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Heat fires across the back of my neck and disgust coils like a deadly snake in my gut.
She thinks I don’t care.
“I pushed you away to keep you safe. I pushed you away because I love—”
“You don’t!” she screams, dropping her hands to her side and balling them into fists as her entire body shakes. “You don’t. So don’t even say it. Don’t you dare say it, Dax Silver!”
Her chest heaves with giant breaths as she fights to stay in control.
And I want to tell her to breathe.
I want to place my thumb over her pulse on her neck or on her wrist. I want to press my lips to her forehead and hold her close to me. Tell her to breathe. Ask her what she can hear. Taste. Smell.
I want to do all those things.
But I can’t.
Instead, I have to watch the girl who means everything to me fight alone to cope with the pain I’ve caused her.
And I’ve never hated myself so fucking much.
“If you felt anything for me, then you wouldn’t have left me for three months with nothing but balloons and photographs and words. Empty fucking words! I needed you. I neededyou.”
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, my chest burning so damn much I could spontaneously combust. Be reduced to ash at her feet, like our burned notes in the last fire we sat beside together.
Forgiveness and blame.
I’m the one to blame for this. For why we’re standing here; a giant ravine between us. And forgiveness is a word I’ve prayed for every second since she left. I’ve prayed that when the day came and I could come for her, that there’d be a chance, no matter how minute, that she might forgive me.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, willing the light to come back to her eyes as she stares at me.
But it doesn’t.
“Why?” she whispers. “I get you don’t trust the police, so you kept copies of evidence against Julian. But the passport for me? Why didn’t you just tell me he was watching me?”
“I couldn’t.” Regret’s thick in my words as Rose snorts and looks away.“I couldn’t.”I reach for her and gently place two fingers beneath her chin and turn her face back to mine. She shakes my hand away, but lets her eyes meet mine.
“I wasn’t working alone, Rose. I was working for them. For the police. It’s how I got out of jail early. They wanted me to be an informant for them. Maybe they suspected I would be going after him myself anyway. I don’t know. But they said if I agreed to six months of working on their operation to bring Julian down, then I could go free earlier. I should have been done before you even came to England. It should have been all over. You wouldn’t have been in danger. Julian would have been locked up. But six months became seven, and then eight, and then nine.” I blow out a long breath, the weight of the secret falling off my shoulders a relief like no other.
She knows everything now.
“I was working for the police. Even though I didn’t fucking trust them.” My laugh is empty as I glance at the sky, then back at her. She’s still watching me, her eyes fixed on my face. But I can’t get a read on what she’s thinking. “I didn’t trust them one fucking bit. It’s why I kept my own evidence and brought it to New York, somewhere they’d never find it. I wasn’t going back to jail if they screwed it up or double-crossed me.”
“James? The police officer who shot Julian’s men?”
“Marcus. I didn’t know he was undercover. I thought he was just some guy who’d chosen wrong and got pulled into it all. But that night when Julian… when he…” My eyes drop down Rose’s body as the image of her being held facedown over the hood of the car flashes in my mind. “That night… I was supposed to have backup. They were watching, ready to arrest him once he opened one of the containers. But it wasn’t there in time. If James hadn’t been there, then…” Acid burns a hole in my chest.
“Then it could have been really different,” Rose whispers.
“Yes.” I search her eyes, my heart lifting as her pupils widen a little before she drops her gaze to the floor. “It could have been so different.”
“Why? Why weren’t they there watching when they should have been? Why did they leave you alone?”
“There was a rat. Someone on the inside, working for Julian. I didn’t know. But whoever he was, he delayed the backup. James realized while working undercover. He told me that night as they took me away. I couldn’t rely on them to protect you until he was found. The less you knew, the safer you were.”
“It’s why you stopped fighting to get to me?”
“I haveneverstopped fighting to get back to you. Never. And I will never stop.”
