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I drop my head, pressing a soft kiss to her mouth. “Do you want to talk about what happened? I read the report. Listened to your statement over a million fucking times. It made me wish I hadn’t killed him so I could have tortured him in ways that would be way more painful. Being shot was doing him a favor.”
Her palm cradles my cheek. “He didn’t hurt me. I mean, I was really scared. But he didn’t hurt me, hurt me. My turn. Fay said it was because of you they found me.”
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against hers. I hate having to relive those moments. “I’ve seen some dark shit in my life. I won’t lie. Iraq did a number on me. It did everyone. But this…it was so much different. Over there, you’re trained to become desensitized. If you’re not numb, you’re dead. We had men go missing. Brothers explode right in front of me. And still…nothing compared to the pain of knowing he had you. That we couldn’t find you, and he stayed one step ahead of us.” She brushes her fingers through my hair. “I saw firsthand what he was capable of.”
“The barn?”
“Yeah.”
“Detective Rochel told me about it. And his apartment.”
“This uncontrollable rage burned through my veins. I couldn’t see anything but red. I hated that he had these intimate things of yours. Images of you that weren’t meant for him or anyone.” Her body shivers under me. My hands curl into fists. I want to punch everything in sight. “I’d kill him a million times over if I could.”
“I know.”
I take a moment to rein in my anger. “I don’t even know. We kept hitting dead ends, and finding out Vince was actually Paul was a kick to the gut. It took me setting my emotions aside and finally thinking like a soldier to become useful.”
“So, what happened?”
“Our first move after learning about Paul was to run a report of every listing his father owned. It’s how we located the barn. That and the lead from Sheldon. What they weren’t looking at were sold houses. From the images in his apartment, it was clear he’d been watching you for a while. People like Paul, they’re good at living in plain sight. They don’t hide in the shadows. He’d been in the wide open the whole time. You just didn’t notice him.”
“I don’t get it.”
“From the pictures, Paul had been at Bev’s way before the night he claimed to be his first. Meredith recognized the photo of him and said he was a regular.”
“No,” she gasps.
“It was like that for a lot of places you went or ate at. He was always lurking. And someone like that, at some point, always slips up. There’s speculation that he hadn’t planned on taking you when he did, but something snapped in him, and he panicked. It could have been because you went MIA, and he wasn’t able to track your every move.
“A week or so before he took you, he’d made a bunch of purchases. When we ran the bank statements, they looked odd. A bunch of woman’s décor for one.”
“He was buying stuff to recreate my bedroom.”
My molars grind. I hate making her relive all this. “Yeah. The good thing is his credit card flagged it for possible fraudulent charges. Paul cleared it up, but when the police tracked his credit cards, the fraudulent report showed, and it led us straight to the address—straight to you.”
“What happens now?”
I press a tender kiss to the top of her nose. Her eyes, her cheeks…fuck, I could kiss every inch of her. “We figure it out. We heal. We move on. Together.”
“Is this you asking me to be your girlfriend, Deveraux?”
“Babe, this is me asking you to forgive me. To accept that I have a ton of demons. And I’m far from perfect. It’s me asking you to open yourself to a man who will battle to keep you safe and happy. Minds, I’ll never let you down again, and if I have to spend the rest of my life proving it to you, I will. I just want you. All of you. To be your boyfriend. Your husband. Your fucking soulmate. You’re it for me.” This time, I take her mouth and kiss her hard. I swallow her gasp and kiss her until my vow sinks in. The second it does, she launches herself at me. I hook her legs around my waist and hold her to me. From this moment on, I’m never fucking letting go.
Epilogue
Mindy
Two months later…
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit…”
“Considering we’re in a church, you should probably stop saying shit.” I may be an ex-porn star and tequila-drinking badass with a trucker mouth, but I still have morals when it comes to being in God’s house. “Seriously, it’s really fucking disrespectful.” Just kidding. Fay laughs, brushing her hands down her wedding dress. “It’s going to be fine. I’m pretty sure Theo running out of the church was to just grab something out of his car—”
“Wait—what?”
“Runaway groom isn’t a thing, is it?”
“Heleft?”
