32. Nash #2
"I'm thinking that I've been lying to myself for years.
" She shifts on the couch, turning to face me more fully.
"With Ethan, I was always settling. Always making excuses for why things didn't feel right, why I never felt that spark everyone talks about.
I convinced myself that comfort and security were more important than passion or real connection, and I built my life around that. "
Her voice drops, becoming almost confessional. "But the truth is, I was trying to distract myself from missing you. From the way you made me feel when we were teenagers. I thought if I built a life with someone completely different, someone safe and predictable, I could forget about you entirely."
Guilt and regret churning in my stomach. All those years I spent convinced I was protecting her by staying away, she was building a life with another man to escape the memory of what we'd had. What we could have had if I hadn't been such a coward.
I reach out, cupping her face in my palm and turning her toward me so she can't look away. Her skin is soft and warm beneath my fingers, and I can feel the slight tremor that runs through her at the contact.
"Nothing could ever get my mind off you," I tell her, my voice rougher than I intended.
"Not other women, not work, not time, not distance.
You've been in my head for twenty-one years, Eve.
Every choice I made, every path I took, some part of me was always wondering what you were doing, if you were happy, if you ever thought about us. "
Her eyes widen slightly, and I can see the pulse point at her throat flutter with increased heartbeat. "Nash..."
"I need to know something," I continue, my thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone. "Are you going to run from me now? Now that you've seen what I'm really capable of?"
The question has been eating at me since the warehouse, since she watched me coordinate her ex-fiancé's murder with the casual efficiency of someone who's done it before.
Because that's what I did—I may not have pulled the trigger or wielded the knife, but I orchestrated Ethan's death as surely as if I'd killed him myself.
"An EMT who takes bribes to let people die," I continue, forcing myself to voice every dark truth about who I am.
"A guy who met a fourteen-year-old girl who needed help and turned her into a contract killer instead of saving her.
A man who spent years convincing himself he was protecting you when really he was just protecting himself from the possibility of not being good enough. "
Eve's expression doesn't change, no shock or revulsion or fear. Instead, she places her hand over mine where it still cups her face, her fingers intertwining with mine in a gesture that feels like absolution.
"I always knew you had this darker side," she says simply. "Even when we were kids, I could see it in the way you looked at people sometimes. The way you processed information. The way you seemed to understand things that other people missed entirely. It was always there."
She leans into my touch, her eyes never leaving mine. "I never minded it, Nash. If anything, it made me feel safer. Like you could handle whatever came your way, whatever threatened the people you cared about."
"This is different?—"
"You were always the one in the way," she interrupts, her voice gentle but firm. "You decided I was too good for you, too pure, too innocent. You decided what I could and couldn't handle without ever asking me what I wanted. You made choices for both of us based on your own fears and insecurities."
The truth of her words cuts deep, but it's a clean cut—the kind that hurts now but heals properly if you don't ignore it. She's right. I spent so many years convinced I was protecting her that I never stopped to consider whether she wanted or needed that protection.
"I won't be in the way again," I promise, my voice rough with emotion and determination. "I'm not holding back anymore, Eve. Not from who I am, not from what I want, not from this." I gesture between us, encompassing everything we are and everything we could become. "I'm all in."
Her smile is radiant, transforming her entire face and making her look younger, lighter, like a weight she's been carrying for years has finally been lifted.
"Good. Because you're all I've wanted, Nash.
Through everything else, through trying to build a life with someone else—you were what I wanted.
That doesn't change now. I want to be here with you. "
She shifts closer on the couch, her hand sliding up to tangle in the hair at the nape of my neck.
"I don't have any regrets about the path that led us here.
The memory loss, the accident, even Ethan's betrayal—if that's what it took for us to finally be together, really be together, then I can't regret any of it. "
The kiss that follows is everything I've been holding back for weeks, for years, for more than half my lifetime.
I pour fourteen years of wanting into it, of regret and hope and desperate love that I've never been able to fully express.
My hands frame her face, fingers threading through her soft curls as I deepen the kiss, tasting her sweetness and the salt of tears I didn't realize had started falling.
She responds with equal intensity, her body pressing closer to mine as her arms wind around my neck. There's nothing hesitant or uncertain about the way she kisses me back—this is Eve claiming what she wants, taking what's hers, meeting my passion with her own.
The kiss builds until I can't think of anything except the need to have her completely, to claim every inch of her skin and make up for all the years we've lost. My hands slide down her body, memorizing the curve of her waist, the flare of her hips, before I break away from her mouth just long enough to stand and lift her into my arms.
She's lighter than I expected, all soft curves and warm skin that fits perfectly against my chest. Her arms wind around my neck as I carry her down the hallway toward my bedroom, her face buried against my throat where I can feel the flutter of her breath, the press of her lips against my pulse point.
"Nash," she whispers, my name a prayer on her lips that makes something primal and possessive surge through my bloodstream.
I push open the bedroom door with my shoulder, carrying her into the space that has always been mine alone.
The room is dark except for the city lights filtering through the windows, casting everything in shades of silver and shadow.
My bed—king-sized, unmade from this morning, covered in dark blue sheets—dominates the space.
"I need you to know something," I tell her as I set her down beside the bed, my hands staying on her waist to keep her close. "I've never brought a woman here before. Never to my bed, my home. You're the only one I've ever taken to my own bed."
The admission feels raw leaving my throat, exposing a vulnerability I've never shared with anyone else.
This apartment, this bedroom—they've always been my sanctuary, the one place in the world that was entirely mine.
Other women got hotel rooms or their places, never this.
Never the space where I sleep and dream and wake up alone.
Never until Eve.
Her eyes widen slightly in the dim light, searching my face as if she's trying to read the truth written there. "Really?"
"Really. This place..." I gesture around the room, at the unmade bed and the clothes tossed over the chair in the corner, at the personal belongings that make this space distinctly mine. "It's always been just me here. You're the first. The only one I've ever wanted here."
Her hands slide up my chest, fingers splaying across the cotton of my t-shirt as she presses closer. "Then it changes now," she whispers, her voice fierce with determination and desire. "No more just you. No more alone. We're together now, in every way that matters."
The promise in her words breaks something loose inside me, some last wall of resistance I've been maintaining without even realizing it.
My mouth crashes down on hers with bruising intensity, one hand tangling in her curls while the other grips her hip hard enough to leave marks.
She responds immediately, her fingers fisting in my shirt as she pulls me closer, her body molding against mine like she's trying to eliminate every inch of space between us.
I walk her backward until her legs hit the edge of the mattress, then follow her down as she falls, my weight settling over her as I brace myself on my forearms. The position puts us face to face, her brown eyes dark with want as she looks up at me, her lips swollen from my kisses and her chest rising and falling with rapid breaths.
"I can't believe I almost lost you," I murmur against her throat, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the column of her neck. "First to him, to that engagement, to a life where you were settling for less than everything you deserve."
My teeth graze her pulse point and she arches beneath me, a soft moan escaping her lips that goes straight to my cock. I'm already hard, have been since she first kissed me back on the couch, but the sound of her pleasure makes me ache with need.
"Then to whoever wanted you dead," I continue, my voice getting rougher as I work my way down to her collarbone. "Some anonymous piece of shit who thought they could take you away from me before I even got the chance to show you how much you mean to me."
Her hands slide under my shirt, nails dragging across my back in a way that makes me hiss against her skin. "I'm here," she whispers, her voice breathless but steady. "I'm right here, Nash. You didn't lose me. You won't lose me."