When Sinclair started reaching for his chair again, I picked him up and dropped him into them middle of the bed, coming down on top of him when he tried to roll away. When he started beating his fists against my back, I captured them and pressed them into the mattress on either side of Sinclair’s head.
“Enough!”
Sinclair stilled, but he wouldn’t raise his eyelashes enough for me to see into his eyes. His chest rose and fell rapidly. His anxiousness almost tangible.
“How could you believe I didn’t want you?” I whispered my words, too stunned by what Sinclair had said to speak any louder. “You’re my mate, Sin. You’ve always been my mate.”
Sinclair’s eyes were flooded with tears when he looked up at me. “Then why haven’t you claimed me?”
My throat was so thick, I could barely speak. “I’ve been waiting for you to forgive me.”
Sinclair’s eyebrows knitted together. “For what?”
“For shooting you and putting you in that damn chair.”
How could he not know that?
“Stone, I never blamed you for shooting me. You’re the one who can’t forgive himself.”
“No, I…” Could Sinclair be right? “I shot you, but it was an accident. You weren’t even supposed to be there.”
I had watched the house for hours before my mark got home, just so I could make sure no one else was there. Sinclair had been a total surprise.
“I know that.”
I jerked when Sinclair pulled his hand free and then reached up to touch the side of my face. Except for right after he had been shot, the man had never voluntarily touched me.
The simple touch soothed me as nothing else could have.
“I told you what happened, how I got there.”
I nodded as I drug up those memories. “You had snuck in the back door so you could talk to Richard Garner about your suspicions that he was seeing someone else. You had arrived early that morning, hoping to catch him before he left for work. When you missed him, you stuck around, waiting for him to come home.”
Sinclair nodded. “And once he arrived home and got settled, I came out of where I had been hiding to confront him.”
“Stepping right in front of my bullet.”
“Until that moment, neither Richard nor you knew I was in the house. There was no way you could have stopped it.”
“That still doesn’t mean it’s not my fault.”
Sinclair sighed. When his hand fell away from my face, I grabbed it and pressed it back to my cheek. I didn’t want him to stop touching me. This was the closest I had been to him in years.
“There is no fault here, Stone. That’s all in your head.”
“The weekly phone calls…”
Sinclair’s eyes dropped. His throat muscles moved when he swallowed, giving me the idea that it was as thick as mine.
“Sinclair, why did you make me call you every week?” I had kind of always thought it was to remind me of what I had done.
When Sinclair looked back at me, tears were flooding his eyes once again. “It was the only contact you would allow me.”
Shit.
“When you said they were crap and then you asked me if you had been punished enough, I…” Sinclair shook his head. “I would never force you to accept me, Stone. You have to know that. If phone calls is all I can ever have…they don’t even have to be once a week. We could talk once a month or…or…”
He was killing me.
