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The car stopped and I straightened when I heard the gears shift to park. “Are we here?” I grabbed for the blindfold, and my arms were smacked away again.
“You have to keep it on until we’re inside,” Erica chastised.
“Is that necessary?”
“Yes!” they both hissed, and I jerked back.
“Got it. Sorry.”
I let Erica help me out of the car and waited until she grabbed my hand to lead me into the restaurant.
“Parker’s already here?”
“Your guy is waiting for you,” she said patiently. “There’s a tiny step up right in front of you.”
I stepped up and my brow furrowed when the light behind the blindfold vanished. I knew we were inside. But it was completely silent, and it sure as hell didn’t smell like food.
“Uh . . .”
“I’ll be right back, let me help Keegan with your gift. Don’t move!”
“Erica!” I complained, and reached out into the darkness, letting my arms drop when I heard a door shut. “Seriously?”
Taking a deep breath, my body stilled and goose bumps rose on my arms as the faint scent of the building I was in registered in my mind. I knew this place. I knew that smell.
Quick flashes tortured me. Skin against skin. Perfectly placed arms and lips. Fingers slowly pulling down the zipper on my jeans. A firm hand gripping my hair. A large bed. Slow movements as I fell in love with him.
My lips barely parted and the goose bumps moved to my entire body as the flashes kept coming. Taking a step back, my hands moved to the blindfold, but stopped halfway when a song began playing throughout the space. As I ripped the blindfold off, my mouth dropped open and I hurried to cover it with my hand when I saw everything in front of me.
I was in Coen’s studio, and hanging from the ceiling were large canvases. Dozens of them. They were low enough so the canvases hung directly in front of me in two rows set
across from each other at an angle.
I walked past picture after picture of Coen. Every one I’d seen the day I looked through the folder of him. They still gripped at my heart when I saw his eyes or his face covered, knowing that he was hiding his demons from the world, but that never took away from how amazing each one was.
My footsteps faltered when the pictures changed to the flashes I’d just been having. The photo shoot Coen and I had done right here in this studio was now in front of me. In each picture the chemistry between us was tangible. In each picture the passion and love that kept pulling us together was breaking my heart more and more. Tears filled my eyes before spilling over as I came upon pictures from the park of Coen and Parker, Parker and me, Coen and me together . . . and last, the three of us.
I stopped walking and looked straight ahead at the only canvas on an easel, which was situated at the end, in between the two rows. Coen was leaning in to kiss me, both of his hands cupping my cheeks; one of my hands was resting on his chest while the other held Parker close to me. Parker’s head was tilted back, looking up at us with a large smile on his face—and there, across our feet, were the words: My Peace.
A jolt went through my body when Coen’s voice came from directly behind me, and I bit down on my lip to try to stop the fresh wave of tears.
“Two and a half years ago, I was on a mission and my team was ambushed. I’d fallen through a trap and was knocked unconscious, and when I woke up, the five of us were in a small room.”
I didn’t turn to face him as he spoke. I just shut my eyes and listened to each soft, haunted word he was sharing with me.
“We were each chained to the ceiling and floor, and roughly an hour after I woke, four men came into the room with us. One by one they tortured my men for hours in ways I refuse to plague your world with, before finally giving them the relief of shooting them. They didn’t want information, and they never said anything to us. They tortured them just for the sake of torturing them. Saco’s team came in at the exact same moment they killed the last man on my team.”
A silent sob worked its way through my body, and my shoulders jerked from the force of it. I shook my head and fought the craving to reach behind me to touch him, to be there for him while he relived this.
“I’d promised their wives I would bring them home safe, and I didn’t keep that promise. I watched them die, and it was because I fell into a trap I know I should have seen.”
“No,” I choked out.
“I see that day whenever I fall asleep. I see it whenever a smell or sound triggers it,” he continued, his voice still slow and dark. “I didn’t think I deserved happiness, not after that, and not until I met you.”
The tips of his fingers brushed up the arm that hung at my side, and my breath caught from the intimacy of the simple gesture.
“You changed me so completely. I’ve tried to hide—and hide from—my demons. It wasn’t until you that I stopped hiding. I fell in love with you and your son, Reagan. I fell hard, and fast, and everything about the three of us together made sense. But I let a few words form doubt, and I know I shattered your trust—I know I shattered the little trust you already had in men, and you will never know how sorry I am for ever walking away from the two of you.”
