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“Mon coeur,” he whispered when she did.
“Où suis-je?”
“L’hôpital.” He was reaching the limit of words he knew in French, besides the obvious ones everyone knew. “You were shot.”
“Petrov?”
Mantis nodded.
“Surgery?”
“Yes.”
She turned her head and looked away from him, noticing for the first time that Dutch was in the room. She reached out her hand for him in the way Mantis would’ve expected her to reach for him.
Mantis met Dutch’s eyes when he stood, and in them, he saw sadness and guilt.
The man who’d been his best friend for twenty years took his time walking the three or four steps it would take him to get to the opposite side of the bed.
Mantis felt his throat close up as his precious Manon clung to Dutch’s hand with her own. He realized then that he was the interloper, not Dutch. Not the man who, only minutes before, had asked what happened between them.
He turned and walked out of the room, cursing himself for being such a fool.
—:—
“That wasn’t fair, Alegria,” Dutch scolded her. “You made him think—”
“That I had moved on.”
“With me.”
She caressed the back of his hand with her thumb. “Haven’t I?”
?
??If I believed it’s what you really want…”
“It is what I want.”
“Listen.” Dutch scrubbed his face with his hand. “I know you still love him. You always will.”
There was no point in lying; she would always love Mantis, but that didn’t mean they could ever be together again. Both of them had said too many things that could never be taken back. She’d given him an ultimatum, and he’d chosen the mission over her.
That’s just who Mantis was. From the day she met him, he’d never wavered in his commitment to the Air Force, and then to the CIA. She’d never been first with him, and she’d made it clear that if he wanted her in his life, he had to change his priorities. When he refused, Alegria knew if she didn’t end the relationship then, she never would. And she’d be miserable.
“I’m with you now. What I had with him is…over.”
“I wish I could believe it was that simple.” Dutch shook his head.
“Why are you angry with me?”
He ran one hand through his hair while he grasped her fingers with the other. “Because I saw what just happened. Worse, I felt it.”
“You let him leave believing we were together. If you don’t want to be with me, why didn’t you tell him so?”
Dutch shook his head. “I didn’t say I don’t want to be with you, Alegria. As to why I didn’t try to stop Mantis from leaving, I can’t answer that. I guess it’s because as much as I care about him, I care about you too, and right now, you need me more.”
“I don’t want your pity.”
