Someone else.She hadn’t been with anyone since him? A possessiveness he had no business feeling thickened in his veins. His mouth twitched under the release of pressure from his chest. All this time he’d imagined some guy warming her bed, settling her chaotic thoughts with kisses and touches that’d once been his and grounding her through her nightmares. For nothing. And those moments she talked about? They didn’t feel like anything big, but according to Maeve, they’d changed her life.
A life that had almost been cut short. Twice.
His smile slipped, his blood growing cold as his mother’s admission surged to the front of his mind. “Then why did you provoke a suspect into stabbing you?”
The color she’d regained in her short recovery drained, accentuating the dehydration lines streaking through her lips. It didn’t matter how many liters of blood and fluids she’d received,it would take weeks for a full recovery. “How do you…how do you know about that?”
“My mom mentioned the real reason she and my dad started going to that trauma therapist.” The tension that seemed to squeeze his insides since his mother had filled him in on exactly how bad things had gotten for Maeve after the breakup only tightened. She’d been hurting—almost died—far more than he’d expected after the breakup, and he hadn’t known. “You didn’t recommend her to them. They went for you. Because they were worried about you.”
“Getting injured in the field is always a risk. That’s part of the job—”
“Don’t.” He used her earlier words against her. “Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear to make this conversation go away. It won’t work. I know the truth.” Callen physically fought down the nausea that came with the burn of acid on his tongue as he forced the words. “Your partner was the one to call my parents to the hospital. They were still listed as your emergency contacts. He told them everything, including the lie he’d filed in his report to protect you from losing your job. I know you went to that house to arrest a suspect in connection to the serial case you were working. I know he was suspected of killing two other female law enforcement officers, but you took the case anyway. I know you and your partner split up that night to search the house. And I know you didn’t draw your weapon when he charged you with a knife.”
Her throat worked on a shallow swallow. She couldn’t deny it. He’d already reached out to one of his FBI contacts to confirm what his mother had said. He’d read the false report and talked with her former partner in the Salt Lake office. There wasn’t anything she could hide from him now.
“You spent three weeks in the hospital, seventy-two hours of that under a suicide watch because my mom thought you mighthurt yourself. Why?” That single word scraped up his throat as though he’d been yelling for hours. Softening his voice, Callen shifted to the edge of the bed. To get closer to her, to touch her, to just neutralize the buzz beneath his skin he’d lived with for the past four days while she’d been unconscious. “Why wouldn’t you defend yourself, Maeve? I know you know how. I’ve seen you do it a thousand times, and like you said, you’re a damn good agent. You could’ve stopped him, and you chose to let him hurt you.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. Only once had she ever cried in front of him during her father’s funeral. He wasn’t sure whether it was because of the emotional onslaught of loss then or because Maeve didn’t allow herself to show that kind of vulnerability over the years. And, hell, he’d done nothing in the past year to show her she was safe with him anymore, but he wanted to be good enough for her now. “Why, Maeve?”
“Because I failed.” Her shoulders shook on a sob, and Callen only shifted closer, pressing his weight into her side like he’d done during her nightmare the other night in his house. “I screwed up Lauren’s case, and you were so angry.” She closed her eyes but somehow found the courage to face him again. “You had every right to get as far from me as possible. I knew that, but knowing something like that and facing it… I failed you. I failed your parents, who’d given me everything. I’ve lost everyone I ever cared about, but Lauren, it was my fault. I realized I wasn’t the woman you thought I was, and I couldn’t handle the fact I couldn’t fix it, and in that moment, that suspect, he just made it so easy.”
He couldn’t keep his anger in check. Over the time he’d wasted blaming her, over the hateful words he’d spewed at her, over the assumption that she hadn’t done enough or that she was anything less than the strong, compassionate woman he’d fallen in love with. Callen pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes, taking her in.
“You never failed me, Maeve. You made a mistake, but that mistake doesn’t equal your worth. Not to my parents, and sure as hell not to me, and I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you weren’t worth loving. Because I forgive you. You are…you are amazing, and it took me far too long to realize what an idiot I’ve been when it comes to you.” Skimming his thumb beneath her trembling bottom lip, Callen caught a renegade tear as it broke free from her lashes. “I haven’t been with anyone either.”
Her watery gaze raised to his as he leaned back.
“I tried. I had one of my security friends set me up, but it felt all wrong. I thought maybe it was too soon after the breakup, so I waited a couple months before going on another date, but that one felt wrong too.” But this? Her warmth radiating into his hand, her breath skimming across his bruised knuckles, her scent still clinging to his clothes? It settled some feral part of him he’d tried to ignore, tried to forget existed but had run rampant since she’d left. “It took me a while to realize food stopped having any taste. I haven’t been able to get to sleep without taking something since I came to Zion. I think about you all the time, and I convinced myself you ruined everything between us by mishandling evidence in Lauren’s investigation, that if I hurt you the way I hurt, I would feel some kind of justice. But after being with you the past few days, knowing you’ve risked everything to be here for my sister, I realize I’m the one at fault. The things I said, I didn’t mean them, Maeve, and I’m sorry.”
Her hand slipped over his as she leaned into his touch. “Me, too. I’m sorry about Lauren. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this case. You almost died—”
“There isn’t anything you have to be sorry for. I made the choice to get involved. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done to stop me, and I’m glad we found her. It’s not what I’d hoped, but she can come home now. She’s not scared or in pain or alone, but Iliana Meyer is still out there, and we need to find her.”His phone vibrated from his jeans pocket. Callen unpocketed the device, and dread spiked through him. Leaning back, he turned the screen toward Maeve with the text message displayed.It’s Simpson. The rangers have found more remains.
Chapter Twenty
They couldn’t keep her here.
Maeve held her internal organs in with the press of her hand as she shuffled toward the end of the bed. Callen had stepped out into the hallway to call the division head of the law enforcement rangers, but all she’d heard through the door was that the remains were on their way to the medical examiner’s office. So that was where she was going.
Just as soon as she figured out how to breathe and walk at the same time again. It didn’t use to be so hard, did it? The paper-thin gown gaped in the back, and a frigid slip of air skimmed down her spine. No problem. She wasn’t walking out of here with her ass hanging out anyway.
Something twisted in her stomach when she took her next breath. Setting one hand on the end of the hospital bed, she tried not to die. And to mentally untwist whatever didn’t like her upright. This was stupid. She knew that, and yet she’d made dumber decisions throughout her life, and she was still here. She’d trained as a federal agent, for crying out loud. Walking ten feet to the pile of neatly folded clothing—probably by Helen’s hands—shouldn’t be such a task. Maeve struggled for her next breath, counting the seconds she had until Callen walked back in the room. “You managed not to shoot yourself in a refrigerated storage container. You can do this.”
It took more effort than she expected to get her feet moving and to hold her weight on her own two legs, but she managed to make it to the chair. Helen wouldn’t have left a clean stackof clothes for her if she hadn’t expected her to use them, right? Or maybe Callen’s mother really just knew her that well. Maeve swallowed the ball of emotion lodged in her throat as she shifted the stack of what looked like jeans, a T-shirt and undergarments into one hand and took a seat.
She didn’t blame Helen for breaking her promise not to reveal the details of Maeve’s hospital stay after she’d been stabbed. It hadn’t been Maeve’s place to demand that from the mom who’d stepped into her life in the first place, and she’d known keeping something like that—her rock bottom—wouldn’t stay between them forever. She just hadn’t wanted Callen to think any worse of her, that she would stoop so low as to drag him back into her life by putting herself at risk. Because he would’ve been there had he known. He would’ve set aside his hatred for her in an instant and blamed himself, and she didn’t want that.
She’d told him the truth earlier. Those seconds in which her hand had flinched to unholster her weapon as the suspect came at her and her choice not to follow-through had nothing to do with him. She could’ve easily drawn her sidearm. She’d chosen not to. Not only because of that sick sense of failure that had nipped at her heels since Lauren disappeared, but from the knowledge that she’d truly believed she deserved the punishment at the time. Looking back, she could pinpoint the signs of the deterioration of her mental health, and Helen and Tommy forcing her into therapy—forcing their support—had worked wonders since, but she hadn’t seen it then. All she’d been was empty.
That wasn’t the case anymore.
She’d lost Lauren—okay, she’d lost more than that—but she felt as though she was finally able to take her first real breath in months. Closing her eyes, she leaned into the warmth Callen’s apology had created until it filled the cold place in the center of her chest she spent so much wasted time trying not to thinkabout. It had heated with his hand on her skin, his thumb tracing the line of her bottom lip. In that moment, there’d been nothing—no investigation, no history, no hurt—but the feel of his skin against hers.
But that chilled emptiness was beginning to return.
With every second she didn’t tell him the truth.
Maeve made slow work of dragging her jeans up her legs, careful not to bend too much and piss off the sutures in her stomach. She was out of breath by the time she managed to secure the button and needed a minute before attempting to wrangle her bra.
