Chapter 30
THIRTY
She couldn’t breathe. Somehow the air must have been getting in, though, because Holly didn’t pass out. He kissed her like he was drowning, as if he wanted to crawl inside her, and the confusion added to everything else inside her skull, turning it into a whirlpool.
It had been so long since she’d done this—well, at least she hadn’t forgotten how.
Reese was heavy, way heavier than he looked, but braced on knees and elbows he didn’t crush her.
A weird, undeniable feeling of safety swamped her, utterly crazy, but her body wouldn’t listen.
Heat spreading through every limb, concentrating way down low in her belly, but it was Reese who tore himself away, sliding to her left, landing on the bed and going completely still.
He kept hold of her right wrist, though, his fingers gentle but undeniable.
That slight contact sent buzzing electricity down her arm. Holly gasped. The ceiling sparkled in places, acoustic tile full of sprayed-on glitter.
Slowly, her breathing evened out. The tears kept trickling down her temples, hot and shameful.
“I’m sorry,” Reese whispered. Hoarse, rough, as if he’d just finished running a marathon.
Maybe he had.
Her mouth felt full. Ripe. It had been forever since she’d kissed anyone. Why did it have to happen now?
“Why...” She couldn’t even find a reasonable question to ask. “Why do you...”
“Do you really not know?” A bitterness scraping in his tone, and it took all Holly’s courage to turn her head against the pillow.
He stared at the ceiling, too, a high flush along his stubbled cheeks, and he looked...
Well, tired. That was some of it. But underneath the exhaustion and the usual set expression, there was something else.
He looked sad.
Oh, dammit, Holly, you already have a bad track record and no time for this, don’t do it. She’d survived Phillip, but only just, right? And only delayed the inevitable. The desire to leave this room had all but evaporated.
She had thought it over, all in one taffy-stretching second as she bent over the bed. Down to the front desk, ask politely for the shuttle to a bus station or if all else failed start walking, somehow beg enough change for a ticket, go home to her shattered apartment and sleep for a week.
As a plan it absolutely sucked, but it had seemed reasonable at the moment.
“This is messed up.” Reese swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, a strangely vulnerable little movement above the shirt collar.
“I thought, you know, maybe I could get you into a nice apartment. Money isn’t an issue, but keeping you secret would be.
Coming to see you whenever it was safe. Even if. .. even if nothing happened.”
That is really bizarre. “So, sort of like a kept woman?”
“No. Maybe, I don’t know. So you didn’t have to worry. You worried too much, I could see it. And you were too good for that diner. I wanted to—look, I was institutionalized growing up, okay? I never had a girlfriend. Never.”
“Institutionalized?” Girlfriend? Is that what he wants? I thought I was just baggage.
“Slow. Developmentally delayed.” A pause. “A moron, that’s what the kids might call it these days. That’s the nicest thing they call you when you just stand there and smile.”
“Reese—” So much more about him made sense now.
“I hit eighteen and the streets, sleeping in a state home or shelter when I could. I got lucky—an Army recruiter wanted to get his quota, so he did me a favor. I was smart enough to figure out they’d feed me there, and the rules made it easy.
I even liked basic training, being useful.
Being worth something. Then... the accident.
They made me into, you know, what I am.”
“Bionic.” The sheer unreality of the situation could have been laughable, if she’d felt any amusement at all. The image of Reese as a young man, struggling to deal with all this, was pretty heartbreaking, when you thought about it.
You and your strays, Phillip always said. I won’t keep buying cat food when we’re starving, Holl.
Had he ever wondered where she went after he told her he wanted a divorce? Had he come back to the rented duplex and looked for her? She’d been moving so steadily from one thing to the next, she’d never even thought about it before.
Reese swallowed hard, again. “You keep saying that. I’m all flesh, Holly.”
I’ll just bet you are. Everything considered, they were having a very calm conversation.
She just had to ignore the soaked crotch of her panties—good God, it had been a long time, but still, she didn’t have enough clean laundry to have this sort of response to a man.
Could he hear the way her heart was triphammering?
Could he smell arousal, too? God.
Holly gathered what was left of her brainpower and her courage, so to speak, and plunged ahead. “You’re not developmentally delayed now.”
“Nope, they fixed that. I’m tired, though, haven’t been sleeping. The little bastards help, but...”
Wait, what? “Little bastards?”
Reese rolled his head to the side, looked at her.
“I’m sorry because I’m not sorry, goddammit.
I’m glad you’re with me. I’m a selfish bastard, I have you, and you can’t even run away from me because you’ll end up dead.
I’m not above using that to keep you with me, and after a while you’ll get used to it.
I can’t even be sorry about that. It’s all I wanted from the first time I walked into that diner, now I have it, and I’m not giving it up. ”
“Well.” Holly searched for something reasonable to say. Nothing in her entire life’s sweep of experience had even remotely prepared her for something like this. “That’s, uh. Not very romantic.” And I’m not going to be around very long, so it doesn’t matter.
Of course, if it didn’t matter, maybe she could... what? Just go with the flow? One last hurrah before the curtain call?
What would he do when the inevitable happened?
At least one person would miss her, and though it was awful to think of him feeling the same sharp grief she’d suffered when Dad died, it was still almost comforting.
She’d worked so hard to pull away so that nobody would miss her at all, nobody would feel that kind of pain on her account.
Because it was unutterably greedy to want someone to miss you, wasn’t it?
Compared to that, his own admission of selfishness didn’t seem so bad.
Reese blinked, and the open surprise crossing his expression would have been hilarious too, if she’d felt like laughing.
“I’ll do romantic if you want, Holly. Candlelight, roses, everything.
All you have to do is tell me, you know, but you have to work with me, I’ve never done it before.
And they’re not going to give up on looking for us. I’ve got a bad feeling.”
When you say that, I’ll bet it means something really bad indeed. “That’s why you came back to my apartment?”
“Why did you think?” He sounded honestly curious.
“I thought maybe you felt, I don’t know. Sorry for me.”
“I messed up your entire life, so it was just the least I could do, is that it? Maybe a normal person would feel that way. I can’t tell.” His mouth compressed, and when Reese spoke again it was very softly. “I’m not normal. But I wasn’t about to leave you there.”
“Why?” I need to know, even if it doesn’t matter.
“You seriously can’t figure out why?”
“Maybe it would go a little easier if you just said it.” Oh, my God, am I really having this conversation with a bionic spy?
“What else do you want me to say?” Now there was a hint of anger, well concealed, a single flash in those dark, dark eyes.
“I’m not normal, not a real person. The only time I feel real at all is when I’m looking at you, when I’m around you, okay?
You’re everything I thought I was protecting when I went out to do my duty for my goddamn country, and now I’m barely keeping us both alive.
I’m not a hero, goddammit, I’m not even human.
I’m a fake, I’m selfish, I’m an agent, I’m unreasonable and hair-trigger and goddamn dangerous, and I’m also going to take care of you.
So do me a favor and stop with the rabbit-talk and the not trusting me.
” He let go of her wrist and levered himself off the bed in one clean, economical motion.
How fast could he move? One second he’d been by the window, the next in front of her with his back to the door. It was eerie. It was downright terrifying.
Still...
I’m not a real person. Was that what he thought? The same man who’d come back to get her, the same man who’d held her during a panic attack and told her it was going to be all right, the same man who had tipped so well probably because he didn’t know what else to do?
He was inside a shell just like hers, except somehow she was in there with him.
Holly pushed herself up on her elbows, cautiously. Her entire body tingled, which was a nice change. “Reese?”
“What?” He was over at the window again, not peering out at whatever it showed. He just stood there with his head down, and for a guy who had just had a serious chubby pressed against her just a few minutes ago, he looked a little... lost.
Struggling for patience, maybe.
“You’re real to me.” It sounded unhelpful now that it was out of her mouth. “I mean, really real.” Like that’s better. Goddammit, Holly Rachel, can’t you say something useful for once?
His shoulders dropped, too. The silence between them, no longer dangerous, was still full of something... uncomfortable.
“I hope so,” he said quietly. “Brush your teeth and get some sleep.”
That sounded like a good idea, even if she felt too keyed-up to really rest. “Are you going to sleep too?”
“Maybe.”
“You can... I mean, there’s the bed, here. We could share.” Oh, Lord. Well, I’ve been divorced for two and a half years. This probably isn’t a rebound. The weird, irrational desire to laugh like a lunatic swamped her again; she pushed it down.
“If you want.” Offhand, as if it didn’t matter.
I do actually need sleep if I’m going to sort this out. If it’s possible. “I, ah, think it would be good. For you. Okay?”
“Okay, Holly. Whatever you want.”
Oh, Jesus. She grabbed for her backpack, got herself upright, and padded toward the bathroom. Halfway there, she looked back over her shoulder.
He just stood there. Waiting, maybe. For what?
Whatever you want.
Was it really that simple?
Why couldn’t I have met you before I got sick?
That might not have made anything any better, though. Because of Phillip, because of everything. Holly shook her head, wiped at her wet cheeks, and escaped into the bathroom before anything else happened.