“So goddamn beautiful,” he rasps.
He doesn’t pull out when he’s done, which isn’t surprising. He holds me closer, his long, slender fingers weaving into my sopping hair to angle my head, the spouting water pinging off him and prancing in new directions. “You trust me to hold your life in my hands, to be a thumbprint away from ending it.”
It’s not a question, but rather an astonished observation.
Still, I answer, “Of course.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you trust me with seeing Jax?” So much hurt threads that query.
I’m too dizzy to hold back any longer. Maybe that’s what he was aiming for. After another craggy exhale, I swallow and hope this sinks in. “Because you’re not God, Ty. You are not responsible for every person in your sphere. The weight of everyone’s safety and choices and morality is not for you to carry. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
His jaw clenches, his spine stiffening, his entire being refutingmy assessment. “Youare my responsibility. And as your husband, it’s my job—my right—to protect you.”
A scoff huffs out of me because he missed my whole point. “There’s a huge difference between protecting me and shouldering the responsibility for things outside of your control.”
He drops my legs and pulls his cock out, creating the distance he needs to cling to his saving-the-world bravado. “This could’ve been in my control—”
“No, Ty. It couldn’t.” I glide my hand over his scruff, drawing him back to me. “Not that piece. I don’t know what they’re up to, but I do know that you being involved would only complicate matters or get you killed.”
He says nothing, but his glare shouts how impossible that truth is to accept, so I unload my rant. He’s not the only one who needed to grow. And being here, being away, being forced into this twisted society is somehow liberating.
“And it’s not only the Jax piece. There are a thousand things concerning me that you can’t control. That you can’t promise. That you can’t prevent. No one seems to understand this except me. My brothers did the same shit, assuming they could shield me from everything—pain, life, heartbreak. When what they should have been doing was allowing me to fail, letting me hurt, and teaching me to get up again. To live through it. Sheltering and shackling are not the same. It’s fucking different.”
He steps back into me, flattening me to the marble tiles, his rigid pecs and abs molding to my soft and subtle curves. His arms bracket my head, and his eyes flicker with curiosity, like something I said penetrated his armor. “You’re not worried about what they’ve gotten themselves into or what could happen to them?”
“Of course I am,” I whisper, my fingertips tracing over the inked trident and raised warrior scars, “but I don’t expect you to rescue them. I mean, if they were reaching out, needing us, that would be a whole other discussion. But they aren’t. They didn’t want me involved, and by default, that includes you. They’ll maketheir own choices and mistakes. All I want from you is honorable decisions regarding them. It’s two different things, Ty.”
He drags a hand down his face, and for a millisecond, all the versions of Ty collide—the boy who found his murdered family; the soldier who needed a home; the prisoner of war who grasped at straws of hope while being beaten; the sniper who sees the world from the sky and wants to play God; the man who thirsts for the blood of those who terrorize; and the man who tenderly rebuilds the tormented. The one who finds connection through movies and lyrics, who celebrates others, who gently rocks Felicity. Who smiles to shield people from his pain.
His eyes are swimming with bits and pieces of them all. “Not to me. Not when it comes to you.”
Tears cascade over my cheeks, merging with the shower drizzle that seems to usher our heartaches. “Well, it should be. It was with your sisters. You made an honorable choice. You tried your best. And something beyond your control happened. None of it was your fault. Not that day. Not the day the bomb went off at the dress shop. Not the day that guy threw me into the wall. Not. Your. Fault.”
He chews the inside of his cheek, his stature weakening as he finally succumbs to the stress of the day—the suffering of a lifetime—and burrows his face into my hair. “I can’t … I don’t … I don’t want to make the wrong choice.”
“Sometimes choices aren’t right or wrong,” I muse before driving home my point a little more. “What happened to your family is no more your fault than being the product of an affair that tore my family apart and eventually killed my parents was mine.”
His chest shudders—my trauma easier for him to cradle than his own. His good arm tangles around my frame, squeezing reassurance into me. “That’s not even close to the same thing. You are a miracle, a gift.”
“It is the same,” I insist, my tone rising with the billowingsteam. “You’remymiracle. And your family’s. You said you’d be my true north, Ty. That means one direction, not ten, not divided, not backward. We face what’s coming for us, for our family.”
His head pops up onour family, a cocktail of relief and shock painting his features. “And if one of your brothers doesn’t survive? Think about that. Because I cannot let you lose your beautiful light, to become … to shatter like me.”
The mere thought has me trembling because I don’t understand how my brothers and I went from flitting around our resort two months ago, contentedly running our business, to half of us with our lives hanging in the balance. So, my sobs break free, my chest quaking so violently that I find myself wheezing again, grasping for oxygen through gasps and whistles. But Ty coils his long, sinewy limbs around me, peppering me with kisses and eclipsing my distress until I eventually regain my composure.
Lifting my chin to him, I speak some of the hardest, truest, and freest words I’ve ever vocalized. “It would hurt like hell. And maybe a piece of me would die with them. But shattering doesn’t have to mean broken—for either of us. We’d hold each other through it and live in a way that kept them with us. That’s the only plan I have, Ty. It’s what I’d want them to do, so it’s enough for me.”
He kisses me with the gentleness that was lacking from that unhinged fucking, licking the seam of my lips and coaxing me to let him in. But the rhythm of the strokes and his quiet intensity alert me to the apology before it’s even birthed.
His hands cup my face, eyes capering all over me. “I’m so sorry I’ve done this to you. This shouldn’t be your life. You deserve more. To be spoiled. To be safe. Everything.”
“I had all that, and I was a shell of who I could be. I’d rather have fleeting moments of freedom with you than a long, sheltered life of nothing spectacular.”
He nods, which I hope translates to a seed of deliverance taking root within him. “So”—he brushes the wet tendrils of hair offmy forehead, sweeping them and the pebbles of water away—“you’d prefer to run or continue?”
“We have to continue,” I affirm, and at the furrow of his brow, I realize that seems in contradiction to everything else I’ve stated. “It’s the only chance for all of us to reach the other side. We shouldn’t get involved in their mess, but this we can do. This is our part.”
“Okay,” he concedes, an ashen shadow descending upon him, the exhaustion finally setting in before he tacks on, “But if I can’t unravel what the fuck this is all about by tomorrow, I’m calling it.”
