I look up at him. “I don’t know how to move forward, Zane. I know it sounds pathetic, but that’s the truth. Every time I close my eyes, they’re there. The things I did to you, the things I did afterward…they haunt me.”
“I know how that feels,” he replies with an understanding smile.
“How did you do it?”
“I’m still trying to do it,” he admits. “But I know that Jesus came here to die for all of my sins, and that brings me comfort in those moments when the enemy seems hellbent on using my pain against me.”
My chest aches, so I rub the heel of my palm against it. “I’m just not sure how to forgive myself.”
“If it helps, I’ve forgiven you.”
He speaks the words so plainly, as if they don’t carry the weight of the world. Eyes wide, I stare at him. “You have?”
He nods and takes a bite of an apple he’d sliced up and put on the table in between us. “Pretty much the moment you came back.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s what we’re called to do.” He swallows hard. “And because I care about you, Tessa.”
The tension that was between us last night in his mother’s bathroom returns full-force, and all I can think about is the way his muscled arms caged me against that countertop. He’d been so close. Close enough that I could see flecks of copper in his green eyes.
The way that gaze dropped to my lips more than once.
The way I nearly gripped the front of his shirt and yanked his mouth down onto mine, even if there’s no real future for us.
Why can’t there be, though?
Because the way he’s looking at me now? I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, there isn’t still something there.
Another knock on the door slices through the tension, and Zane chuckles, running a hand over his face. “One of these days, we’re going to finish that conversation.” He pushes up, and I turn in my seat, watching as his hand goes to the weapon holstered in the waistband of his jeans.
“Who is it?” he calls through the locked door.
“Someone tired of being ignored,” a stern feminine voice calls back.
With a frustrated sigh, he slides the door open, revealing the brunette who’d shown up after we were shot at a week ago.
Her dark hair is slicked back in a ponytail tonight, and instead of a pencil skirt, she’s wearing black slacks and a matching jacket as she strolls into the cabin on heels so high they should be registerable weapons.
“You’ve gotten yourself and him into quite some trouble,” she snaps at me.
Anger flushes my skin, and I slide out of the booth and cross both arms to glare back at her. I will not be intimidated anymore.
“You’re going to use respect when you talk to her,” Zane says, crossing his arms. “Or you can leave, Brenda.”
She rolls her eyes. “Did you even bother looking into your high-school sweet mess here before just letting her back into your life?”
High school sweet mess? Is this lady serious?
“As I said,” he growls. “Respect. Or get out.”
Brenda glares at me, then turns her attention back to Zane. I don’t miss the way she eyes him like he’s the last piece of candy in a candy store. Jealousy threatens to eat me up, but I beat it back down.
Not the time.
“The guy you killed? Former CIA.” She shoves a manila folder at him, and Zane opens it.
“Who sent him?”
