Page 106 of Beautiful Killer

I stilled and bit my lip, on the verge of begging him to stop talking. I couldn’t take it, not again. He may still be attracted to me, but that wasn’t enough, not anymore.

“I also have this feeling.” He grabbed my hand and held it against his chest. “Right here. When you’re with me, it feels so damn big I can barely breathe, and when you’re gone, it hurts, aches so bad I don’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t recognize it at first, didn’t want to . . . darlin’, I was afraid to.” He slid this thumb below my bottom lip. “Can you tell me what that is, Sunshine?”

My eyes started to sting and I bit my lip.

I shook my head. Too afraid to hope.

His thumb did another sweep, this time my cheek. “I love you, Sunny. I was too damn scared to admit it even to myself, but I’ve loved you since you sat beside me in that bar, since you shone your light on me and chased away the shadows.”

More tears slid down my face. “You love me?”

“More than anything,” he said, voice rough. “I was scared, so damn scared. I didn’t want to let you down. There are things, things that happened during my last deployment that I’ve struggled to get past.” Another swipe of his fingers over my cheek. “You found your way in, Sunny, past all the guilt and self-loathing and it fucking terrified me. I didn’t deserve happiness, and that’s what you were making me feel. I didn’t know how to deal with it. Honestly, I’m still struggling with it.”

“Something bad happened?” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Will you tell me?” I knew from the moment I met him there was something he was struggling with; it was impossible to miss. He loved me, and I loved him. I’d do whatever it took to help him through this, whatever it was. For that, I needed him to share it with me.

He let out shaky breath, and I saw how hard this was for him. “There . . . there was this kid . . .” He slid his fingers up the back of my neck, into my hair. “This kid, he hung around us all the time, we’d kick a ball around with him if we were at a loose end, stuff like that. This one day, I was up on a rooftop, covering our guys on patrol, when I saw the kid approach. Everything in me knew something was wrong, the way he was walking, acting. My instincts were screaming at me to do something. But he was this cute, funny kid we’d gotten to know. I couldn’t pull the trigger when I needed to. That kid, he had explosives strapped to him. I hesitated . . . and because of that, two of my men, a child, were killed.”

I didn’t know what to say, what he described was horrifying. I clung to him tighter.

“Both of those men had families, wives, kids. I’ve been on a road to self-destruction since I came back, and that night, the night I met you . . .” He cupped my face, tilting my head back so our eyes met. “Sunny, you saved my life. I was ready to go out, run headlong into whatever would help me end the way I felt. Then you, with your vanilla scent, and your wild blond hair, and that fucking smile . . . you talked to me like I wasn’t the monster I saw myself as, you stopped me. And you kept on stopping me. As long as I knew I had you waiting for me, I had a reason to get through another day. You did that, darlin’. You saved me.”

I cupped his face, my heart breaking for him. Nothing I could say would change what he’d been through, the way he felt, so I said, “I love you so much, Zeke. I’m here for you, baby. Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”

He pressed his forehead to mine, his rough curse vibrating through me. “I want this, Sunny, I want us. I want you, and our baby,” he said gruffly. “You gave me something to fight for, and I’ll never be able to repay you for that.”

The man was killing me. But he wasn’t the only one whose life had been altered the day I sat on that bar stool. “I stopped believing there was a happy-ever-after for me a long time ago,” I said. “I’ve been let down so many times in my life, been so alone. I may have brightened your world, Zeke Stanton, but you did the same for me. I’d say that makes us even.”

He groaned deep and pulled me in tight. “Thank God you found me.”

I tilted my head back and smiled up at him. “We found each other.”