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“I know you lost Maddie too, but I need to make you understand.” His shoulders tensed at the mention of their daughter’s name, but she forged ahead. “As much as you loved her, you never felt that life inside your body. Never felt her growing and stretching, or that instant connection that takes every terrible thing I’ve ever done and washes it clean because I know in my heart she’s the one thing in this life that I’ve done right.”
She held up her hand when he turned around and she saw he was going to speak. Her hand shook, so she put it down quickly, but she got what she wanted. Gabe’s lips pressed together, and he nodded again for her to continue.
“And then she was born, and it was a completely different kind of miracle. She was so perfect, Gabe. How could she come from two such imperfect parents?” She licked her lips and tasted the salt of her tears. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying. “I can’t tell you what it feels like to have to fight so hard to bring her into the world only to sit there helpless as she was taken out of it.”
She couldn’t quite bring herself to look him in the eyes. “I hated you for a while. I hated myself. To the point where I didn’t care if I lived or died as long as I avenged her death. I’ve been struggling on my own for these last two years, determined to forget you and deal with the pain on my own in the only way I knew how. What has the government made us, Gabe? What kind of person am I that my first thought is to go out and kill?”
“The kind who has a conscience. The kind who takes chances because others choose to look the other direction when it comes to right and wrong. We know what real sacrifice is. And we live with it because there’s no other option.” His voice was soft and full of emotion, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. Not yet.
“This hate is like a disease,” she said. “I can feel it creeping over my skin and devouring my soul. It scares me, and I hate the person I’ve become.”
“Give yourself a break, sweetheart. I still love you as you are. The woman you used to be is in there somewhere, but she’s never going to be the same. She’ll be stronger. Because she’s a survivor.”
He moved toward her, and she tried to back away. To get everything said before he touched her and she fell apart. But he wouldn’t let her. He pulled her into his arms, and she broke. Sobs violently shook her body as she soaked his shirt with her tears. Two years of pain, and hate, and loathing tore free until the sounds that came from deep inside her no longer sounded human.
Gabe knelt with her on the floor and rocked her as he would a child, his own tears falling silently against her neck. She didn’t know how long they stayed that way, but when the tears were gone, her body continued to shake with fatigue and the grief that had finally made its way to the surface.
“I don’t want to be this person anymore, Gabe. I can’t be this person anymore. I won’t survive it.”
“And do you want to survive?”
He tilted her face up until she was looking directly into the blue depths of his eyes. They were wet with emotion and held their own silent grief. Grief that had nothing to do with Maddie and everything to do with the pain she’d caused him.
“Yes. I want to survive. I want to live again. With you.”
“Then you will.” He kissed her softly on the lips, and she shuddered against him as the weight began to lift from her shoulders. “We’re going to do it right this time. There are still going to be troubled spots ahead of us. But we’ll do it together. No more running for either of us. I think it would be a good idea to see a grief counselor. I think it’s time for us to heal.”
The tears she thought were gone slipped down her cheeks. “I’d like that, but what if it doesn’t work? I’ll kill you if you ever tell anyone this, but I’m so scared. What if I keep having these breakdowns?”
“Then you do, and I’ll be there to help you through them. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. All we can do is our best and fight through it together.”
They looked at each other a long while until she finally found the courage to say the words she’d never stopped feeling.
“I love you, Gabe.” She touched the ends of his hair and rubbed the silky strands between her fingers, then trailed her way down his neck and up to the coarse beard at his cheeks. She wanted to memorize every texture of this moment. “I just thought I should tell you.”
He kissed her softly, his lips tasting and savoring as if it were their first kiss. It was the kiss of new beginnings, and the slow, dizzying feeling of falling in love all over again.
She didn’t know how they got from the floor to the bedroom, only that everything around her was a hazy dream. She’d remember the love and tenderness he was showing her for the rest of her life, and the way he looked at her as if she were the only woman in his universe.
* * *
They didn’t speak much over the next two days. There was no need for words. But they touched often and made love as if their lives depended on bringing each other pleasure.
“We’re going to eventually have to go downstairs,” Gabe said.
“Jack will let us know if Ethan gets a lock on the auction. We’re just waiting at this point. We don’t even know for sure that his scientist was able to re-create the Passover Project. There haven’t been reports of other testing sites.”
“That’s what worries me. It’ll be much harder to isolate the Passover Project as a murder weapon if it’s only killing one person instead of many. I’ve got Ethan looking for high-profile unexplained deaths.”
“Can I ask you something?” Grace said.
Gabe could tell by the tone of her voice that the topic was something she’d rather not have to talk about. He rolled to his back and pulled her close to him, loving the feel of her hair as it slid like silk over his chest.
“I’m serious, Gabe. This is important.”
“You can ask me whatever you want and I’ll give it to you,” he said.
Her voice was timid. “Do you think we can get married again?”
