Page 100 of Direct Action

“Ryan—”

“Love you, Chloe, but please stop talking.”

I stopped talking.

Actually, I stopped breathing.

No, the world stopped spinning as I replayed love you, Chloe over and over.

Love.

Love.

He loved me?

Ryan loved me?

“Jesus fuck, woman, you’re going to give yourself a seizure,” Ryan seethed.

That was when I realized I was blinking—rapidly blinking. Partly because I was trying to comprehend the words I hoped I’d heard correctly and partly because I didn’t want the wetness gathering in my eyelids to fall.

Poppy grabbed my hand and tugged me back down to the couch.

“You love me?” I whispered.

Ryan gave me a ferocious scowl. “Are you shitting me? No offense to Poppy—and I’d have my reservations sending her into the den of vipers—but they’d be reservations, and I’d voice those and work with my team to do everything we could to keep her safe. What I wouldn’t be doing was standing here losing my motherfucking mind at the thought of you going anywhere near that den. I wouldn’t be standing here wondering if I could live with myself if I told my team we’re bagging this operation and we’re letting those girls swing, because my woman’s not getting on a fucking plane with a piece of shit unprotected, flying wherever it is that he’ll take her, then letting her loose at a sex party full of other motherfucking dirtbags who have zero morals, if I didn’t fucking love you.”

Well.

That answered that.

And since I was freaked way the hell out that he’d said he loved me in front of our friends, or said it at all—and not because it wasn’t what I’d desperately wanted for so long, but because it was a dream come true and in our current situation—I couldn’t run and jump into his arms and tell him I loved him back, then celebrate until the sun came up.

Not that that celebration would end at sunrise, seeing at it was already nearing on four in the morning and I’d need at least three to five hours to properly communicate how much he meant to me.

So instead of doing what I wanted to do, I told him, “You say motherfucker a lot when you’re mad.” He growled. “And you grunt and growl a lot too.”

Ryan’s hands came up and slammed on his hips while at the same time his head tipped back and he stared at the ceiling.

Okay. If this was going to work, he needed to know the truth, and I was going to have to ignore the room full of people to give it to him.

“Please don’t be mad at me. Sterling screwed me and asked Poppy first. Once she said yes, you know there’d be no way I’d let her go in alone.”

“I can go by myself,” Poppy interjected. “They can give me one of the trackers you mentioned, and I’ll be—”

I put my hand up and shook my head. “You’re not going alone. No way. We stick together. We both go or neither of us goes. I couldn’t live with myself if I turned my back on you.” I looked back at Ryan and continued. “I have to do this. You know I do. But it also terrifies me, and the only way I’m going to be able to do it is if I know you’ll be there to protect us if something goes wrong. We’ll wear trackers, and you and the guys can follow. You won’t be far away.”

Ryan was still scowling.

“I’m scared, Ryan. But I wouldn’t be the woman you fell in love with if I tucked tail and let my best friend swing and do this alone. And you wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with if you made me leave her when you can keep me safe and we can get you what you need to help the other women.”

I couldn’t say he was no longer scowling, but some of the savagery had leached out.

“You know what pisses me right the fuck off?” he asked.

At the present moment I could probably name five billion things that were pissing him off. My name being at the top of the list. Sterling would have a spot right below mine.

Wisely, I didn’t tell him that.