Pfffttt.Likethatever really happened.
Instalove was all about chemistry.Butterflies.Reallyfalling in love meant so much more than that.
Real love is found in the quiet moments when nothing is happening and you still can’t think of anyone you’d rather be with.It’s about trust.Letting someone hold your heart and knowing they won’t break it.Love is when their happiness means more than your own.It’s not about needing someone but wanting them with every piece of your soul.Love is…messy and complicated but still somehow comfortable.
That’s when realization hit him between the eyes like a two-by-four.
Holy shit.
He loved Hadley.Even worse, he wasin lovewith Hadley.
One night with her wouldneverbe enough.
She frowned at him.“Are you even listening to me?”
He swallowed hard.“Yeah,” he rasped.
“You’re being weird,” she muttered, and damned if he didn’t also love the way her little button nose wrinkled up when she called him weird.
He wassofucked.
“What’s on your mind?”he eventually managed to ask even though his throat felt like he’d been swallowing razor blades all day.
She dropped the dish brush into the soapy water and turned to face him, leaning a hip against the counter.Great.Now he was turned on by the fact that her breasts—the breasts of the woman he now knew he wasin love with— had brushed his forearm.
This was getting worse by the minute.He was probably going to have a stroke or something by the time this conversation ended.He needed to calm the fuck down.He’d been in hostage situations that didn’t have him as discombobulated as he was right now.
“I don’t feel good about this anymore.”
He’d been expecting it and still, it was a knife in the heart to hear it.He swallowed hard.“I understand.”
She looked relieved.“You feel it too, right?”
The shooting, stabbing, crippling pain?The knowledge that he was about to lose what was maybe the only truly good thing he’d ever had in his life?“Yeah.Sure.”
Hadley let out a sigh.“I knew it.So, what are we going to do about it?”
Well, he didn’t know about her.But he was fairly certain he was going to die alone, mourning the loss of her until he was dropped into his grave.“I’m…not sure.”
“I’m not, either.But I definitely don’t feel right telling Franklin about any of this.”
That’s when he got his first inkling that maybe they were having two very different conversations.“Are you talking about this mission?About Stella and Eric?”
She blinked up at him.“Well, yeah.Why?What wereyoutalking about?”
Was it possible for his heart to rip itself out of his ribcage and burst into a million gory pieces?Felt like maybe it was.“Um…doesn’t matter.Tell me more about whatyou’rethinking.”
“As Stella was talking about him, and after seeing them together, I just found myself wondering, what if Eric was just a guy who’d been given a terrible job to do, but decided he wasn’t going to do it?What if he’s just a guy trying to start over and live a normal life?A guy like…”
“Me,” he finished for her quietly.
Her eyes softened.“Exactly.”
“You don’t want to hand him over to Franklin,” he guessed.“You’re thinking about telling him we came up empty handed, or that there’s no sleeper agent in the neighborhood.”
She bit her lower lip.“What would happen if Iwasthinking all that?”
Nothing good.Ofthathe was certain.“We can’t fail.Franklin would make sure I disappeared and you took the fall for murder, but only after telling the Irish mafia you killed Darren and Liam.”
