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I relax my hands, which I honestly didn’t realize were balling. “You’re not fucking off to Miami and leaving me here.”
He reaches me, rounds me, puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me back down to the chair. Then he dips and pushes his mouth to my ear. “I know,” he says, kissing my lobe. I’m not the only one who relaxes. It seems the whole table does.Thank God.He starts massaging into my flesh, and my hands lay over his, my relief making way for contentment. Odd, isn’t it, that weeks ago when I was faced with a similar situation, I was pissed off that he was dragging me away from my haven back to a city I hate. But I’ve learned that my haven, in fact, is Danny.
“That’s okay, then,” I say, nodding to myself, sounding way surer than I suspect I should. Could there be a catch coming? “And you’re not locking me up in the mansion.”
“I know.”
Oh? “I will happily carry a gun.”
“You will.”
“And the Vikings?” I ask, flashing a look to Beau. She’s smiling mildly, as is James.
“Will be distributed as needed,” Danny says, continuing to massage my shoulders. What the fuck is going on? It’s as if he’s had a personality transplant.
“Am I missing something?”
“Like?”
I look to Esther, who shrugs, as equally perplexed. “You tell me.” Am I suddenly bulletproof?
“Happy wife, happy life,” he murmurs.
“Okay,” I say, standing from my chair, prompting his hands to move from my shoulders. “What’s going on?”
“Let’s go,” James says, collecting Beau and exiting quite speedily.
“What?” Beau asks, appearing to be a slave to James’s strength, unable to stop him from leading her away. It’s absurd. She’d turn the tables on him with one swing of an arm and a roundhouse kick. So, of course, my worry heightens, especially when Otto declares he and Esther are also leaving.
And then it’s just the two of us, Danny and me. His hands find my shoulders and push me back down to the chair, and I wince terribly when he crouches, his jaw tight. His chest. His beautiful, smooth, mutilated chest. A lump in my throat forms, and I damn myself to hell and back as I take his T-shirt and pull it up, as if I need to torture myself some more.
His chest is heavily bandaged, so I can’t see the damage. But I see it. I caused that. His maiming. His pain.
Gently taking my hand, he eases it away, and his chest is soon covered again. I move my eyes to his. To this day, I still can’t fathom how ice blue can radiate such heat. And yet here it is, hot blue burning through me. This is my husband. Confident and in control. This is the man I was instantly attracted to, the dark creature that reflected a version of me, but, ironically, it was the vulnerable, lost man I saw past the darkness that I fell in love with. The man I saw this morning. I flinch away from that thought, and Danny catches it.
“Never again, Rose,” he reiterates, cupping both of my hands in both of his.
I could cry for him. “Stop it,” I say. “Just stop it.” I need him to be rid of this self-loathing. I must take some of the responsibility. Finding and killing a man isn’t a cause for anguish for my husband, but the impact it’ll have on me is. I should have supported him in his hopelessness, not kick off and cause him further stress, because his hopelessness was spiked by worry for me. Haven’t I learned?
He nods, if mildly, “I have a gift for you.”
“You’re my gift. I don’t need anything else.”
He smiles, but it’s half-hearted. “I shouldn’t have been so careless with you. I shouldn’t have zoned-out. I should have been fully aware, and I wasn’t.”
And I know that will only increase his anger and purpose. God help his enemies.
“If you left me,” he goes on, squeezing my hands in his, “I wouldn’t blame you. But I’m begging you not to, Rose, because a life without you is not a life I am interested in living.”
I remove my hands from his and encourage his crouched body into mine, hugging him carefully so not to put pressure on his wounds. “I’m never leaving you.”
“Good. So you’ll accept my gift.”
“What is it, a slap?” I joke, feeling him smile against my neck.
He pulls away and reaches into his back pocket, pulling something out, holding it up to me.
A ring.
