“It was.”
“Do you miss it?”
His jaw tightens but he doesn’t answer. Instead, his gaze tracks to the photo I’d been studying.
“Do you still see any of them?”
“The ones who are still alive, sometimes, yeah.”
“Denver,” I whisper.
His eyes come back to meet mine. “Don’t be upset for me, Sinclair. We all knew the risks doing a job like that.”
“This is why you worry so much,” I say, finally beginning to understand. “Why you sleep with your gun under your pillow and always sit facing the doorway.”
“Threats are everywhere. That’s why I wanted to train you. So you’re prepared if you need to be. But at the same time I don’t want you overthinking it. That’s my job.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re immune to death, though. I mean…” I swallow the lump in my throat that appears whenever I think of my mom and brother. “I’m so sorry.”
He sighs, tracing figures of eight over my thigh with his thumb. “No one is immune. But when you’ve held your friend’s bodies together as they’ve died in your arms, you have to find a way to keep going.”
I lift his free hand in both of mine. It’s huge in comparison. But despite the power in his hands, I know how gentle they are. I know what it’s like to be steadied by them, to be held by them when I’ve thought I was about to fall apart.
Like when he caught me and asked if I was okay at their funeral.
And I know what it’s like to be stroked by them, to have their fingertips pressing into the skin on my hips and thighs as he’s driven himself inside me and made me come for him. Then had them cupping my face as he kisses me so tenderly like I’m his one gift he’s allowed himself to have.
I press a kiss to the center of his palm and then rest my cheek against it.
“You can always talk to me if you want to. I don’t know what that must have been like for you. But I do know grief.”
His eyes soften. “I wish you didn’t.”
I give him a small smile. “I wish you didn’t either.”
We stare at one another as he strokes my cheek.
“Why didn’t you use your word yesterday?” he asks softly.
“Because I stopped not wanting to know what it would be like to feel your hands on my body. And your mouth on mine. I don’t know when exactly. Only that I did. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”
He inhales slowly, studying me. His eyes pinch like he’s thinking about something he would rather ignore.
“I can’t say no to you. You know that, don’t you? I’d do anything you asked of me.”
My heart lifts, then immediately drops at the heaviness in his voice. He says it like it’s a bad thing. Like it’s theworstthing.
Like he wished it wasn’t true.
“Anything? Like make me eggs for breakfast?” I ask, eager to do something to dispel the seriousness from his expression.
The weight in his shoulders eases and his lips curl up a fraction. I run the tip of my finger over them. “I like your nearly smiles now that I’m starting to see them.”
“Do you?” he rumbles, his voice deep and delicious again.
“Yep.”
“Well, they’re yours.”
