“Tell me, Gage. Tell me how this was supposed to go. Because you’ve had weeks to come clean, to tell me what you were really doing here and why you needed access to the Hawkes. But you chose to keep that secret. You chose to maintain the lie rather than come clean with me.”
The tears brimming in my eyes threaten to fall, but I swipe them away before they can. This man has seen me cry enough, more than anyone else in my life ever has, and that’s given him far too much power that I need to take back.
Gage stops a few feet from me, his eyes wild, as if he’s teetering on the same edge I am—about to completely lose his grip on his emotions. “How did I see this going?” He sighs, shaking his head. “When I met you, all I was thinking about was how much I wanted to be around you, how I couldn’t stay away. The incident with Jade was a foot in the door I hadn’t expected, and I took it—both for the mission and because I was being selfish for the first time in my life and wanted to feel what I did around you.”
His gaze stays locked on mine, as if he’s afraid to look away, afraid I might run if he does.
“I definitely never thought I was going to fall in love with you. By the time I realized I had, it was too late. But I thought that once I figured out where McDonald was and if I could track down Satriano for you, that maybe, just maybe, it would be enough for you to forgive me for keeping everything else from you. That maybe making you and your family finally safe would buy me some…”—he searches for the word—“understanding. But I know I was wrong.”
He steps closer, so close now that the leather and spice scent hits me, and I hold my breath to avoid pulling it into my lungs any further.
I can’t even trust myself with that.
Because that scent has become so synonymous with happiness. With relaxing in his arms, lying on his bed, being held…
Gage overwhelms me without even touching me, and if I give in to any of the pull I still feel toward him, I won’t get back out from it.
“I would’ve told you everything, Bishop, and I would’ve begged you to forgive me and to believe that everything that happened between us was real, just like I’m doing now.” Another half-step brings him within reach. “You know it was, Hellcat.”
Dammit.
Damn him.
I close my eyes as every moment we’ve ever spent together rushes through my head. A bright, vibrant video playback of all the things that made me fall in love with him.
That chuckle when I had him pinned to the club floor…
His grin when he turned over…
The “standing offer” he gave me to do it again anytime…
Watching him box with Atlas and so easily get along with Astrid…
Our date in the park when he called me out on my unhealthy workaholic behavior…
The way he had my back when Satriano appeared and refused to just walk away from a fight that wasn’t his…
His insistence that he knew what I needed that night and what he gave me by taking control…
All the days and nights since…
One after another, they just keep coming. A tidal wave of memories and feelings that I’ve been trying to suppress all day, that I’ve tried to wall off strictly in the “lies” category because the alternative was so much worse.
“I know what you’re thinking, Bishop.” His voice is soft, calm, even closer than it was only a moment ago. “You’re allowing yourself to spiral. You’re trying to go back to that place where you live behind a one-hundred-foot high wall and keep everyone on the other side of it. You’re trying to shut down the memories of us so you can shut me out…when all I want is for you to let me back in.”
When I reopen my eyes, a single tear I can’t contain finally trickles out of the corner and down my cheek. “You took everything I’ve always hated about myself and made me love it. You took all the things I prided myself on and showed me how they were killing me. You made me feel things that I only thought existed for people like my cousins, for people who could be that open. You did all that in a span of only a month. You read me like an open book, knowing you were going to close it.”
He tentatively takes another step forward, and my back stiffens. “No. I cherish that book. It has been what has kept me going. You have been.” He raises his hand, and when those rough calluses gently brush against my cheek, I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself. “You know who I am, Bishop. I’m the man you spent the last week with. I’m also the one who has been looking out for you, who’s been protecting you from the shadows, even when you didn’t know it. Who has been bending over backward, trying to figure out how to keep you and the rest of the Hawkes safe. I will always protect you, Bishop. Always. Even if you hate me. Even if you never want to see me again.”
My lip trembles, those damn tears threatening again. “Why?”
His gaze softens. “Because anything worth living for is worth dying for.”
It doesn’t matter that he stole that line from the book in his nightstand, my heart still stutters all the same.
That part of me that I thought was dead forever this morning.
The source of so much agony.
