Page 16 of Frost and Venom

“Harlow.” Now there was a warning in his voice. “If you’re over there, I can’t comfort you.”

She spun around to glare at him. “I don’t need comfort. I need to be alone for a little while.”

He shook his head and indicated for Falcon to move back. “That’s the last thing you need. Have you ever heard the old quote, ‘no man is an island’? You try to be, but you have that soft spot that needs protecting.”

“If I do, it isn’t your business or Rainier’s.” She tacked on Rainier at the last minute so it wouldn’t seem as if she was singling him out. “I’ve been on my own a long time, Wilder. I appreciate your concern, but I’m just fine.”

He threw back the covers. “No, you’re not. The rest of the world might not see it, but I can, and I’m making it my business.”

“What are you doing?” Harlow was horrified. Wilder ignored Falcon’s warning and turned so he could drop both feet onto the floor. “You’re impossible.” She hissed it at him and glared at Falcon as she stormed across the room to put a restraining hand on Wilder’s chest. “What use are you if you can’t control your patient?” she asked.

Wilder’s hand clamped over hers, holding her palm to his heart as he settled back against the pillows.

“He’s all yours,” Falcon said. “I’m tired of babysitting. You can deal with his tantrums. His chart is on the wall, although he gets up regularly and messes with it.”

Wilder gave him the middle finger as the other man walked out, leaving Harlow alone with him. Satisfaction gleamed in his crystalline eyes for just a moment.

Harlow took a deep breath and let it out. Wilder had such a way of throwing her off-balance. “You have got to stop getting up and down like a crazy person, Wilder. You know better. You might not be a medical doctor, but you’re highly intelligent and have enough knowledge to know that you need a little healing time before you start PT or moving around to the point you undo all the internal work the surgeons did on you.”

She swept a hand through her hair, betraying her agitation. He was looking at her so intently, as if he was hanging on every word, but she wasn’t certain he was actually hearing what she was saying.

“You’re a grown man. You’re intelligent. Why would you risk your life like this?”

He caught her hand again and pulled it to his chest, his thumb sliding over the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. “You have a point, Harlow, a good one. I am intelligent, just as you are. I am grown-up, just as you are. So I’m asking you the same question. Why would you risk your life like you do?”

Her heart dropped as his piercing gaze met hers. Hawkin Wilder wasn’t a man to challenge to a verbal match. He would win every time, at least with her. She should have known he would ask the hard questions she had refused to think about. Denying his accusation was useless, and she wasn’t a coward. If she wanted him to face truths, she had to do the same.

“I suppose I never looked at it that way. I run. I’ve been running all of my life. When I climb, my mind doesn’t think about the things I know my father has done and my mother has covered up. I don’t have to think that I should have tried harder to get someone to believe me when I told people about him. If I had, maybe this young woman who disappeared would still be alive. Maybe any other girl he touched without their consent wouldn’t be a weight on my shoulders. And the death threats? Maybe I think I deserve them as much as the ones my parents receive.”

All the while she spoke, the pad of his thumb gently glided back and forth over her inner wrist. His touch felt far too intimate, creating a bond between them that wasn’t really there. Couldn’t ever be there. She tugged on her hand to get it back, but his fingers curled around her wrist like a shackle, holding her clenched fist against his heart.

“Thank you for telling me the truth,” he said. “I wasn’t throwing a tantrum to get my way because I’m tired of being in this bed the way Falcon or even Rainier and obviously you believe. You were missing. You’ve been avoiding me since I came to you for help. I wasn’t able to talk to you or see that you were okay with the danger I was clearly bringing to you. Then, when Rainier found that threat in your mailbox and no one could find you, I had to find you myself. That’s what I do best. I track people. I’m not losing you.”

She found herself frowning. When she did, he immediately rubbed at her lower lip with his finger. Again, his touch and the gesture were far too intimate.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t want to understand. We’ve been dancing around each other for a long time, Harlow. It took me a little time to realize you weren’t going to stand still and let me catch you. You weren’t playing games; you simply weren’t going to allow yourself to be in a relationship. It took me far too long to realize the truth, and when I did, I had to figure out how best to handle the situation.”

“The situation?” she echoed faintly. He was so intense. She couldn’t do intense. A part of her knew where he was going, but most of her rejected even the possibility.

“When I call you mon rêve, that’s what you are to me: my dream. The only dream I’ve ever had. The only one I will ever have.”

She was shaking her head again, something she found she often did around him. He made no sense. “I’m no one’s dream, Wilder. Nightmare, maybe, but not dream. You may think you have an idea what my family is like, but my father’s a monster. That’s what I come from.”

His thumb slid gently from her bottom lip to her chin. “He may be one, Harlow. There are many monsters in this world. I grew up with one as well. The things I saw as a child, the things I was forced to do, losing my mother and brother the way I did, all of that shaped me into a monster.”

Her treacherous heart wept for him. How had he lost his mother? His brother? She couldn’t have said anything, even if she tried. The last thing she expected was for him to open up to her. Wilder had a reputation even among Rainier’s security force. From the beginning, when he’d first come onto her radar, she felt the darkness in him. It was rumored he was a little crazy, a wild card, yet he appeared to be close with Sam, Zale and Rainier. They were very good judges of character.

“I would run through the woods, try to lose myself there, try to be one of the animals, because there was nothing left in me as a human but darkness. I lost my heart, and if we have souls, that was gone as well. I couldn’t feel for anything or anyone. My father had shaped me into a killing machine. The military did the rest, giving me more tools. Everywhere I trained only added to my arsenal of weapons. I felt nothing. I’d become the very thing my father was.”

Harlow didn’t believe him. He might see himself that way, but she saw him differently. She saw into him. She absolutely knew she wasn’t building a fantasy about who he was. She’d witnessed his kindness, how gentle he could be. “Wilder…”

His thumb slid across her lips, silencing her. “Let me get this out. You don’t know the reputation I have in my agency. I am the psycho. The wild card. The one Blom sent when he needed multiple cartel members taken out because I have no fear of death. I have no filters. I never stop. That’s what he values in me.”

She’d definitely heard that rumor about him. Yet…“What about Rainier?” Because to Harlow, Rainier seemed far scarier.

“Rainier keeps to a code of honor, and he instilled that in me and a few others. Having a man like Rainier believe in me kept me from being a complete psychopath, but I still knew there was no redemption for me. And then one day, I saw you. You were on a boulder, and the sun hit you just perfectly. You looked like a fiery angel with your hair blazing red, blowing in the wind. I saw you helping two climbers who were obviously new to the sport; you were so patient with them. They were older and obviously strangers, but you took time out of your recreation to help them. After that, every chance I got, I came to Knightly to see you. I stalked you like the creeper psycho I am. When Sam needed help and wanted you and your friends safe, I drew your name, and I knew it was fate. I was supposed to have you.”