Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
“There has to be more to the world than just monsters. I want that more. I’ll fucking have more. I’ll have Emerson.”
– Gray Stone
She wasn’t a ticking time bomb.
Or…maybe she was.
Her father’s schizophrenia had been faked. He’d been tricked. Manipulated. Murdered. And all in the name of love.
Love wasn’t supposed to make you into a monster. It wasn’t supposed to twist you and make you kill people. It was supposed to make you a better person. Supposed to enrich you.
Except…
Love could be dark. Or maybe for some people, love brought out the darkness already in them.
Emerson knew darkness lived in her. So maybe there was a ticking time bomb inside of her, after all. Tick, tick, ticking, and one day, it would explode. One day, she might explode. One day?—
“Darling, if you think any harder, I will literally hear your thoughts.”
Her head swung to the right.
Gray had entered his office. She’d been waiting for him. After avoiding him for thirty-six hours straight, she’d forced herself to head to the FBI building. To stride right inside and march to his inner sanctum.
Only the office had been empty. Sort of anticlimactic. So she’d sat in the chair across from his desk. Waited.
And she’d been so deep in her thoughts that Emerson hadn’t heard him glide into the room.
He offered her a half-smile. “Decided to stop running, did you?”
“I wasn’t running, I—” Emerson heaved out a breath. “Avoiding. I was avoiding, not running.”
He strolled around her and leaned his hip against the desk. His arms crossed over his chest as he stared down at her.
“I knew you had a lot of work to do, what with closing all the cases.” Cases that had all centered around her. The mess of her life.
“Your mother held a press conference yesterday.”
Emerson nodded. “Yes, I saw it. She’s apologetic. She’s the victim. She never saw the monster beneath Owen’s mask.”
“You don’t sound like you believe any of that.”
Her hands gripped the armrests of her chair. “My mother never believed me. No matter how many times I told her what was happening.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Her chin lifted. “You believed me. From the very first moment. You never doubted anything I told you.”
“Of course, I didn’t.”
She shot out of the chair. Reached out for him. Stopped herself at the last minute. “Why not?”
“Because you’re my partner.”
“A partner you didn’t want.”
“Oh, Emerson, you know there is no one I want more in the entire world than you.”
His words made her ache. “I brought so much danger to you.”
“I don’t mind danger. It keeps life interesting.”
It did not. “Why didn’t you ever doubt anything I said to you?”
He smiled at her. A soft smile. Not his megawatt, manipulative smile. “Want to hear a secret, Emerson?”
“I don’t know.” Blunt. Truthful. “I’ve heard a lot of secrets recently, and they have not been very good.”
His right hand extended. Skimmed over her cheek. “This one is good. It’s one of my secrets. I have a lot of secrets, you see. And I’ve decided, well, you’re my partner, so you get to know all of them.”
She exhaled. “How many secrets do you have?” A lot wasn’t a specific number.
“Oh, tons.” Breezy. “Like…did you know I was a member of the Night Strikers MC?”
“ What?”
“Yep, that’s why I didn’t sweat the scene outside of O’Sullivan’s.
I knew that the Strikers were all around me.
Not just the ones who came roaring up on the bikes, either.
Others were hiding in the shadows of O’Sullivan’s the whole time.
Some were on the rooftops of nearby buildings. Cass had my six.”
“How is an FBI agent also a former member of one of the most notorious motorcycle clubs out there?”
He winked. “Did I say that I ‘was’ a member? My bad. Probably should have said that I am a member.”
Emerson felt her eyes widen.
“But that’s really not the secret I wanted to share with you. The secret I wanted you to know, the reason I believed you from the beginning, it’s because I loved you from the beginning.”
She could feel every hard beat of her heart.
“I didn’t want you as a partner at first because I knew I would cross lines with you. It was inevitable. I looked at you, I talked to you, and I fell for you. I knew I would always want for you to be far, far more than just an associate working cases with me. I would want you to be my whole world.”
She swayed toward him. Caught herself. “What if…if I’d been wrong? About it all? What if I’d been…” Her words trailed away.
“Emerson.” A shake of his head. “I could see the truth about you every single time I looked into your eyes. You weren’t weak.
You were battle scarred and soul strong.
That’s why I loved you. But I knew I couldn’t rush you.
You had to tell me your secrets in your own time and in your own way.
” A pause. “Just like I had to tell you mine.”
“It’s been thirty-six hours,” she whispered. Yes, she’d counted every single hour that she’d been away from him. “You didn’t…you didn’t come rushing after me.”
“No.” A shake of his head. “Because I will never try to control you. Because I know when you need your time. Your space. I want you to choose me, Emerson. A partner not just here at the Bureau, but in life. All your days—I want you to choose to be with me.”
“There is no one else I could ever want this much.” Truth. “I love you, Gray. I want to be with you forever. You understand me like no one else ever could.” He’d given her justice for her father. Stood by her. Protected her.
Loved her.
She loved him so much that it scared her.
“What do you say, sweetheart? Want to keep hunting monsters with me?”
Emerson nodded.
“Want to keep profiling, bringing those dark deeds into the light?”
Another nod.
“Want to stay with me always, marry me, maybe have us a daughter with your gorgeous eyes?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t stay away any longer. Emerson leapt at Gray. He caught her, wrapping his arms around her, and hauling her close. And it was there, in his arms, with his warmth around her, that Emerson finally realized the truth…
I am safe.
No ticking time bomb. No deadly whispers in her mind.
Gray was safety. Gray was her anchor. Gray was the man who’d fight the world for her.
He was everything she needed. There was no one she could want more.
He was her perfect partner.
Because she’d fight the world for him, too. She’d keep his secrets. She’d watch his back. She’d be a pain in the ass when he tried to get too arrogant with her, but…
She’d love him until she died. Love him and be happy with him, and Hannah McIntyre and all the other killers out there could just go screw off.
Because sometimes, love was real. Sometimes, people did get happy endings. Endings that you bled for, that you fought for, and that you won.
A love that you treasured more than anything else. A love that?—
“We are not honeymooning at Sea Island,” Gray told her, his lips right above her own.
She laughed. For the first time in thirty-six hours, the heavy weight that Emerson had carried lifted.
She could breathe again. She could be free of the past. She could focus on her present.
Her future. The life that waited. And they would definitely not, one hundred percent not be honeymooning with the stampeding horses.
“Let’s go somewhere cold,” she decided. “Let’s get a tiny cabin in the woods, be naked in front of a fireplace for days, and let’s lock out the rest of the world. ”
“Done.”
She laughed again.
I love this man so much.
The perfect partner.
Her partner. Always.