Chapter 24 #2
“Tell me, Gage. Tell me how this was supposed to go. Because you’ve had weeks to come clean, to tell me what you were really doing here and why you needed access to the Hawkes. But you chose to keep that secret. You chose to maintain the lie rather than come clean with me.”
The tears brimming in my eyes threaten to fall, but I swipe them away before they can. This man has seen me cry enough, more than anyone else in my life ever has, and that’s given him far too much power that I need to take back.
Gage stops a few feet from me, his eyes wild, as if he’s teetering on the same edge I am—about to completely lose his grip on his emotions.
“How did I see this going?” He sighs, shaking his head.
“When I met you, all I was thinking about was how much I wanted to be around you, how I couldn’t stay away.
The incident with Jade was a foot in the door I hadn’t expected, and I took it—both for the mission and because I was being selfish for the first time in my life and wanted to feel what I did around you. ”
His gaze stays locked on mine, as if he’s afraid to look away, afraid I might run if he does.
“I definitely never thought I was going to fall in love with you. By the time I realized I had, it was too late. But I thought that once I figured out where McDonald was and if I could track down Satriano for you, that maybe, just maybe, it would be enough for you to forgive me for keeping everything else from you. That maybe making you and your family finally safe would buy me some…”—he searches for the word—“understanding. But I know I was wrong.”
He steps closer, so close now that the leather and spice scent hits me, and I hold my breath to avoid pulling it into my lungs any further.
I can’t even trust myself with that.
Because that scent has become so synonymous with happiness. With relaxing in his arms, lying on his bed, being held…
Gage overwhelms me without even touching me, and if I give in to any of the pull I still feel toward him, I won’t get back out from it.
“I would’ve told you everything, Bishop, and I would’ve begged you to forgive me and to believe that everything that happened between us was real, just like I’m doing now.” Another half-step brings him within reach. “You know it was, Hellcat.”
Dammit.
Damn him.
I close my eyes as every moment we’ve ever spent together rushes through my head. A bright, vibrant video playback of all the things that made me fall in love with him.
That chuckle when I had him pinned to the club floor…
His grin when he turned over…
The “standing offer” he gave me to do it again anytime…
Watching him box with Atlas and so easily get along with Astrid…
Our date in the park when he called me out on my unhealthy workaholic behavior…
The way he had my back when Satriano appeared and refused to just walk away from a fight that wasn’t his…
His insistence that he knew what I needed that night and what he gave me by taking control…
All the days and nights since…
One after another, they just keep coming. A tidal wave of memories and feelings that I’ve been trying to suppress all day, that I’ve tried to wall off strictly in the “lies” category because the alternative was so much worse.
“I know what you’re thinking, Bishop.” His voice is soft, calm, even closer than it was only a moment ago.
“You’re allowing yourself to spiral. You’re trying to go back to that place where you live behind a one-hundred-foot high wall and keep everyone on the other side of it.
You’re trying to shut down the memories of us so you can shut me out…
when all I want is for you to let me back in. ”
When I reopen my eyes, a single tear I can’t contain finally trickles out of the corner and down my cheek.
“You took everything I’ve always hated about myself and made me love it.
You took all the things I prided myself on and showed me how they were killing me.
You made me feel things that I only thought existed for people like my cousins, for people who could be that open.
You did all that in a span of only a month.
You read me like an open book, knowing you were going to close it. ”
He tentatively takes another step forward, and my back stiffens.
“No. I cherish that book. It has been what has kept me going. You have been.” He raises his hand, and when those rough calluses gently brush against my cheek, I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself.
“You know who I am, Bishop. I’m the man you spent the last week with.
I’m also the one who has been looking out for you, who’s been protecting you from the shadows, even when you didn’t know it.
Who has been bending over backward, trying to figure out how to keep you and the rest of the Hawkes safe.
I will always protect you, Bishop. Always.
Even if you hate me. Even if you never want to see me again. ”
My lip trembles, those damn tears threatening again. “Why?”
His gaze softens. “Because anything worth living for is worth dying for.”
It doesn’t matter that he stole that line from the book in his nightstand, my heart still stutters all the same.
That part of me that I thought was dead forever this morning.
The source of so much agony.
It starts to beat again.
He brushes a tear from my cheek, and I have to look away from the intensity in his gaze, from the very heavy emotions he’s trying to convey that I’m not sure I can handle.
“Please look at me, Bishop.”
It isn’t a command this time.
It’s a request.
Somehow, that makes it so much worse.
But I comply.
“I love you, Hellcat. None of this was fake. None of what we have is. It’s the most real thing I’ve ever had in my life, and I think it’s the most real thing you’ve ever had, too.
Don’t throw it away because I’ve hurt your pride, because you want to go back to that place where you’re an island.
Let me back in, and I promise I’ll never hurt you again.
I promise that if I even try, you can bring me back into this ring and have your way with me. ”
The corners of my lips twitch despite how angry I still am with him.
Probably because the person I’m really angry with is myself.
Not for trusting him. Not for believing him. Not for ignoring that first initial gut reaction that told me there was something off about him. But for not being able to see the truth until this very moment.
Gage Newhart isn’t a stranger.
He isn’t a liar, either.
He’s a man who fell in love and let that become the most important thing to him over a mission that he knew was going to get very complicated.
He is the person I’ve fallen in love with.
“I’ll do anything, Bishop, anything to prove it to you, to make you trust me again.” He pulls my face between his palms, forcing me to look him in the eyes and see the love there. “Anything. Just name it.”
“I honestly don’t know what it will take, Gage.” I swallow through my tightening throat. “I don’t know how we move past all this.”
His thumb sweeps across my cheek, wiping away another tear as the tiniest of grins pulls at his lips. He slowly drops to his knees, pleading up at me with so much pain in his gaze and unshed tears shimmering there. “I do. With you in control.”
A laugh that sounds completely wrong slips from my lips. “Haven’t you been trying to get me to let go of that?”
He nods, squeezing my hands. “I have, but I’ll tell you a secret that isn’t such a big secret. I’ll do anything for you, Hellcat. Anything.”
I tug him back up to his feet and press my hands against his chest to feel the steady beat of his heart beneath my palm again. To ground myself the way he does with his dog tags.
This man has bent over backward to take care of me, to protect me, to give me whatever I need, whenever I need it. And he dropped to his knees for me, promised to ensure my safety even if I never take him back.
All those reasons I had for hating him, for not trusting him, were my anger about my loss of control. And he’s giving it back to me.
“You can pin and straddle me anytime, and I will truly be a happy man.” He lowers his mouth to mine, feathering a tentative kiss across my trembling lips. “Anything you want will make me a happy man, as long as I’m in your life to experience it with you.”
Only an hour ago, my world had fallen apart.
All the pieces of myself I had shown only to Gage and learned to embrace through his love were scattered in the wind, and I never thought I would find them again.
I was ready to go back to being that renegade who rejected all the attempts anyone made to break through my walls.
But he’s somehow found those pieces, reminded me how safe they are with him, and rebound them into the story of us.
It took a rogue to do it, but my renegade is finally tamed.
Sort of.