“Yes. I do. We can talk now, in front of your parents. Or somewhere private. But I’m not leaving until I apologize and give you an honest explanation.”
“Why are you being so nice all of a sudden?” She leaned in so close she was almost touching him and whispered, “You don’t owe me anything, Bryson.”
He slowly shook his head. “I owe you my life.”
“Damn it,” she muttered, stepping back. “You’re making me cry again.”
“Teagan—” her mother began.
“I know, I know. Language. Sorry, Mom.” She wondered if her mother would still treat her like a kid when she hit thirty. She swiped at her wet eyes. “We’ll talk in the backyard, Bryson. Then you can go.”
“After dinner,” her mother said. “Whatever you two have to say can be settled later. Now go wash up. Henry, show Bryson to the other bathroom so he can wash up too.”
Teagan’s face heated with embarrassment at being ordered around in front of Bryson. But since he was currently following her father to the master suite to the second bathroom, at least she wasn’t the only one being bossed around like a child.
“You can thank me later,” her mother whispered. “Now go fix your face before that handsome man comes back.”
She gasped in dismay, remembering that she’d washed off her makeup, and ran for the bathroom.
“YOUDIDN’TNEEDto put on any makeup, you know,” Bryson said after dinner as they both rested their arms on the top of the picket fence and stared out over the backyard pond.
Her face heated yet again. “I’m amazed you even noticed.”
He sighed heavily. “I owe you a tremendous apology. I’ve been an absolute beast since waking up after the explosion.”
She hesitated, his words surprising her. “I didn’t think of it that way, that when you woke up in recovery it was your first time being awake since the explosion. You must have been really confused. In your place, I think I would have been terrified. Not knowing what had happened.”
He turned to face her, his left hand braced on top of the fence. “I was beyond terrified, about you.”
“About me? But... I was right there in the recovery room. You saw that I was okay.”
“By the grace of God, yes. Teagan, what were you thinking coming back inside that shack? Just a few seconds earlier and that madman would have still been there to kill you or take you with him. A few seconds later and you’d have been killed in the explosion. You shouldn’t have risked your life like that,especially after promising me you’d run as fast as you could and wouldn’t stop.”
“Sort of like you promised me that you’d run out of the shack too? If you’d told me you’d been shot, I would have helped you instead of running off and leaving you. If you’d been killed, how do you think that would have made me feel? How could I live with that kind of guilt on my conscience? If you think I’m the kind of woman who thinks it’s romantic for a guy to die for her, then you don’t know me at all. I don’t want you to die for me. I want you to live.”
His jaw tightened, and he turned to face the pond again.
She did the same, counting silently until she could speak again without her voice shaking. “So that’s it then?” she finally said. “You’ve been mad at me ever since then because I couldn’t bear for you to die if there was anything I could do to prevent it? Is this your apology? Because as apologies go, it totally sucks.”
He suddenly turned and grasped her forearms, pulling her close. “Don’t you get it, Teagan? When you walked in my door in Gatlinburg, you changed everything for me, everything. You made me care when I didn’t want to. You made me want...you. And instead of shutting myself away to protect someone else from being hurt by another one of my lousy decisions, I decided to give it another try. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could help you and not be a bringer of doom. But look at how that worked out? I’m a jinx. Bad luck. Whatever you want to call it. If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have been at the Brodericks’.”
She shook her head. “What you’re saying doesn’t even make sense. Mason told me what happened with Hayley, when you were shot in the hip. You were the only person for miles around who saw her with the kidnapper. You rammed her truck with your car to try to save her, and paid for it by getting shot.” He started to interrupt, but she pushed his hands away to stop him. “The only one who thinks you were a failure in that incident isyou. From what Mason said, the delay you caused before the abductor took off with Hayley again was enough of a delay to save her life. It gave other Seekers the time they needed to catch up to them. She’s alive because of you. Period.”
His jaw tightened. “Are you done yet?”
“No. I’m not. I won’t bother getting into the details about the Ripper case. I already told you my own investigation proved to me that you were the only one who had that right. And, hey, look at me, I was the one who was dead wrong on who abducted me. It certainly wasn’t Lowe. But as far as me going with you to interview the Brodericks, give me a break. You know me well enough by now to realize that if you hadn’t agreed to work with me after running into Zeus and me on that path, I would have continued my investigation on my own. So what do you think would have happened when I took the steps you did, set up an interview with the Brodericks, and others. Eventually I’d have stumbled onto the killer, like you and I both did. But I’d have done it alone. How do you think that would have turned out? Without you to save me, I’d have never figured out how to get out of handcuffs, or thought to make a hole in the floor to escape the shack. Without you, I’d be dead right now. Don’t you see that?”
His gaze searched hers. “After everything that’s happened, how can you have such faith in me?”
“You’ve never let me down, not once. Why wouldn’t I believe in you?”
He lifted her hands and gently pressed a kiss on the back of each of them. “I’ve been angry at myself, angry at you, because I care so much about you. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
She tugged her hands free and cupped his cheeks. “Then maybe instead of pushing me away, you should be pulling me close. Because there’s no one I’d ever trust more than you to keep me safe.”
He groaned before taking her in his arms and kissing her. The kiss was so sweet, so tender, that she was crying when it was over.
He frowned and gently wiped away her tears. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. What is it? What did I do?”
