When Mick stepped around the curtain, Rachel stared back at him, her hands gripped together on top of the blanket. He pulled a chair closer to the bed and lowered into it.
“Thanks for bringing my brother and the girls here.” She squeezed her hands tighter. “And thanks again for…everythingearlier.”
His throat filled, but he forced himself to smile. “It still pains you to say we saved your life, doesn’t it?”
“It’s just that…everything’s so messed up in my head.”
“I still don’t think you recognize that you really could have…diedtoday.” Mick hated that his voice broke on the word. He needed to stay in control, no matter how much it hurt.
“I do get it.” She gestured to the tube in her hand and then to the developing bruises on her arms, where he’d secured her to the ladder for her own safety.
“You could have left your whole family behind,” he continued, straining to hold his composure. His voice sounded steady in his ears, though his mind raged.You could have left me, he wanted to shout, but he kept it inside where it festered and burned.
“I know. I know.” She shook her head. “I just wish—”
“You’ve made it pretty clear what you wished.”
“It’s just that there was a letter in the box to Riley and me. My dad admitted that he was guilty of some of the crimes but said not all of the things we’d learn would be true. He also said he wished he could have confessed and protected us at the same time.”
Mick didn’t miss that she’d stopped calling Stan by his first name. That was something. “You see? Just like we thought, he was trying to protect you.”
He didn’t mention that he’d been the one to suggest it. “At least you got to see the letter and know it existed. You might have to let that be enough.”
“I want to. I do. But I can’t.”
That was the crux of it. Mick accepted the truth that stood between them. He couldn’t take back the decisions he made at the fire scene—no,wouldn’t—and she couldn’t forgive him for them.
“I want you to know that given the same set of circumstances, I would have made the same choices I did today.” He lifted his shoulders and lowered them. “Other than that I wouldn’t have participated in your rescue at all.”
She’d been staring down at her hands, but at the admission, she looked up, her brows knitted together.
“Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you.”
She stared back at him with wide, shocked eyes. His own reaction was no less extreme, his chest aching as though he’d yanked the words right from his center and left all the torn flesh behind. This wasn’t how he’d pictured telling her. Or how he’d hoped she would receive the message.
“AndbecauseI’m in love with you, I had no business trying to be the hero by participating in your rescue. Everyone knew it. I set a terrible example for my whole crew.”
She swallowed visibly and opened her lips a few times as if she planned to respond. Then she closed her mouth and lowered her head. It was the first time since he’d met Rachel Hoffman that he’d struck her into silence, and pain sliced through him that it had taken his confession of love to do it.
But it gave him an opportunity to say more, and he was already on a roll, so he took advantage of it. “You said I was trying to make up for the losses back in Chicago. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll always be trying to repay my debt for that. But at least I’m making something good out of a horrible situation. What you’re doing is just the opposite. You’re trying to destroy the future to make up for the past.
“You don’t think you deserve to be happy. But you do. Someday I hope you find someone you can really put your trust in. Without fear or strings or escape hatches.”
With tears falling down her cheeks, she nodded. He hoped she would contradict him, would say everything that had happened that day didn’t matter, and there was still a chance for them. Instead, she said nothing at all.
His heart heavy, Mick stood, but he had one more thing to say.
“You didn’t have a choice over some of the bad things that have happened to you. Losing your mother and your father. Then the perfect father you thought you had. Even the jerk who abandoned you.”
“This time, I want you to know you had a choice.”
* * *
It took Rachel about thirty seconds to realize what a big mistake she’d made. The same thirty seconds required for Mick to stride out of the room and out of her life.
What had she done? She’d just pushed away the best thing that had happened to her since the birth of her daughters and the possibility of a future with someone who loved her, someone she loved, because of records that had gone up in smoke. Papers that could never bring her father back or make him the perfect person who’d lived only in her imagination, no matter how much mitigating proof they would have found in those boxes.
She tore at the tape on her IV and considered yanking it out and chasing him down the hall. But what would that prove? To him or her daughters?
