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A shudder racks through her body as she places her cup down and I find my feet frozen barely off the elevator. She starts to head down the hallway to the small common area where the coffee pot and fridge are. I don’t think she’s going to look back at me, but she glances over her shoulder anyway.
What I see on her face guts me. There are tears in her eyes and defeat in her gaze.
She’s running.
When she turns into the small room, my feet finally come unglued from the floor and I’m pounding down the hallway toward her. Before I can get there, Blaze steps out of his office, a stern look on his face. The man barely talks, but I get the feeling he has some words for me. He’s always been protective of the people he considers family and Piper is included in his short list.
“Why the fuck did Piper look like she was crying?” There’s a clear threat in his voice, “What did you do?”
I step up and get right in his face and snarl, “What I did isn’t any of your business, but I know you’re only trying to protect my woman, so I won’t punch you for having the fucking audacity to ask me such a thing. I will say I claimed her. She’s mine. She knows it.” Some of the fire in me deflates at the thought of the tears, uncertainty and pain in her eyes when she looked back at me. “I thought she needed some space to process, but I realize now I was wrong.”
Blaze studies my face for a moment before grunting, “Take care of it.”
I give him a nod, knowing I won’t be stopping until it’s taken care of. Until she knows what she means to me. Until I put all her fears and worries to rest. When Blaze steps out of my way, I’m on the move again.
Piper’s shoulders are practically falling in on herself when I slip into the room, closing and locking the door behind me. The way her shoulders move tells me she’s crying and my heart sinks. I was trying to do the right thing and I still fucked up.
Maybe I’m not the right man for her.
No, you just need to stop fucking up. You need to be honest. You need to tell her how you feel.
“Piper,” I breathe out her name as I close the distance between us. When my back is pressed against her front, she starts shaking her head rapidly and her hands come up to cover her face. Fuck. I grip her shoulder and turn her, but she doesn’t drop her hands, doesn’t let me see her gorgeous face. “I’m sorry, Piper. I thought you needed some space. I thought you just needed some time to think and process, but you really needed me to reassure you. I fucked up. Again.”
Her dark brown eyes peek up at me from between her fingers. It would be adorable if her eyes weren’t rimmed with red, making me want to kick my own ass. I bet Blaze would do it for me and I might just let him later, but right now I need to focus on my little Button in front of me.
“Last night,” she croaks.
I don’t know if she has anything else to say or not because I’m not going to let her finish her thought. “It was the best night of my fucking life, Button.” Her hands fall to her sides and her eyes widen as she stares up at me. I band my arms around her and pull her into my chest, not leaving any space between us. “The fucking best. I’m sorry I gave you any room to doubt me or what you mean to me. That’s on me.”
She shakes her head slowly, her mouth opening and closing before one word slips past her lips, “What?”
I give her a small smile because she has no idea what she does to me, what she means to me. “I’ve pushed you away for so long, I thought you needed a little time, a little space to process what happened.”
“Space?” Her eyebrows furrow together. “You were trying to give me space? You don’t regret what happened? You don’t want it to just go back to,” she pauses and winces as her eyes fill with hurt and pain, “to how we were before last night? Before I was threatened?”
I let out a low growl, my entire body revolting at the notion of us going back. “No,” I bark, and she blinks up at me. I cup her face in my hands. “I meant every single word I said to you, and I feel more for you than I could even express. I held back because I don’t want to scare you. I don’t regret a damn thing that happened last night.” I kiss her lips softly, murmuring against them, “The only regret I have is not letting you in and telling you what I knew the moment I met you, Piper; not making you mine then.”
“You don’t regret having sex with me?” Her voice is barely there, but I hear it all the same.
“Never,” I snarl the word. “I don’t regret making love to you, Button. I never could. Never.” I look into her eyes, willing her to hear me and to understand. “You hear me? Fucking never. You’re mine. I’m yours.” I pepper her face in kisses and feel her relax into me little by little. “I should have told you back then because I knew it the moment I met you. There was never a single doubt. I knew it. I was just scared.”
She scoffs, “You, Landon Sullivan, were scared?”
I chuckle under my breath and nod, tucking her into my chest where she burrows deeper. “I was scared because there are times when it feels like my demons will drag me down to hell. I was scared because you’re too damn good for me, Piper. I don’t deserve you. I probably never will, but I also know you’re the other half of my soul and I’ll put in the work every single day for the rest of my life to work at being the man who deserves you.”
She gasps and pulls back from me so fast, my hands scramble in order to grab her and not let her fall back on her ass. Hell, the room is small enough that she’d probably hit her head. Not on my fucking watch. Hell no.
There’s chastisement in her tone, “Landon Sullivan, I better never hear you say such a thing again. I won’t tolerate such bullshit being spoken in my presence.” Despite how raw it feels having displayed all my worries, all my vulnerabilities and the whispers of my demons, I find myself smiling. “You are the most amazing man I’ve ever met. You have no idea how honored I’ve been to work here, to see the work you do and how committed you are to protecting the people who need you. It has been more rewarding than I thought it would be.”
“That’s just my job,” I insist.
Her hands come up and bury into my hair, giving a little tug. “No,” she grits out. Her eyes soften as she looks at me. “It’s who you are, Landon. You care about others. You make sure they’re safe. You’re a good man.”
“I don’t just care about others, Piper,” I whisper the words somehow even though I’m almost too in awe of her and her conviction to speak. “Helping people in need is my penance, my attempt to balance the scales for the things I’ve done and seen.”
She sighs and shakes her head, “You have nothing to atone.” I’m ready to dispute her words even though I know I can’t tell her much of anything, but she cuts me off. “I don’t need to know what you did, what you were ordered to do or what went wrong in order to know what I’m saying is true.” She looks deep into my eyes, and I swear I can feel her brushing against my soul. “We all have demons because it’s part of being human; it’s part of living. Yours pushed you into the life you’re living.”
It's hard to listen to her, to reconcile her words with everything I’ve been telling myself for years. The flashes in my mind of the atrocities I’ve seen are hard to swallow. Does it matter that they were done in the attempt to do what’s right?
