Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
They didn’t speak on the way back to Callie’s place. Seth gripped the wheel tight and imagined a million ways to start a conversation, but he couldn’t make the words come out. He was angry and he was sorry, and he wasn’t used to existing in both those states at once.
Usually, he didn’t get into emotional standoffs with anyone because he never got down in the pit with them in the first place.
He hadn’t realized he’d climbed down in it with Callie until she wouldn’t speak to him. Until, when she did, she was furiously angry, throwing his own words about chitchat back at him. He’d had to walk out of the SCIF or do something that nobody inside there but her needed to witness.
Like drag her onto his lap and kiss her until she was soft and melting. Until she forgave him.
He had a good idea that wasn’t going to work, though. Callie might have a soft side, she might enjoying gluing her scraps of paper into her journals and writing about the books she read, but she had a tough side too. She’d lost her parents and she’d taken charge of her sister, working hard to make sure Nikki could keep two horses and continue to ride and train for competitions, though it had to be a big expense. Callie did it because she wanted Nikki to have normalcy in her life, and she protected her sister fiercely. She would not be melted with a kiss.
He glanced over at her. She had her head turned, looking out the window at the sunlit fields. It was almost dusk, and the light was golden. Beautiful. He wasn’t looking at the fields though. He was looking at her and the way the light added an orange glow to her hair, her shoulder, places where it touched with the most intensity.
That light made him ache. It was the weirdest fucking thing ever, but the beauty of it almost hurt.
He reached the long driveway to her house and turned. He had his phone lying in the holder in the center console. There were no alerts about intruders. He’d stop and check before driving into the stand of trees where the house sat. Callie knew his routine, so she didn’t ask when they stopped. Then he squeezed the gas and they finished the trip.
He parked beside her Sequoia. Kane had taped plastic over the driver’s side window last night before he left. He’d gone over the interior, too. The intruders hadn’t cut the seats or done any damage beyond the window. They’d emptied compartments and felt beneath the seats. They’d probably been moving fast by the time they got to the Toyota, or it would have been worse.
Callie waited for him to give her the signal before she got out of the truck and followed him to the door. Luna trotted in front of them, always alert. She didn’t give any signals that anything was amiss, which was a good sign. She might not be a trained military dog, but she was still a dog and a stranger would ping her radar quicker than Bonnie the mail carrier could stick her nose in other people’s business.
Seth disarmed the alarm and walked into the house, Callie behind him. Then she strode past him without looking at him. Something inside him snapped. He caught her elbow and she jerked away, spinning to glare at him.
“Don’t touch me.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. He had to say something meaningful, or he’d lose her. She’d keep on walking and hole up in her room and wouldn’t speak to him.
“I’m sorry.”
She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. Her eyes snapped with fire but he could see the vulnerability in her. The hurt. “For what? Doing your job?”
“No, I’m not sorry for that. I will always do my job, Callie. I swore an oath to my country. I pledged my life in service to its ideals. I’m not sorry for doing my damnedest to protect it. But I am sorry I hurt you.”
“You dug into my life. You knew everything about me before I walked in your door and then you pretended you didn’t. I told you things and you already knew them. You must have been so bored having to ask questions when you already knew the answers.”
“I didn’t know everything about you,” he snapped. “I knew a lot, but not anything deeply personal. I didn’t know about your journals and all that stuff you’ve got, the way you sit and study a page and then decide what to paste into it. Why the fuck you use tweezers instead of your fingers. The fact you have roses and lacy shit all over your bedroom, or that you’ve got this weird thing about junk food. I didn’t know you’d competed on horses the way your sister does now, or that you’d sound so sweet and hot when you’re asking me to make you come. I didn’t know I’d crave you or that my fucking heart would feel like there’s a vise around it because you’re mad at me and refusing to look at me or talk to me about any of it.”
He ran out of steam, his pulse pounding, throat aching, breath pumping in and out of his lungs like he’d run a marathon. What the fuck was wrong with him? Why did he feel so damned helpless and powerless at the same time?
Why did he feel desperate?
This was a level of emotion he wasn’t accustomed to. No wonder he didn’t like feeling them, why he kept himself separate from most people and didn’t get involved. How the ever-loving fuck did this one small woman get so deep beneath his skin in a matter of days?
She turned her head away from him, arms still folded tight over her chest, hugging herself, but he could see her chin quivering. It made him want to sweep her in his arms and hold her, but he didn’t because he couldn’t take it if she rejected him.
“I want to believe you,” she finally said. “But I don’t. You could be saying every bit of this to make me trust you again, to make me let you in. Or maybe you just want to get your rocks off one more time.”
She swiped her fingers beneath her eyes and swore beneath her breath.
His heart was a wild thing in his chest. Running scared and desperate. “Tell me why I would do that. Why would I need to make you trust me? We told you what’s going on. You’re in now. You know more than any civilian should. And you know, no matter how pissed you are, that my goal is to protect you and let you do your work because it’s that damned important. So why would I try to make you let me in if all I cared about was the mission? Why, Callie?”
She didn’t speak, and he laughed. It was a crazy sound, though. Crazy and hurt.
“You think I care more about fucking than I do this mission? That I’d say anything to make you let me into your bed again? I don’t need to do that. I can find a woman to fuck if that’s all I want. It doesn’t have to be you.”
She whirled on him then, her face red, chin still quivering as hot tears slid down her cheeks. “Oh sure, tell me how perfect you are and how you can get any woman you want. Did you lower your standards to be with me, huh?”
Okay, now she was pissing him off.
“What the fuck, Callie? What would make you say that? What I’m telling you is being with you has never been about convenience. If anything, it’s fucking inconvenient , and this shit right here is why.” He threw his arms out in frustration, then slapped a hand to his chest. “I’m supposed to be concentrating on protecting you, but instead I’m getting emotionally involved, and that has the potential to compromise my ability to do what I’m supposed to do.”
She dashed those tears away again. Tears that were putting a hole in his heart.
“Stop, just stop. What’s the point? Even if we get past this, even if we have sex again, everything about us is temporary. And if I feel this devastated now, what would it be like when you’re ready to move on? I don’t want to know. I just don’t. So we need to be done. Now.”
“I don’t want to be done.”
“But I do.”
They stared at each other until she looked away first. She didn’t want to be with him. Didn’t want more of that bliss they’d had together earlier. Didn’t want to sleep tangled up with him. Didn’t want pancakes in the morning and sex in the shower. They hadn’t even begun, and she was done.
Because they’d reached a bump in the road. A single bump and she wasn’t willing to keep going.
Why? Why?
He was the one who was supposed to not give a shit, who didn’t like small talk and useless conversation, who didn’t get emotionally involved with anyone. But he was the one whose heart was galloping because he realized he couldn’t convince her. Nothing he said was going to work to thaw her ice.
“Who hurt you, Callie? Because it had to be pretty fucking bad to make you give up so easily. Didn’t think you were that kind of person. I had you down as a fierce combatant for the things that mattered.” He snorted. “Then again, guess I don’t matter. Hear you loud and clear, babe. Do what you need to do, and I’ll make sure we’re safe out here.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He headed for the back door, Luna trotting with him.
He needed air.
And he needed to figure out how to make this ache in his chest go away.