Chapter 30
She was exhausted.
Erin could no longer deny it. She was so tired she should be asleep on her feet, and yet she knew if she went to bed she would lie awake half the night as she had the entire ten days Ethan had been gone.
Actually, it would probably be worse tonight. Because all she could think about was what Walker had told them the clerk had said.
…he looked scared.
Her little boy—she caught herself, he wasn’t so little anymore—was out there somewhere, caught up in something he hadn’t intended, or at the least had changed his mind about. Oddly, that gave her hope, but that hope was swamped by the rest of the situation.
…if he could have… Ethan would have asked for help.
She tried to focus on the progress they’d made, more since Blaine and his friends had begun to help out than she’d made the entire time since Ethan had taken off.
They were getting closer, and thanks to Foxworth, they knew so much more.
But that only made her feel again as if she ought to be out there, pushing harder, searching.
They had the cameras here now, she could do it.
It would be better than this. But then almost anything would.
She rolled over and sat up on the edge of her bed. She rubbed at her burning eyes, wondering if she had any moisturizing drops left. She got up to go into the bathroom to see, but stopped short of the doorway when she heard something from the front of the house.
Something that had sounded a lot like the front door opening and closing.
Ethan?
Her heart leaped with hope. Had that robbery been the last straw, had he broken free and come home?
She pulled open the bedroom door and started quickly down the hall. But the moment she saw the figure in the darkened living room she knew it wasn’t Ethan. No, this was a man, tall, broad-shouldered, strong. A man who moved in a way she knew all too well.
Blaine.
But he had clearly just come in—using the spare key she had given him, because it was the only practical thing to do—from outside, because he was pulling off his heavy canvas jacket.
But what had he been doing? Rafe and Cutter were back at the Foxworth headquarters, she suspected intentionally leaving them alone together.
She wasn’t sure why she thought that, except that Rafe had said, when he’d told her he would be staying there, “He’s a good man, Erin.
Even if you don’t love him anymore, let him be a bigger part of your son’s life. ”
He was wrong about one thing, but she wasn’t ready to admit that yet.
And on him being a larger part of Ethan’s life, well, she’d already decided that.
Maybe if she’d done that earlier on, Ethan might not have taken off at all.
She grimaced, tired of feeling this way, of self-critiquing her every thought and action.
But it was hard not to, when this had been the result.
She flipped on the living room light. Blaine spun around, startled.
“Sorry. I tried to be quiet and not wake you.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t asleep.” She let out a sour laugh. “Not sure when I did sleep last, truly.”
He just looked at her then, wearing that worried expression she had once known meant he cared, so much. Now she wasn’t sure what it meant.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Out walking around. Just in case.”
Just as she had lain there wanting to do, only he’d already done it.
How very like him. Even if it seemed futile, Blaine just never quit if it was something that had to be done.
She could only remember once he’d lost his temper with her, after she told him that she was leaving because she could not ever go through anything like this again.
A sudden image flashed through her mind, of the moment when her words “I’m leaving,” had hung in the air between them.
He had stared at her as if she’d spoken them in ancient Latin, as if he had no idea what she could possibly mean.
But when he’d finally understood, what she’d said and that she meant it, he’d had a few choice words to say.
And every one of them had been true.
“I kept thinking,” he said now, “about what Walker said about that clerk’s impression, that Ethan was scared and wanted help.”
She quashed the painful memories of the destruction of a beautiful life. “So did I. It’s why I couldn’t sleep.”
He crossed the room to her, put his hands—those strong, powerful hands that could make such delicate adjustments while flying that his bosses called him one of the best they’d ever seen—on her shoulders.
She looked up at him, at a loss for words.
Maybe because it used to be when he touched her, words were the last thing she wanted, except to maybe say “Hurry up.”
“He’s going to be all right, Erin. We’re getting closer, we’ll find him and get him free of whatever he’s gotten himself into.”
She drew in a deep breath to steady herself. Rafe’s suggestion once more went through her mind. And then, still looking at him, she nodded.
“And when we do find him, when he’s safe again, things have to change. You have to be in his life more, Blaine. I’m sorry I’ve made it more difficult than it should be. But I was…afraid.”
He drew back slightly, but didn’t let go. “Afraid? Of me?” He looked beyond upset, almost horrified.
“Not you. Never you. I was afraid of…me.”
“You?” he said, brow furrowed.
She took another deep breath. And said what had to be said. What he deserved to know.
“I know I’m the one who left, the one who destroyed us.
The one who thought Ethan and I would be better off if we weren’t always worried about it happening again.
Weren’t always worrying that the next time, you might not survive.
” She let out a harsh, short laugh. “Ethan’s answer to that explanation was that I might be a coward, but he wasn’t.
That he wanted to live with you, wherever that was, and no matter how often he had to pack up and move. He obviously inherited your courage.”
He gave her a look then that she couldn’t quite interpret. Not happy, not now under these circumstances, but…pleased?
“Erin, I understand how bad it was, what you went through.”
And there he was, that kind, understanding Blaine, the gentle part that lived behind the tough, self-confident warrior. The Blaine who had ever been able to put her back together when she fell apart. Except for the time when she made sure she was too far away for him to even start.
She shivered slightly and lowered her gaze. “But there was one huge flaw in my grand plan.”
His hands slid down her arms and he clasped her hands. “What?” he asked.
She stared down at those strong hands wrapped around hers, those tough, protective hands. She drew strength from them, from his touch, as she always had. And it was that strength that helped her look up once more, and lock onto those beautiful blue eyes.
“The huge flaw was… I couldn’t… I never stopped loving you.”
“Erin,” he said, and it was a low, harsh, almost broken whisper.
And then he was kissing her, not the light, tender kiss of before but deep, fierce and absolutely luscious.
She leaned into him, helpless to do anything else.
This man, and only this man, had ever stirred her like this.
The feel of him, the heat of him, the taste of him, fired nerve endings that had been dormant for so long she’d almost forgotten they existed.
It was like rereading a well-loved book that she hadn’t looked at in years. All the things she’d adored were there, but it had been so long it all felt new.
But when, half-dressed and just outside her bedroom door, he stopped and threaded his fingers through her hair to tilt her head back to look at him, and asked in that deliciously rough tone she knew so well but had tried fruitlessly to forget, if she was sure, she knew this was still Blaine.
Her Blaine, and if she said no he would stop. Because that was who he was.
“I’m sure I don’t want to go another minute without you.”
“But how are you going to feel…after?”
“I’ll deal with that then. But I swear, I won’t take it out on you.”
The only time she felt any hesitation was when, after freeing her of the last of her clothes and putting her gently on the bed, he shed the rest of his and she saw the scars.
Not because they repelled her, but because they reminded her.
Not just of the horror of what had happened, but of how pitifully incapable she’d been of handling it.
Look at them as proof he’s a survivor.
The words of one of the Navy doctors who had noticed her state of mind came back to her now. She’d shoved them aside then, but now…
The moment he was on the bed beside her, hot, powerful and fully aroused, she forgot everything about those horrible days, and knew only how much she had missed this, the perfection of them together.
From their first time she’d been stunned, but Blaine hadn’t.
He’d merely smiled and said he’d always known it would be perfect.
And it was perfect now as the door on that knowledge she’d kept locked away burst open, and everything she’d learned about his body, about what he liked, and where he liked to be touched, stroked, licked and kissed, came flooding out.
At the same time he made it clear he hadn’t forgotten a thing about her, either, and it was a reunion she’d never expected to have.
And more explosively spectacular than she could have hoped.
The moment he started to slide into her, she arched involuntarily, wanting that feeling of utter completion she knew would happen when he was inside her. And it did, and the groan of pleasure he let out when he was fully there told her it hadn’t changed for him, either.
She shuddered at the sensation and whispered, “Only you. Only you do this to me.”
“Because—” he began to move, to stroke “—we were—” he drove hard and deep “—made for each other.”
She could not deny it, didn’t even try.
And when she felt her body hit the peak, tightening around him until he let out her name on a gasp, she remembered how she’d always thought in this moment she understood him, because this was as close as she could get to flying.