“Don’t be.” He shook his head, adding another step between them as though his mere proximity would corrupt her. “He wasn’t anyone to lose sleep over. Certainly not a man who deserves your sympathies. He was an abusive bastard who ruined lives, and I’m glad he’s not able to hurt anyone else.”
Drennan nodded in understanding, that intense green gaze fully locked on him as it had been that night he’d brought her home. Not a single ounce of judgment or criticism aimed in his direction. “But you went to his funeral.”
“I needed to see him in the ground. I needed to make sure he got what he deserved.” He’d never said the words out loud before, and that all too familiar growl of anger resonated through his chest. Nearing out of control. “I enlisted the second I turned eighteen. It was my way out, but that meant leaving my mom behind. I think she understood. She wanted me to get out, but six months into my first tour, I got the news she died. Scans showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.”
“Permanent brain damage from too many concussions.” Drennan latched on to his forearm, squeezing it to provide comfort. She was a medical professional. It was in her nature,but all it did was remind him of the times his mom had tried to reach his dad in those late-night fits of yelling matches. And ended up paying the price. “Harvey, I’m so sorry. I’m sure your dad’s funeral was hard no matter what your relationship with him entailed, but what happened to your mom is not your fault.”
He wanted to believe her. Wanted to take her words and use them to drown the guilt and grief and rage until it couldn’t get hold of him again. If anyone could help him forget the mess in his head, it was her. That invisible hook that’d snared him the night they’d met pulled taught, urging him to see the good she saw in him. But the demon in his blood wouldn’t let him.
“I don’t blame myself for my mother’s death, but you need to understand something, Drennan.” He stared at her hand, every cell in his body on fire, and backed out of her reach. Her face fell, stabbing the ache in his chest deeper. “My grandfather was an abuser. My father was an abuser, and I can feel it in me, too. This pent-up darkness just waiting to get out. It’s what made me such a good soldier. Their legacy is in my blood.”
She took a step back. Good. She should be scared of him.
“So you need to go home. You and the baby need to stay away as far from me as possible. I’ll keep my word. I’ll pay child support or whatever you need to raise him or her.” It took everything he had not to promise he would be better than the men in his family. That she was safe with him. Harvey shook his head, keeping himself in the moment. Here, with her. “But as long as I’m in your or this baby’s lives, I’m a danger to you.”
Chapter Nine
She’d learned to walk on eggshells.
She’d learned to recognize certain footsteps, tones. How to tell if her mother was in a bad mood and when to avoid her. Drennan had learned to study people at a young age and could read almost everyone like a book before they spoke.
It was a trauma response.
Medical school had taught her that much. Hyper-focusing on what people said or thought was how she’d stayed safe in her unpredictable environment. At least, according to the psychology professors who’d required each and every student to participate in therapy sessions during the term focused on the mental health of future patients. Every shift in mood or behavior hit her upside the head because she was the one who would face the consequences of those shifts. She’d become habituated to the high levels of stress since her father’s death. The result? She’d been a “good” girl. Praised for not having big feelings, not making messes, not making noise.
Until the pressure of being that good girl had torn her apart from the inside. Drennan forced herself to take a slow breath. Observation was still hard. Being watched. Noticed. It’d become a precursor to punishment once upon a time, but the way Harvey had looked at her that night… It was the same way he was looking at her now. As though he’d been broken into a thousand shards of himself, begging for someone to come along and put him back together. He was right before when he’d said her pain had called to his. The same thing had happened in her chest.Latched on to him and refused to let go. In that moment, she’d wanted to be that person for him. To be the one to piece him back together. Just as she’d treated and mended so many others.
Drennan took a step into him. Invading his personal space. His shoulders tensed, his body preparing for the threat his brain was trying to convince him existed. A feral animal backed into a corner. One wrong move and he’d lash out, but she wasn’t scared of him or of anything he’d told her about his family history. It was true a correlation existed between living through abuse and becoming an abuser. An entire third of children continued the cycle and patterns of neglect and abuse brought down on them through their childhoods, but Harvey wasn’t ever going to hurt her. Not like that.
Because that same part of her that recognized the shared pain he’d talked about also recognized his pure need. He probably didn’t even realize how he’d held her a bit tighter that night, how he’d sought her out in the dark as though he couldn’t stand to be parted from her, how he’d trusted her and himself to get close. And she was going to prove he wasn’t anything like the parent that had taken the last shreds of his worth. “Do you want to hurt me, Harvey?”
Surprise relaxed the muscles around his mouth and eyes, and he seemed to draw his own deep breath. Clarifying. Cleansing. His gaze snapped to hers. “No.”
She took another step, her chest brushing against the hard planes of muscle beneath his shirt. Her pulse thudded hard at the base of her throat to the point she thought he might actually be able to hear it. How could he not? According to him, she was putting herself at risk just being near him, but Harvey had gone out of his way to take care of her—to take care of this baby—since the moment he’d learned her name. “How about now? Do you want to hurt me now?”
The struggle to back off and put as much distance between them as he could manage flared in the flexed tendons of his neck and forearms. If she wasn’t a medical professional, she might think the tension hurt as it tried to break free of his skin. His chest rose on a strong inhale, and he closed his eyes. Still fighting. “No.”
“Do you see me as a threat, Harvey?” She wasn’t a psychologist or a social worker. She had no business testing his limits without putting protections in place for herself, but whether Harvey trusted himself around her and the baby or not, she wasn’t going anywhere.
He shook his head, as though not about to trust himself to speak, but still refused to look at her.
Drennan reached out, watching her fingers slowly slide up his forearm. Feeling the tendons beneath his skin. Dark hair parted under her touch, followed by a row of raised goose bumps. She ran her hand farther up his arm, across his shoulder, framed the side of his neck. Not a single inch of space separated them now, his shallow breaths skimming her jaw. A deep jolt of heat speared through her nervous system as she caught another dose of that earthy scent she’d associated with him since the night they’d met. “Do you know why men like your father feel the need to overpower those weaker than them?”
Harvey didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe now.
“They manipulate, control, dominate and destroy anything and anyone that makes them feel because they’re not emotionally mature enough to cope with the people in their lives and their surroundings. Their emotions and opinions weren’t welcome or important growing up, and so they found a way to make themselves important. Heard, even. They suppress everything until all that’s left to break through is anger, outrage and stress. They let themselves be overrun by it minute to minute and end up taking out that immaturity on the peoplethey’re supposed to love.” Her voice threatened to lodge in her throat on that last word. Tears sprang in her eyes as her attempt to get through to Harvey hit too close to home. Always the mediator, always the one who needed to fix things so she wouldn’t be punished. So she would be seen by the one parent she had left. It didn’t do any good. It never changed a damn thing, but she could help him. Right here in the middle of his living room, she could make him see the truth. Drennan leaned in, her mouth brushing at the corner of his. His beard pricked at her skin, sending a shock of sensation through the rest of her. She set her free hand beneath his opposite wrist and tugged his fingers to her hip, then did the same with his other hand. “I trust you not to hurt me.”
Harvey’s eyes snapped opened, brilliantly blue and as compelling as she remembered. He took an initial step back, but Drennan only tightened her hold on his hands at her hips. “You shouldn’t.”
Gravel coated those two simple words, and her heart broke a little more for him. For what he must’ve been through as a child, for the darkness he surely carried having to leave his mother behind to escape, for the pure self-loathing that simmered beneath every word out of his mouth.
“I trust you because you offered me your hand that night at the bar.” She pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth, instantly lost to the feel of a warm-blooded man who’d wanted her. Who didn’t see her as anything like a tool to be used or someone to exert power over. “You gave me a choice.”
She swept her bottom lip across his, countering his step to escape, and kissed the opposite side of his mouth. He opened to her slightly, his breath mingling with hers until she wasn’t sure where she began and he ended. “You brought me to a place you feel safe. You touched me with nothing but respect and followed my every cue. You let me take control of the situationas though you were simply grateful I was there. So no matter what you might think of yourself, I know you’re not like him or your grandfather or anyone else who has used their power to diminish someone else’s.”
One second. Two. She’d made her point, and despite the unfiltered desire heating her blood, Drennan moved to step back. To give him the space he obviously needed. Once again, he’d swooped in to save her, to take care of her, but this was the kind of man who would never see himself as any kind of hero. And she would leave if that was what he required.
But his hands tightened on her hips, holding her hostage.
