Chapter Fourteen #2
Maybe they had their problems. She wouldn’t pretend that understanding how much there was to lose solved them.
But it put things into perspective. They could work on relationship stuff. They had time now—well, if they survived whatever this was. Together. Together.
She wanted to be together. She loved him. And a life like she’d been living the past two years was dull. A life with him at the edges was empty, even if she filled it in other ways. It was never enough. It was never this.
He had always been her other half. And she never would have given up on him. Maybe it was wishful thinking to believe he felt the same, but he was still here. After two years of her not remembering, he’d never left. Never pushed. Never hurt.
But he touched her now, and she touched him. They moved to the bedroom, dreamy and soft, like they were both too scared to move faster, feel the desperation ratcheting up.
She’d never be able to imagine what it was like for him. To be so close and at arm’s length, but she could feel an echo of that pain when they came together, when they shuddered in each other’s arms.
He whispered her name like it was a prayer, and she felt like she’d finally come home after so long away.
They lay there, wrapped up in each other, neither speaking. But after a while, she could feel him begin to tense. And she knew him, didn’t she?
“Don’t feel guilty.”
He toyed with the ends of her hair. “Easier said than done,” he muttered.
She turned in his arms, leveraged up on her elbow so she could study his face. “Maybe, but we lost too much time to play victims now. We’re going to make the best of what we have. Because we didn’t before. And now we know better.”
His hazel eyes met hers. Studied her very seriously. “I love you. I think that was the hardest part. Not saying it. All this time.”
Her eyes filled again, but she didn’t want to keep crying all over him, so she blinked them back as best she could. “Maybe it was lost these past two years, but I know. When I remembered, I never thought you didn’t.” But he had thought she didn’t. Or at least, that she’d been done.
Maybe, if she was honest with herself, she could admit that even though she never would have given up on their marriage, she had definitely been at a low point where she hadn’t known how to reach him.
It had felt dire when he’d walked out of that house to take his last assignment. It had felt like an end. Even if she wasn’t going to accept it as one. And he needed to know that part.
“I was never giving up on us, Ellis. I love you. Even if it was lost under my brain injury these past two years, it doesn’t erase it.”
She wasn’t sure he believed her, but she’d work to make sure he got there. She traced his hairline, reveling in touching him again. In being together again. In everything she could remember, feel, believe. It was big and unwieldy, really, all this hope for something they’d lost.
But they had to make it through this threat first—a threat that had worked to keep them apart for the past two years.
“So, we’ll work together to figure out who wants to hurt us knowing that neither of us is going anywhere, even when we’re both safe. I’m promising you that.”
“Kirsten, you might feel differently. You might—”
“We made vows,” she interrupted firmly. “I made a vow to you. Whatever we have to work through, we will. Beginning and end of story.”
His mouth curved ever so slightly, and he pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I never want you to feel beholden to me.”
Her heart ached. Didn’t he understand why he was always so worried about beholden? He’d never felt love from his stepfather, only that duty. Always so cautious, so afraid to believe someone else could feel what he did.
And she’d never said that to him, because she was always afraid he’d get mad or withdrawn or silent.
“I’m not Jason, Ellis. You don’t have to be afraid of me treating you like nothing more than a duty to suffer through.”
He got stiff and tense—oh so familiar. “I’m not afraid—”
“You are,” she said firmly, not letting the bluster keep her quiet. Not letting the tension freak her out.
This man had stayed with her through what could only be described as the worst. And she had survived being thrown off of a balcony. She was done being afraid.
She was living in strength now. “I know fear is touchy for you, but it’s true.”
She didn’t enjoy the look of shocked hurt on his face, but this was something that had to be done. She remembered all her regrets now. She wasn’t going to fall back into old bad habits born of her own issues.
“And I was afraid you’d abandon me like my parents did.
We’re not so deep or complex as I think either of us would like to believe.
The hard part is acknowledging it, admitting it, and figuring out what to do about it.
And I am going to stop being afraid that you’ll leave me like they did.
” She pressed her mouth to his. “You didn’t leave me when I didn’t remember.
You won’t leave me now. I didn’t give up on you when you left.
I won’t now, no matter what I remember.”
She could tell he wasn’t fully on board with this, but she also knew he was considering what she was saying. Even if he’d still knee-jerk refuse fear, he was going to think about it.
“Now, we should get dressed and start looking into Colleen, don’t you think?”
He eyed her dubiously. “Just like that?”
She smiled at him. “For now. I guess the rational place to start would be with the Chicago office. Is there someone there who might tell you why she left?”
“If Colleen is involved in this, it’s possible there were others in the office who are involved too. Who turned or whatever this is. I can’t just call up my old coworkers and see what they know. It’s too dangerous. Zach has already involved more people than I like.”
His fingertips moved up and down her shoulder, just like they used to do when they’d lay in bed together on a lazy weekend day they both had off work. Rare, but always a warm memory.
“What about Boyd Cavalier? You always trusted him. He was your best friend.”
Ellis was quiet for a while. “He was on a different undercover detail when you were hurt. Last I heard he’d transferred to Nashville, but we haven’t been in contact.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t call him up and catch up.”
“Out of the blue?”
“Sure. Friends fall in and out of touch. I think he’d understand why you might have retreated into yourself. He thinks I’m dead and you’re in Alaska, right?”
Ellis was frowning, but he nodded.
She moved out of the bed, began to pull the borrowed clothes back on. “And he would have reached out, right? He didn’t just…never talk to you again after you lost your wife?”
She could feel his eyes on her as she got dressed, but she focused on the task at hand. She wouldn’t settle for anything less than their old life back.
“No, he…tried. I never responded. I didn’t really know how to lie to him. Seemed easier to just cut him off.”
“So, call him up. Tell him the truth.”
Ellis sighed, tossing the covers off and reaching for his own clothes. For a strange moment, Kirsten almost felt…shy about watching him. Like she was Jessica again for a moment, but she only had to reach out for her memories to find them.
To remember she had seen this man in every state of dress and undress. They had explored every inch of each other for years. She knew every scar—well, not every scar. The exit wound on the back of his shoulder had happened right when she’d had her own injury.
He must have had his own serious recovery from that, and she hadn’t been there. Not in her own present mind. It hurt, but Ellis was talking to her in that FBI agent lecture way he had.
“The truth doesn’t solve everything, Kirsten. Not in this instance. Not with lives on the line.”
She knew he believed that. Had probably been trained to believe it.
But she couldn’t. “I think, if there’s a very basic lesson to be learned from everything that happened, it’s that…
holding ourselves back and not helping each other, not trusting each other to be there when we needed each other, emotionally, has to be some kind of lesson. ”
“In our relationship, maybe, but this is essentially an investigation. You can’t trust anyone in undercover work.”
“Except your team backing you up. You trusted Boyd to be your backup during that one case. What was it? The human trafficker? He was your best man at our wedding. We need someone who can look into Colleen without it leading anyone back to Hope Town, don’t we?”
He sighed. “Well, you sure didn’t forget how to be stubborn.”
She smiled at him. “I think I’m going to really lean into it.” She sobered a little. “I can’t go back to who I was two years ago. I don’t think you can either. Things have changed. Life has changed. But there’s still enough of who we were, what we felt, to build something new.”
“Once we take care of this threat.”
“Then call Boyd, Ellis.”
He reached out, put his hands on her shoulders, gave her a squeeze. His gaze was pained, and she could see the ghosts of the past two years in his eyes even if they weren’t the same for her.
“Your life is on the line again,” he said very seriously. “I failed you last time. I can’t again.”
She frowned. Damn him and his superman complex. “You didn’t toss me over a balcony, Ellis.”
“I wasn’t there. I took this case when I shouldn’t have. You can’t talk me out of blaming myself for everything that happened.”
She lifted her chin, leaning into her stubbornness, just like she said. “Fine, then you don’t get to talk me into blaming you when you should blame the criminals.”
He closed his eyes and sighed, but instead of dropping his hands or turning her away or lecturing her more, he simply lowered his forehead to hers. She could hear him swallow and knew there was a lump in his throat.
When he spoke, his words were hoarse. “I’m glad you remember.”
She felt her own lump form, but she swallowed around it, blinked back those tears. “Me too.”