She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “You know, I never asked you.”
“Asked me what?”
“Why you’re single.”
His lips twitched at one corner but didn’t spread into a real smile.
“I didn’t think it was any of my business before,” she added.
“And now?”
She met his gaze. “Now it is.”
He exhaled, dragging his fingers through his hair, raking through the salt-and-pepper that she loved.
“I was always ambitious in my career. I didn’t think I could give the military my all and also give a wife what she deserved. Back then, it was all or nothing. I chose my career.”
His voice didn’t echo with regret—he just stated it as fact.
Her chest tightened. “Matt couldn’t give our marriage everything either. Not really.”
Church stilled beside her.
“Oh, I know he loved me. I never doubted that. And he made me feel loved. It’s just that he wasn’t a husband first…and I felt that.” She instinctively touched her ring finger, bare for the past year, ever since she’d taken off her wedding rings.
“He did love you, Zee. I saw it on his face.”
Her mouth filled with salt that she refused to allow to turn into tears. She wasn’t here to talk about Matt. She wanted—needed—to understand what she and Church had. What they were. Before she let herself fall any harder.
“What you’re saying…” She cleared her throat. “It sounds like you’re telling me you can’t give more than this.”
His gaze drilled into hers.
“I get it. I do. If this is as far as we go, I understand.”
Even as she spoke the words, a sharp pain seared through her. She didn’t want that. She wanted him.
He reached for her, closing his hand on her arm. He tugged her a step toward him and then his mouth was on hers—hard and claiming, his lips drugging her even as her mind lit up with a thousand new possibilities.
She gasped into his mouth, and he delved his tongue inside. She gripped his shirt and yanked him against her, needing his heat and strength.
The kiss raged from wild to passionate to hungry and back to tender. When he finally broke it, he dropped his forehead against hers, breathing hard.
“I’m telling you the opposite, Zee.” His voice pitched low with an intensity she’d never heard before, not in all her years of knowing Church.
She blinked, trying to catch up to what he was telling her.
“Nothing is holding me back now. I can give the training facility the attention it deserves and still give you a hundred percent in this relationship.”
Her breath caught.
“The job is not my whole life anymore. Life is different now. I’m not the same man I was back then.”
She curled her fingers against his chest because her knees were trembling so hard they might buckle.
“I came to find you because you deserve to know where I stand, Zee.”
Her throat clamped with emotion. “Tell me why,” she whispered.
