I grab hold of her hand and lift it to my mouth before pressing a kiss on her knuckles. “It’s just a nice spot I know, angel. Nothing special.”
“It will be special to me,” she says, eyes shining with happiness.
Yeah, there’s no way she’s one of them. She’s too fucking sweet and innocent to be a member of the Brotherhood. Pierre’s words come back to haunt me.If she’s one of them, and she was raised as one of them, she would cut out your heart and smile while she did it.I push his words away, not needing him in my head right now. Besides, she chose to wear a pair of flimsy sandals with her new dress. If she were going to run, she’d have made an excuse to wear her sneakers, surely?
“Yeah, it will be special to me too.”
She beams widely. “I’m glad to see you’re not wearing your mask, sir.”
“Why would I?”
“You usually do when you go out in public, don’t you?”
Maybe it’s Pierre’s suspicions getting in my head, but for some reason that rankles me. “We’re unlikely to see anyone where we’re going, angel. And if we did, it would be a hiker. Nobody likely to come close enough to see my face. Or yours.”
That doesn’t seem to faze her at all and she goes back to staring out the window with all the excitement of a child on Christmas morning. I spent two Christmases with her as a child, although she was much too young to understand what it was. I push those memories away too, because they’re a reminder of how I’m betraying her father.Protect her for me, he said. One hundred percent sure he didn’t mean like this.
But we are where we are, and I’m in far too deep to stop this now.
“That was all delicious.” She lies down on the blanket, her hands resting on her stomach. “That was my first picnic ever.”
I lie next to her on my side and link my fingers with hers. “Mine too, angel.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You never went on any as a kid? Or you know took anyone else special for a picnic?” She blushes at the last few words.
“I already told you I never had relationships before. Just casual sex. Definitely never anyone I wanted to take on a picnic.”
“I’m happy to be your first, Linc,” she giggles and I fall in love with the sound. This is how she should be all the time. Carefree and happy. “And you never went as a child either?”
“My childhood wasn’t exactly about picnics, baby. It was about survival.”
She traces her fingertips over the scars on my cheek. “I guess we have that in common.”
“I guess we do.”
“Will you tell me about your childhood, Linc?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know something about you. You know so much about my past, but I know nothing about yours.”
“There’s not a lot to know. I grew up in foster homes. I got into a lot of trouble. But I figured my shit out eventually. Realized I could read computer code the way that other people can read a book, and I never looked back.”
I don’t tell her I was recruited by the Brotherhood at the age of fourteen and brainwashed into believing they were the good guys until I was twenty-four. And then when I found out they weren’t, it was too late to save the one person I should have protected. And they hurt her. Maybe even worse than that are the decisions I made afterward, which destroyed the only people who were ever a real family to me.
“So you have no family?”
I cup her jaw, my grip possessive. “I have you.” She has no idea how honest I’m being. Her smile makes my heart race, and I’m in danger of revealing too much about my past. I roll on top of her and silence any follow-up question with a kiss.
When I let her up for air, she traces her fingertips over my scars. “How old were you when you got these?”
“In my twenties.”
Her eyes narrow and she studies them intently. “How did you get them? They’re very...” she chews on her lip “... unique.”
