I wrapped my hands around the mug, feeling the warmth, but my stomach was roiling too much to take a drink.
Keira was quiet. When I didn’t go on, she said, “Whatever you did, I forgive you.”
How could I possibly deserve her? “I almost killed that girl. But I didn’t. Couldn’t take the shot. First time that ever happened.”
Keira exhaled slowly. “You told me before that you lost your soul a long time ago. Sounds to me like you took your soul back that night.”
“But I killed that girl’s parents, Keira. Traumatized her for life. And for what? I have no idea. I hadn’twantedto know. But that night, it was like I looked in a mirror and found a monster staring back. The monster inside me. Dealing out death as if it was my sole purpose.”
“You thought you were doing the right thing.”
“I suppose I do that a lot. Fuck up my life based on some twisted idea of what’s right.” Like when I left Keira two years ago.
“But that was your last mission,” she pointed out. “You quit afterward. You stopped.”
“I had to. Felt like waking up from a nightmare, and thenightmare was me. I kept that bullet as a reminder.” I nodded at it. “The last shot I would never take.”
“Your superiors let you walk away?”
“If they’d wanted to stop me, they would’ve had to kill me. They decided not to. I tried to live a simple life after that. To make up for my mistakes. But deep down, I was still Bullseye. I didn’t get rid of my rifle or other weapons. I couldn’t. They were still…parts of me. I wandered around for years not really knowing what to do with myself.”
I turned to look at her.
“And then I met you.”
Her eyes were shining, but not with pity or fear or judgment.
“All I wanted was to be good enough for you,” I said. “Never thought I could manage it.”
“Youarea good person. You’re a good man.”
“How do you know?”
“I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you otherwise.”
I knew what she was trying to say. She had faith in me. Knowing the truth, thefulltruth, about my past hadn’t changed that.
“I love you, Keira. I didn’t want to admit that to myself because it scared me. But I loved you two years ago. Loved you a while before that. I think…I think I probably realized it the day we took that photo in Owen’s backyard. The one I printed out and kept? That day, you truly felt likemine, and I wanted to hold on to that. For me, it’salwaysbeen you.”
“It’s always been you for me too.”
She leaned into me. Our lips touched and opened to each other. Keira tasted like spices and milky sweetness. Everything soft and good that I hadn’t believed I deserved.
I still wasn’t sure. Maybe she could have faith enough for the both of us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Keira
“Take me to bed,”I said against Dean’s lips.
Still kissing me, he picked me up from the barstool. My legs wrapped around his middle, arms closing around his neck. The rest of the chai was going to get cold, but I’d worry about that later.
I wanted Dean in our bed. Inside me, all over me. This man I loved with everything I had.
Nothing he’d told me had changed how I felt about him. Nothing had frightened me, or even surprised me that much given what he’d shared before. My clearest impression was that Dean had been searching for some bigger purpose his entire life. His superiors had taken advantage of that, but at the crucial moment, he’d broken free.
I just wanted to love him. To show him how perfectly imperfect he was to me. Dean was all I needed, just as he was.
