Page 76 of Thaddeus

All he wanted was for me to believe.

Simple.

One word.

Yet the hardest thing I’d do in my life.

“Let’s grab your stuff.” Thad’s voice startled me, and snapped me back into the present.

Thaddeus moved down the hallway, stopped in front of his bedroom door, opened it, then continued to hold it for me to enter. Incidentally he’d moved my stuff into his room.

Once I was inside, he let the door shut behind him and asked, “Did you have a good time with Tatiana?”

“Yeah, I really like her.”

“I’m not surprised, she’s good people.”

The admiration in his tone couldn’t be missed and I liked that he thought highly of her. It reinforced that my opinion of her was correct. She was a good person and had proved her worth to the team.

I moved to the corner of the room where the luggage sat on the floor and looked at it. In the not-so-distant past, the contents of the suitcases had been important to me. The clothes, shoes, and jewelry would fund my next mission. I’d lived with the singular purpose of finding Autumn with the cherry on top of my endeavors as saving women who’d been taken against their will.

But that was over. Now I was left with a bunch of really bad reminders. Ones I didn’t want.

“What are you thinking about?” Thad asked.

With my eyes glued to the expensive suitcase I knew was filled with even more expensive clothes, I answered, “That’s a lot of baggage.”

“It’ll fit—”

“No. I don’t want it to fit. I want to unload it. I don’t want to carry it from place to place.” I turned to face Thad fully and gathered all the courage I could find. “Do you really think we can make this work? That we can be a ‘we’ again? That you’ll be able to forgive me and trust me again?”

“Yes.” His answer was firm. Resolute. There was no hesitation.

“Then I have to let go of all of this.” I pointed to the bags. “The woman I am with you isn’t in there. Your Emerson isn’t fancy clothes and outrageously expensive shoes. The woman I want to be, who I was before, wouldn’t be caught dead in any of that crap. I can’t have all of that strapped to my back and believe we can be a ‘we’ again. I want to believe, I want us to have a shot, I want to be me. The woman I was when I was with you—the real me. So, no, I don’t want it to fit because it can’t.”

“Then dump it, agápi mou. You don’t need it where you’re going.”

“Where am I going, Thad?”

“On an epic, wild, scary, fulfilling journey. One that I promise will be filled with so much beauty you won’t remember the ten years we spent apart. A life filled with love and babies and you teaching in a classroom, good friends, and adventures. A life where you’ll be safe to be you. So leave it, throw it all in the trash, take it outside and burn it, whatever you need to do to unload it I’m on board with.”

“I want that life, Thaddeus.”

“That’s good, agápi mou, because I wasn’t giving you the option not to have it.”

A devilish smile hit his mouth and I’d forgotten how sexy he could be when he was being bossy. Which was lucky for him, because he was bossy a lot, and the only reason why he’d gotten away with it was because he looked damn hot while doing it.

“Now come here and give me a kiss,” he demanded, further proving he was not only sexy and hot while being bossy but he could catch my body on fire with a simple demand.

I thought about denying him and making him walk to me, but that would only delay what I wanted, so I moved across the room to him, planted my palms on his hard chest, and rolled to my toes. At nearly six-foot-four he still had to lean down to capture my kiss.

His mouth opened and our tongues glided. Heaven. He hoisted me up, my legs wrapped around his waist, something he used to do frequently due to our height difference, and he deepened the already deep kiss. Our heads slanted and he took me on one of his journeys.

Seriously hot.

Hotter than hot—scorching.

My body was on board with the kiss and my hips started to move, trying to find friction through my jeans. Just as I was finding what I needed, he broke the kiss.