He squeezed me closer. “I like waking up with you, having my breakfast with you, watching you move in all the different lights of the day. I don’t want that to change. I know my shift work is crazy, and not easy to fit a nine-to-five life around but…”
“But that’s something we can overcome.” I stared at the tap, it was dripping every five seconds. “If we want to.”
“I want to.”
“So…” I inhaled deeply. “Move in, permanently. If that would work for you.”
“It would.” He’d spoken quickly. “I mean, I’ve got a place to stay, Rose Cottage, with the twins, but here…it smells of you, it tastes of you, and I haven’t slept so well in years as when you’re in my arms.”
My eyes prickled, and my heart did a silly flip-flop. “I know I shouldn’t say this.”
“What? Say it.”
“Well, you’ve just been shot, which was horrendous, but…but I’ve never been so happy as having you here. I feel alive, like I’m living and not just existing when I’m with you.”
“Ah, you say the sweetest things.” He chuckled, his chest moving against my back. “And for the record, that’s how I feel. It’s called love, Amy.” He paused and slid his left hand to my breast and squeezed. “I love you, I really fucking love you.” He kissed the side of my head, a firm crush of his lips that added gravitas to his words.
“I…I love you, too.” I closed my eyes and felt relief at finally saying it.
“No, don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t know everything about me, you can’t say that until you do.”
What the hell? Not the response I’d been expecting.
Silence. It stretched, deafening. Thoughts rattled around my head. I’d known there were depths to Mitch, dark depths. Was this my opportunity to find out more? Was he inviting me in deeper?
“When we were at the hospital and the police came to take your statement,” I said, “you made me leave the room. Why?”
“Because I couldn’t lie in front of you. I never want to lie to you.” He’d spoken quietly, his breath warm on my ear.
“What did you tell the police?” I asked.
“That I was mugged in a back alley, the asshole got rough, pulled a gun when I refused to hand over my wallet. He shot me.”
I swallowed. It was the same picture I’d painted in my own mind. “And that’snotwhat happened?”
“No.”
“So…what did?” Oh fuck, my stomach was in knots now. What was I going to learn about this big strong man of mine who played by his own rules? “How did you get shot?”
“I was with the guys—”
“The twins?”
“Yeah, they were there. And we were…””
“You were what?” My voice was tight, my heart thudding. “You were what, Mitch?”
“We’d got a this tip-off, some old farm south of here that was being used for human trafficking, women from abroad. So we decided to check it out.”
“Just you guys? Not the police?”
“We would have passed the information on to the police had our suspicions been correct, but we had to act…had to go see for ourselves and help if we could. There was no time to lose if women were being held hostage. You wouldn’t believe the evil in some men, the greed and the disregard for human life. The waythey treat women as sex objects. Theirs to violate in the most despicable of ways.”
I stayed quiet, waiting for him to go on.
