“But not his father.”
“No.” The word carried hurt. “Not his father.”
Rowan wanted to reach for her hand again, but a gulf had opened between them. “For what it’s worth, he would be proud of the son you raised. He’s amazing, Sierra.”
“Thanks.” Sierra’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears. She swallowed. “What about you?” Sierra asked, her voice thick with emotion. “What happened after you left? Really happened?”
Yeah. Maybe it was easier to talk about his own failures than to sit with the knowledge that she’d loved someone else, had created a child with another man.
“I went through basic training, went through advanced training, became a Delta Force operator. Became someone new, someone I thought I wanted.”
She nodded. “And then?”
“Then I deployed. When it came time to re-up, I did it without looking back.” He sighed, met her eyes, holding her gaze. “I never thought I’d end up dead. At least, officially.”
“What does that mean?”
This was the part that mattered, the explanation he owed her for ten years of silence.
“We were on a rescue mission. A woman—a valuable asset—had been taken by some very bad people. My team and I went in to get her out.”
“And?” Sierra had gone completely still.
“Someone on our team betrayed us. Set us up to be ambushed. By the time we fought our way out and got the woman to safety, officially, we didn’t exist anymore.” His jaw clenched at the memory—gunfire in a warehouse, Kane kidnapped and held, a woman who’d been used as bait in a trap designed to kill them.
It had taken them three years, all the way up until this summer, to unravel it all and find justice.
“Why were you betrayed?” Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
“Because the person who betrayed us had connections. High-level connections, and we weren’t sure what we might be walking into. It was safer for everyone if Rowan Wallace and Luca Saxon and the rest of the team died on that mission.”
And then he couldn’t stop himself. He reached out and took her hand. Held it. Then he met her eyes. “I never stopped thinking of you.”
“You could have told me.” Her voice cracked.
“I wanted to. But…” He sighed. “It got complicated.”
“You came to get Mack though. So he knew.”
“Mack was in trouble. He’d gotten into a fight with his dad a few months before, when he told him he wanted to enlist. I was worried it would go south, so after the dust settled, I circled back and grabbed him. He’s been traveling with us ever since.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“When?” The single word held years of hurt and waiting.
“Today.” His eyes met hers, willing her to understand. “I came back to Renegade to tell you I was alive. To see if there was any chance?—”
He stopped, the words too big, too dangerous to speak aloud.
“Any chance of what?”
“Of us. Of finding our way back to what we had.”
Sierra’s breath caught. “Rowan?—”
“I know it’s been ten years. I know you’ve built a life here, that you have Huck to think about. But seeing you again, being here with you—” He lifted their joined hands, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. And here went nothing—“I never stopped loving you, Sierra.”
