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He was smiling, like Charlie and Ian were, working to keep the atmosphere light, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Well, not their depths. She’d seen his genuine smiles and knew that what she saw now was a shadow. Rhianne’s heart did that hard twist again, this time for Eric and his suffering. She couldn’t let it go on, let his pain continue.
“Robyn,” she murmured to her sister, “will you be okay if I go over there for a few minutes? I’ll be right back. I just need to talk to the man who saved you.”
Robyn lifted her head from Rhianne’s shoulder. “Go where?” She looked where Rhianne was pointing. “Just back there? Nowhere else?”
“Yeah.” Robyn was sitting so close to her they could have been joined at the hip. Rhianne understood. Of course she did. She wondered how long it would take her sister to feel okay, to not be terrified that someone else was going to take her. Robyn—all the girls—would need trauma counseling. Well, Rhianne would do whatever it took to make sure it was available.
“We’ll be in each other’s sight the whole time,” Rhianne promised.
When her sister nodded, Rhianne stood and took a couple of steps along the bus, then slid into the empty space beside Eric. He sucked in a quick breath and the haunted look in his eyes worsened. He didn’t speak, just acknowledged her presence with a brief nod before facing front again.
“Eric?” Rhianne said, to get him facing her.
He did, but still said nothing, and that wary tension enveloping him thickened.
Rhianne’s brows drew together in puzzlement. What was wrong? Why was he looking at her like that, like he was waiting for her to say something? But say what?
Anything. Something.Rhianne put the pieces together in a flash. Before he spoke, Eric needed to know her reaction…to what he’d had to do. She remembered what he’d said before, about how people reacted when they knew he was a sniper. What kind of reaction was he expecting out of her now that she’d seen him in action? Her heart twisted further.
Would she have walked away if his aim had been off, and he’d hurt Robyn? Would she have turned away and called him a monster with a gun? Rhianne sat back in her seat and examined her heart. No. She wouldn’t have, because if she had, it would have been the worst mistake of her life. Eric was resolute and fierce in the face of danger, and a protector down to the last drop of blood and the last breath in his body. He protected people to the end, no matter what it took, what the cost. He’d acted to save Robyn, using the best solution available to him in that moment. Even if it hadn’t worked out, she still would have honored the courage and determination that drove him to act.
Rhianne spared a second to think back to Jeff, or Cole before him, and even Liam, from basic training. The lack of comparison had her curling a lip. There was none. She might have been let down in the past, but when it came down to a man’s fundamental character, to his very soul, she could never be disappointed by a man like Eric.
A huff of a laugh escaped her. There weren’t many men like Eric, and she’d only realized that here, now, after everything they’d been through? Life was so weird. Soinfuriating. But better late than never.
But what if itwastoo late? What if he couldn’t forgive her for the way they’d fought, the way she’d ended things between them? The thought of his rejection made her stomach sink. But the only way to find out whether or not he’d take her back was to stop being a coward.
“Eric,” she began, conscious of the silence that had stretched out between them while she was soul searching. “I can never thank you enough for what you did for my sister. You kept her safe in a moment where no one else could.”
“I…didn’t think I understood the real concept of family.”
His reply seemed to come out of left field until she realized he’d been doing some soul-searching as well.
“Why not?” Rhianne asked.
“I don’t have one. Well, a birth family,” Eric amended. “What I mean is, I never knew my father and I can barely remember my mother. She gave me up when I was a little kid.”
“Oh, Eric.” Rhianne’s heart had twisted for him, and now it cracked.
“There’s more.” The sadness in his eyes haunted Rhianne. “In the last family I was placed with, I found Caleb. A foster brother, but we became brothers in every way that mattered. And I promised him that I’d make us a home when we aged out of the foster system. That I’d keep him safe—he was always in trouble. But I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t rescue him. Then he was gone.”
Rhianne clutched Eric’s hand. What a horrible start to adult life. No wonder Eric didn’t get too close to people when he’d given so much of himself for no return.
“I have difficulty trusting that people are who they say they are,” she confessed. “It means I always have one foot outside the door, ready to take off.”
“Rhianne, I—”
“You are one-hundred percent honest and open, and you need a partner who accepts you for who and what you are,” she finished, not allowing him to interrupt. She had to get all of this out. “A partner who will stick by you.”
She went silent, trying to understand the expressions flickering in his eyes. She readhopeandwonderandloveand knew he was seeing the same in hers too, because she was feeling each and every one of them.
Her hand unsteady, she brushed a lock of his unruly hair from his face. Eric’s hand shook as he caressed her too, tucking a long strand of her hair behind her ear, bringing his face close to hers.
“We make a good team,” he whispered against her lips. “Rescuing people and all.”
“We make a good teamperiod,” she answered.
For an eternity of a moment neither moved, or even breathed, but then their arms were around each other, pulling the other close, and their lips met in the deepest, longest kiss of Rhianne’s life. It was the most perfect press of lips and tangle of tongues she could ever have imagined.
