“Come on.” He guided her toward the family room, needing space and light and somewhere that didn’t feel quite so much like the edge of a cliff. “We need to talk.”
Rowan turned on a single lamp, casting everything in soft gold.
Sierra perched on the edge of the cognac leather sofa, still clutching her robe. Rowan took the chair across from her, needing distance to think clearly.
“He’s perfect, Sierra.” He said, his voice husky. “Huck is perfect.”
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. She searched his face, as if looking for anger, for condemnation, for the judgment she clearly expected to find. “I wanted to tell you. So many times, I wanted to?—”
“Why didn’t you?” He couldn’t keep the hurt from bleeding through. Not anger—he was trying so hard not to be angry—but the raw ache of everything he’d missed. “Why keep him from me?”
Sierra wrapped her arms around herself, looking young and vulnerable and exactly as she had when she’d stolen his heart, first in a childhood crush, and then forever at eighteen.
“You were so angry, so broken, and you had dreams. You wanted to serve your country, see the world.” She took a shaky breath. “A baby would have ruined everything.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make.”
Her own accusation about him leaving echoed in his ears. No—this was different. He’d been trying to protect her.
“I know,” she said softly. “I know that now. But I was eighteen and scared, and you’d left me for your big dreams. I thought…I thought I was protecting you.”
Oh.
And then the heat just twisted out of his chest. He could see it—young Sierra, pregnant and alone, trying to figure out how to tell a boy who’d just gone through boot camp, about to train for special forces, that he was about to become a father.
“Then you deployed, and I did write a letter, but it was returned to me. And when I asked Mack, he said he didn’t know where you were.”
And that was on him, wasn’t it? The thought burned through him. He closed his eyes, looked away. Sighed. “I’m sorry.”
At her silence, he turned back to her.
“I was going to try again,” Sierra continued, her voice gaining strength. “Tell you about Huck, maybe send pictures. But then…” She swallowed hard. “By the time I found the courage to write again, Mack showed up and said you were killed in action.”
“No wonder you told him his father died.”
“Well…” She lifted a shoulder. “He did.”
The words hit him with unexpected force. Of course. So she’d grieved him, raised their son alone, thinking he was gone forever.
“How hard that must have been for you.” The realization crashed over him, washing away the last of his anger. “Raising him alone, thinking I was dead.”
“He saved me,” Sierra said quietly. “After I lost you, Huck was all I had left. He kept me going when I wanted to give up.”
Aw, he couldn’t help it. He moved to the sofa, sat beside her, close enough to touch but not quite ready to bridge that gap.
“I shouldn’t have slept with you that night.” The confession tore out of him as if it were bleeding. “I was angry and broken, and I…I let my emotions lead.”
Her gaze turned soft, almost comforting. “And I said yes. There were two of us there. And Huck is the best thing that ever happened to me. He’s all I had of you for ten years, Rowan.” She touched his hand. “You were the love of my life.”
The love of my life. The words hit him in the chest, stealing his breath. But, past tense. Hello…were the love of her life.
Still. “You kept me alive,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “During the worst missions, the darkest moments, thinking about you was what got me through. You were my safe place in a storm, Sierra. But I…I couldn’t come back. I dove into my life, my missions because…well…it was the only way to protect you.”
“From Alden?”
He stared at her, his throat thickening. “From me.”
She stilled. “What? Why?” Tears tracked down her cheeks again. “Why did you think you had to protect me from yourself?”
