the better of him. He had just gotten her back, and he wasn’t going to let her get hurt or mess up her future if he could help it.
“No,” he replied, getting to his feet and shaking his head. “Sorry, Bailey, but no. We talked about this, and we decided it’s not safe for you. You know why.”
“And you know you can’t do this without me!” she exclaimed. She was getting heated. Aaron should have known their encounter the day before wouldn’t be enough to shut down her usual stubborn, focused self. When she got something into her head, nothing was going to stop her, especially a bunch of men telling her she couldn’t do something.
“You’re staying here, where it’s safe,” he replied. “They already know the lodge exists. At least that’s a known fact.”
“No, I’m not,” she snapped back. “You can’t just make these decisions for me, Aaron. I’m sick of it!”
Her words hung in the air, laced with more meaning than he cared to acknowledge. He knew he had to stop this. He didn’t want Xavier and Lawson hearing all the ins and outs of their messy history, but there was nothing else he could do. She was going to make him have this argument right here, right now, in front of everyone.
Luckily, the guys seemed to realize this wasn’t a conversation they should be sitting in on, and all of them made their excuses and hurried off. Bailey and Aaron were alone together again, but this time, there was none of the chemistry between them there normally was. No, it was just anger and all the feelings of hurt and betrayal.
“This is exactly what you did to me six years ago,” she told him, tears rising in her voice. “I… I can’t believe you think I would just go along with this again. Don’t you know me at all?”
“I wanted to protect you,” he replied through gritted teeth. “That’s what I’m trying to do now. You know that, right?”
“You don’t need to protect me,” she shot back. “You didn’t need to protect me then, and you don’t need to protect me now—”
“Of course I needed to protect you back then!” he exploded at her. “They were going to hurt you, Bailey. You have no idea what they were capable of!”
“I know that they weren’t capable of anything the two of us couldn’t have handled together,” she replied, her voice dropping. “You should have told me, Aaron. You know I would have helped you. Hell, I would have run with you, if you’d asked me to.”
That stopped him dead in his tracks. He stared at her.
“You would have?” he murmured.
She nodded, her eyes dropping, a tear running down her cheek. “Of course I would have, Aaron,” she told him. “I would have left with you. I was in love with you, I would have done anything you’d asked me to.Anything. As long as it meant we could be together. I would have chosen you over my career, my safety, anything. I just wanted you.”
He couldn’t bear to hear her say this. It hurt too much. If he could go back in time and tell this to his younger self, he would done things differently. He would have kept her close to him, supported her, maybe even worked with her to take them down.
But it was too late for that now. The damage was done. And he wasn’t sure if there was anything he could do to put the pieces back together.
“I loved you, too, Bailey,” he replied, his voice catching at the back of his throat. “That’s why I did what I had to do. And that’s why I’m doing this now. I can’t live with the thought of you getting hurt because of me—not again.”
He couldn’t even finish what he was saying—the thought of it was far too painful. He couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the truth of what he had put her through, especially knowing how deeply she felt for him. It made him feel even guiltier, knowing how much he had hurt her without even realizing it. He hated himself for what he had done to her.
“That’s not how love works, Aaron,” she replied, shaking her head. “You don’t take someone’s choices away when you love them. You work with them. You talk to them. You tell them what’s going on. You don’t just throw them away.”
He parted his lips to try and protest, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. She turned away before he could speak, and headed for the door. When she got to the door, she paused for a second with her hand on the knob, like she might say something else, but instead she opened the door and left the room.
He listened to the sound of her footsteps down the corridor, the sound of her words ringing in his ears. She had loved him. She had loved him so much she would have given up everything to be with him. Instead, he had taken that choice from her. He had taken away everything she had worked for, everything she had dedicated herself to, and then left her alone, without the support of the man she had loved.
He felt like she had punched him in the stomach. This pain was worse than anything he’d ever felt before, worse than the beating he’d taken from Ziegler and his men. Because this was a pain he had inflicted on to her, a pain he would never be able toundo. The way she saw it, he was just doing the same thing he had done to her six years ago, and he couldn’t even argue with her.
But he couldn’t stand the thought of her out in the line of fire again. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to her, just like he couldn’t have all those years ago. He could still remember when they had threatened her, when they had told him they would take her out if he didn’t do what they said, and the sheer terror that had consumed him when he had been forced to confront the thought of losing her.
So much terror, he hadn’t even thought about how she felt about all of it. He wished he could go after her, find the right thing to say to fix it, but the pain in her eyes when she looked at him ran deep. Maybe deeper than he would ever be able to reach.
