It starts to beat again.
He brushes a tear from my cheek, and I have to look away from the intensity in his gaze, from the very heavy emotions he’s trying to convey that I’m not sure I can handle.
“Please look at me, Bishop.”
It isn’t a command this time.
It’s a request.
Somehow, that makes it so much worse.
But I comply.
“I love you, Hellcat. None of this was fake. None of what we have is. It’s the most real thing I’ve ever had in my life, and I think it’s the most real thing you’ve ever had, too. Don’t throw it away because I’ve hurt your pride, because you want to go back to that place where you’re an island. Let me back in, and I promise I’ll never hurt you again. I promise that if I even try, you can bring me back into this ring and have your way with me.”
The corners of my lips twitch despite how angry I still am with him.
Probably because the person I’m really angry with is myself.
Not for trusting him. Not for believing him. Not for ignoring that first initial gut reaction that told me there was something off about him. But for not being able to see the truth until this very moment.
Gage Newhart isn’t a stranger.
He isn’t a liar, either.
He’s a man who fell in love and let that become the most important thing to him over a mission that he knew was going to get very complicated.
He is the person I’ve fallen in love with.
“I’ll do anything, Bishop, anything to prove it to you, to make you trust me again.” He pulls my face between his palms, forcing me to look him in the eyes and see the love there. “Anything. Just name it.”
“I honestly don’t know what it will take, Gage.” I swallow through my tightening throat. “I don’t know how we move past all this.”
His thumb sweeps across my cheek, wiping away another tear as the tiniest of grins pulls at his lips. He slowly drops to his knees, pleading up at me with so much pain in his gaze and unshed tears shimmering there. “I do. With you in control.”
A laugh that sounds completely wrong slips from my lips. “Haven’t you been trying to get me to let go of that?”
He nods, squeezing my hands. “I have, but I’ll tell you a secret that isn’t such a big secret. I’ll do anything for you, Hellcat. Anything.”
I tug him back up to his feet and press my hands against his chest to feel the steady beat of his heart beneath my palm again. To ground myself the way he does with his dog tags.
This man has bent over backward to take care of me, to protect me, to give me whatever I need, whenever I need it. And he dropped to his knees for me, promised to ensure my safety even if I never take him back.
All those reasons I had for hating him, for not trusting him, were my anger about my loss of control. And he’s giving it back to me.
“You can pin and straddle me anytime, and I will truly be a happy man.” He lowers his mouth to mine, feathering a tentative kiss across my trembling lips. “Anything you want will make me a happy man, as long as I’m in your life to experience it with you.”
Only an hour ago, my world had fallen apart.
All the pieces of myself I had shown only to Gage and learned to embrace through his love were scattered in the wind, and I never thought I would find them again.
I was ready to go back to being that renegade who rejected all the attempts anyone made to break through my walls.
But he’s somehow found those pieces, reminded me how safe they are with him, and rebound them into the story of us.
It took a rogue to do it, but my renegade is finally tamed.
Sort of.
