Chapter 20
TWENTY
Austin
ELLE WAS IN MY HOUSE, wearing my clothes and drinking my goddamn whiskey.
I lay stunned, frozen in the realization that she was so close to me—just down the hallway.
My gaze remained plastered to the ceiling.
The clock on my nightstand approached two a.m., reminding me that only a few hours separated me from seeing her again.
No amount of exhaustion, physical or mental, could put me to sleep.
Thick adrenaline coursed through my body.
I was a calm, collected man. Usually so poised that I prided myself on it. Losing control was not a functioning part of my wheelhouse.
But Elle was a different breed. She did things to me I would never understand. Everything about her sucked my usual tranquility back into the endless undertow.
My shirt, my boxers, nothing else. The oversize clothes she had borrowed from my wardrobe could never hide her perfect body from me.
I tried my damnedest not to stare, but the outfit’s simplicity only added to her overflowing innocence, taunting me from across the kitchen.
Barefaced and braless, she strolled in like she belonged there.
For a moment, a trail of broken glass was the only thing that separated us.
Thank fuck for that glass because a visible, sharp line was precisely the reminder I needed to take things slowly. Cautiously.
For so long, I’d hungered for the sight of her standing before me, like a shark starved of blood. The moment it had arrived, it’d shredded me into nothing but a broken bucket of chum.
How did we get here? A mix of gratitude and hesitation drenched my thoughts.
Half of our story was written by the coincidence that had brought Jesse into my division when he reported for boot camp. His bad decisions and my memory of her forged the other half.
I’d found their letters when I cleaned out Jesse’s bunk after catching him sneaking around with—no, fucking—Rita Camellino, a female recruit from another division. Elle’s name and address were waiting for me on the top left of each envelope. The key to her I’d been searching for.
My curiosity convinced me to read them to see how she was doing.
Instead of alerting her about Jesse’s delay, fate bribed me to write back to her in his name. Although it hadn’t taken much convincing.
I knew she would find out about her ex-boyfriend’s indiscretions, regardless of when or how. But reading her letters, witnessing her desperation for reassurance, and seeing her gorgeous face in the pictures she had sent told me not to let her slip through my fingers again.
For two years, her face had taunted me. I no longer had to sit back and let it. I was a reasonable man, but sometimes, reasons weren’t meant to be understood. There was a reason I never forgot her face.
What better reason could there be than us?
Her future mattered to me as much as my own; her happiness mattered to me more than my own. Helping her get over Jesse, whether we had a second chance or not, was the least I could do.
Jesse’s words had been riddled with lies, false hope, and bullshit. But once they had started coming from me, they were nothing but truths.
My truths were meant to provide her comfort and support until I could tell her face-to-face.
My truths were the ones that could end up pulling her deeper into the darkness if I wasn’t careful.
My truths were the ones I vowed to ensure she understood before she went home.