Chapter Nineteen
She hadn’t meant that.
Callen couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. His skin suddenly felt too hot.
He fisted both hands against the chair’s arms, igniting a flare of pain in his lacerated wrists.
If he’d been hooked up to the heart rate monitor currently pounding through his brain, she’d know.
She’d know how much her words affected him, how much he wanted them to be true.
Because he’d been lying to himself all this time.
Since the day he’d found her engagement ring on the nightstand and her belongings moved out, something inside him had become unfixable.
Like she’d broken off a piece of his soul and taken it with her to Vegas.
His anger toward her—his blame—had distracted him enough for him to focus on the job in front of him and dig deeper into Lauren’s investigation, but he’d just been lying to himself.
Hadn’t the past few days proved it? The cracks in the wall he’d built between him and the rest of the world—especially her—weren’t just slivers anymore. They’d grown.
Her staying in touch with his parents.
Her risking her career to privately work Lauren’s case.
Her pulling him from the truck.
Her taking the bullet meant for him.
Each crack had fissured into gaping holes now puncturing his defenses, and Maeve was at the center of it all.
His ex-fiancée, a woman who should hate him with every fiber of her being, had sacrificed everything to put him and his family first. And he’d cut her out of his life as though she’d meant nothing.
He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t even deserve to breathe the same air as her.
He’d done nothing but try to tear her apart piece by piece since he’d confronted her on that trail, and now she was telling him she hadn’t moved on with someone new since they’d broken up? That she still thought about him?
Clearing his throat, Callen leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees.
Every muscle in his body ached from being inside that damn truck when it’d gone into the river, but he’d take the sensation over the numbness he’d allowed himself to slip into since coming to Zion.
It was only in the past few days that he’d felt anything.
Because of her. “You’ve been through a lot the past few days—”
“Don’t.” The sharpness in her voice silenced the part of him that wanted to deny her claim. “Don’t do that. Don’t twist my words until they fit whatever narrative you’ve told yourself since we broke up.”
His heart nearly jerked to a full stop. “I hurt you.”
“Yeah. You did. But it doesn’t change the fact I never stopped caring about you.
” The color had come back into her face over the last four days, but it would take much longer for him to stop seeing the blood bubble out of that gunshot wound, to stop feeling it coat his hands.
“How could I not, Callen? You were there after my dad died. You stayed with me at the police station so I didn’t have to be alone, and you…
you found the man responsible. Lauren was my best friend, but you?
You were the one who put me back together. ”
Callen didn’t know what to say to that, what to think.
Everything she’d just said settled like a rock in his stomach.
He wanted to deny it all, tell her he was nothing compared to the courage and determination and protectiveness she’d displayed just since she’d come back into his life. “You weren’t broken.”
“Yes, I was. I just didn’t know it until I fell in love with you.
You were there when the nightmares got to be too much.
You made me feel wanted when you proposed and went out of your way to make sure I felt included in your family, made me feel like I was loved.
” Her voice wavered, and suddenly Callen couldn’t help but feel too far away.
That he should be touching her, telling her it was okay.
That she didn’t owe him anything. “And you supported me when I applied to be a field agent and iced all my bruises and scrapes from training.”
His laugh surprised him. “There were a lot.”
“I remember.” Her answering smile hitched his next breath.
She didn’t do that often enough, even before Lauren had gone missing, and Callen tucked this one away in his mind so he’d never forget it.
“My point is, you gifted me with something far more valuable than an engagement ring or a place to live or nights I didn’t have to spend wrapped up in my own head alone.
You were my light in a world of darkness.
You showed me how to feel safe again. How could I ever expect to find that in someone else? ”
Someone else. She hadn’t been with anyone since him?
A possessiveness he had no business feeling thickened in his veins.
His mouth twitched under the release of pressure from his chest. All this time he’d imagined some guy warming her bed, settling her chaotic thoughts with kisses and touches that’d once been his and grounding her through her nightmares.
For nothing. And those moments she talked about?
They didn’t feel like anything big, but according to Maeve, they’d changed her life.
A life that had almost been cut short. Twice.
His smile slipped, his blood growing cold as his mother’s admission surged to the front of his mind. “Then why did you provoke a suspect into stabbing you?”
The color she’d regained in her short recovery drained, accentuating the dehydration lines streaking through her lips. It didn’t matter how many liters of blood and fluids she’d received, it would take weeks for a full recovery. “How do you…how do you know about that?”
“My mom mentioned the real reason she and my dad started going to that trauma therapist.” The tension that seemed to squeeze his insides since his mother had filled him in on exactly how bad things had gotten for Maeve after the breakup only tightened.
She’d been hurting—almost died—far more than he’d expected after the breakup, and he hadn’t known.
“You didn’t recommend her to them. They went for you. Because they were worried about you.”
“Getting injured in the field is always a risk. That’s part of the job—”
“Don’t.” He used her earlier words against her.
“Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear to make this conversation go away.
It won’t work. I know the truth.” Callen physically fought down the nausea that came with the burn of acid on his tongue as he forced the words.
“Your partner was the one to call my parents to the hospital. They were still listed as your emergency contacts. He told them everything, including the lie he’d filed in his report to protect you from losing your job.
I know you went to that house to arrest a suspect in connection to the serial case you were working.
I know he was suspected of killing two other female law enforcement officers, but you took the case anyway.
I know you and your partner split up that night to search the house.
And I know you didn’t draw your weapon when he charged you with a knife. ”
Her throat worked on a shallow swallow. She couldn’t deny it. He’d already reached out to one of his FBI contacts to confirm what his mother had said. He’d read the false report and talked with her former partner in the Salt Lake office. There wasn’t anything she could hide from him now.
“You spent three weeks in the hospital, seventy-two hours of that under a suicide watch because my mom thought you might hurt yourself. Why?” That single word scraped up his throat as though he’d been yelling for hours.
Softening his voice, Callen shifted to the edge of the bed.
To get closer to her, to touch her, to just neutralize the buzz beneath his skin he’d lived with for the past four days while she’d been unconscious.
“Why wouldn’t you defend yourself, Maeve?
I know you know how. I’ve seen you do it a thousand times, and like you said, you’re a damn good agent.
You could’ve stopped him, and you chose to let him hurt you. ”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. Only once had she ever cried in front of him during her father’s funeral.
He wasn’t sure whether it was because of the emotional onslaught of loss then or because Maeve didn’t allow herself to show that kind of vulnerability over the years.
And, hell, he’d done nothing in the past year to show her she was safe with him anymore, but he wanted to be good enough for her now. “Why, Maeve?”
“Because I failed.” Her shoulders shook on a sob, and Callen only shifted closer, pressing his weight into her side like he’d done during her nightmare the other night in his house.
“I screwed up Lauren’s case, and you were so angry.
” She closed her eyes but somehow found the courage to face him again.
“You had every right to get as far from me as possible. I knew that, but knowing something like that and facing it… I failed you. I failed your parents, who’d given me everything.
I’ve lost everyone I ever cared about, but Lauren, it was my fault.
I realized I wasn’t the woman you thought I was, and I couldn’t handle the fact I couldn’t fix it, and in that moment, that suspect, he just made it so easy. ”
He couldn’t keep his anger in check. Over the time he’d wasted blaming her, over the hateful words he’d spewed at her, over the assumption that she hadn’t done enough or that she was anything less than the strong, compassionate woman he’d fallen in love with.
Callen pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes, taking her in.
“You never failed me, Maeve. You made a mistake, but that mistake doesn’t equal your worth.
Not to my parents, and sure as hell not to me, and I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you weren’t worth loving.
Because I forgive you. You are…you are amazing, and it took me far too long to realize what an idiot I’ve been when it comes to you.
” Skimming his thumb beneath her trembling bottom lip, Callen caught a renegade tear as it broke free from her lashes. “I haven’t been with anyone either.”
Her watery gaze raised to his as he leaned back.
“I tried. I had one of my security friends set me up, but it felt all wrong. I thought maybe it was too soon after the breakup, so I waited a couple months before going on another date, but that one felt wrong too.” But this?
Her warmth radiating into his hand, her breath skimming across his bruised knuckles, her scent still clinging to his clothes?
It settled some feral part of him he’d tried to ignore, tried to forget existed but had run rampant since she’d left.
“It took me a while to realize food stopped having any taste. I haven’t been able to get to sleep without taking something since I came to Zion.
I think about you all the time, and I convinced myself you ruined everything between us by mishandling evidence in Lauren’s investigation, that if I hurt you the way I hurt, I would feel some kind of justice.
But after being with you the past few days, knowing you’ve risked everything to be here for my sister, I realize I’m the one at fault.
The things I said, I didn’t mean them, Maeve, and I’m sorry. ”
Her hand slipped over his as she leaned into his touch. “Me, too. I’m sorry about Lauren. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this case. You almost died—”
“There isn’t anything you have to be sorry for.
I made the choice to get involved. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done to stop me, and I’m glad we found her.
It’s not what I’d hoped, but she can come home now.
She’s not scared or in pain or alone, but Iliana Meyer is still out there, and we need to find her.
” His phone vibrated from his jeans pocket.
Callen unpocketed the device, and dread spiked through him.
Leaning back, he turned the screen toward Maeve with the text message displayed.
It’s Simpson. The rangers have found more remains.