Page 42 of Hunted in Hope Town

“Didn’t you learn anything from this?” she demanded. “After everything that’s happened, you’re still going to use work to keep me at arm’s length?”

“Kirsten, this isn’t work.”

“It is. Or if it’s not, you’re using it like work. An excuse not to deal with me.”

Frustration that she wasn’t wrong bubbled through him, because there was a threat, even if he wasn’t ready to deal with her too. “It’s not an excuse to want to do everything in my power to keep you safe, to stop this threat.” He believed that.

Or had, but she was making him unsure, which made him want to double down.

She tossed the covers off of her and moved off the bed in jerky, frustrated moves. She crossed the room to him, and it took every last FBI skill he’d trained for to maintain his ground, not back away.

“Do you know that I was so afraid to lose you, I wouldn’t fight with you?” she demanded.

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“But I lost you in a different way,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

“You never lost me. I was right here,” he managed to rasp.

“You were, but you weren’t. Couldn’t be. I understand that. I don’t know that I agree with everything that’s happened, but I understand… I don’t think I could remember until I felt safe, and maybe that could have happened sooner if we’d spent more time together, but maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know. I can’t go back. And I don’t want to waste time trying to…go through what I remember and what I don’t.”

She placed her palms against his chest. Something kept him frozen, rooted to the spot. Bigger than the fear that was whispering at him to walk away. To find something to accomplish. Something concrete. Something real.

“For two years, I haven’t lived my life,” she said to him. “I’ve lived someone else’s. And it didn’t even matter, because here a threat is all the same.”

“It matters,” he managed to reply. “Because you have been safe.”

She shook her head. “I remember. Maybe not everything, I’ll grant you that. But enough. Enough to…know who I was. Know who I am. Enough to know that what you’re so afraid of isn’t true.”

“I’m not afraid.” He couldn’t afford to be afraid.

“You’re afraid I didn’t love you anymore. That our marriage was over. I was mad at you for sure. I was afraid I didn’t know how to make our marriage work when you always ran away, but my God, Ellis. I never, ever stopped loving you.”

KIRSTEN DIDN’T CARE if she remembered everything, because she knew that with a certainty that couldn’t be dispelled by concerns over how she felt.

She had loved this man practically from the moment he’d come up to her in a little college courtyard, cocky and handsome and…

Hers. He’d always been hers.

And she remembered it all. Clear as day. Maybe there were gaps, she couldn’t deny it was a possibility. But everything she reached for came up. Maybe Kirsten felt a bit like a ghost, but it was a real one, with memories and truths and feelings.

Love didn’t go away, even if it had been hidden under a wall these past two years. The wall of her fake identity and Ellis keeping his distance. But it was gone now.

And she didn’t really care about a threat when she remembered how much she loved her husband—even when he frustrated her, ran away from what they needed to work through.

Because she’d done her own version of running away, and that wasn’t going to happen again. She’d rather be thrown off that balcony again.

Though she shuddered at the thought, at the memory. The terror of it all over again. How…disposable she’d felt.

“I think you should talk to Dr. Leigh.” He put his hands over hers on his chest before she could get riled up. “Not because I’m trying to avoid this. But, Kirsten, you had a severe reaction to remembering last night. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

She breathed through her frustration with him, because she didn’t think he was lying. She could feel the concern radiating off of him, but she also knew he was distancing himself.

It was what he did when he was afraid. And there was something about fear he couldn’t admit to himself. Like he had to be brave or nothing mattered.

Because whether he liked it or not, she did remember his issues. With his stepdad and his upbringing. He couldn’t see them or admit them to himself, but she could. She always had.

And probably given him too much leeway because of it. He’d always had to be brave. A solitary figure with no one to lean on. Through his father’s death, his mother’s, and then a teenage boy with just a taciturn stepfather. Neither of them knowing how to deal with each other.