Twenty
TWENTY
Hart
Two months.
Technically, if I included the time that Reagan had been held captive, it was more like two and a half months that I’d lived with the clear understanding of what Reagan meant to me.
And I’d only just now told her the truth for the first time.
I loved her.
I hadn’t anticipated saying those three words feeling quite as good as it did. Now that I’d said it once, I wanted to say it a hundred more times. I wanted to be sure she knew how much I cared about her, how important she was to me. I didn’t care if she never said it back. I came into this knowing she probably never would say those words in return, because I’d ruined any possibility of that happening.
Even still, understanding where things would go and where I’d wind up with her after it, I would do what I’d done all over again if it meant getting her out of there. If it meant being able to see her one last time and confirm for myself that she was safe.
I could admit I’d taken some liberties since arriving here. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe it was wrong. But judging by how she was responding to me, I didn’t have any positive thoughts about this going my way.
Recognizing that I would likely not ever see her again after this, I wanted to be close enough to touch her jaw and smell her just one last time. And I wanted to be that close when I said those words to her.
But then her takeout had arrived, and I had no choice but to step back.
Reagan had since gotten the food and closed the door, but she hadn’t done anything else. She was standing there, looking at me with so many questions swirling in her eyes. I wanted to believe that meant good things for me, as it was far better to have that doubt or uncertainty lingering there instead of the unadulterated hate.
After such an intense showdown between us, it was strange to see her so subdued. And although she wasn’t taking steps to shove me out the door any longer, I could honestly say I didn’t love seeing this level of submissiveness from her.
I wanted that fun-loving, talkative, and spirited woman back. But that was going to take time, if I ever received the privilege.
Since Reagan seemed unable to speak, I decided to take advantage of the lack of fight in her, but I did my best to be gentle about it. “It kills me to see you looking so uneasy around me. I know I might not ever be able to fix this, Reagan, but I’m begging you to give me the chance to at least explain everything to you. All along the way, I’ll answer any questions you have. All of them. The only thing I’m asking is that you give me the chance to share the truth. If after I’ve done that, you still want me to go, I’ll go. It’ll kill me to have to walk away from you, but I swear I’ll do it, if that’s what you want.”
Holding the bag with her food in one hand, Reagan dragged her other hand through her hair and shifted back and forth on her feet. Her eyes were wide, and if I had to guess, she had no less than a dozen thoughts racing through her mind.
Anything.
God, I would have given anything to ease all the worries she was experiencing.
Finally, Reagan parted her lips and spoke, but her voice was strangled and raspy, like someone had their hands around her throat. “Okay, Hart. If I have your word that you’ll leave after you say what you need to say, I’ll listen.”
Relief swept through me.
Relief and perhaps a bit of resignation.
Because while there was one part of me that wanted to jump for joy and pull her close for allowing me the opportunity to clear the air, the other part of me couldn’t miss how she still seemed hellbent on having me out of her sight. She wanted me gone.
It left me with such a sense of emptiness inside, but I tried not to allow that to consume me. I still had a chance. Maybe after she heard the truth, Reagan would feel differently.
I jerked my chin down with appreciation. “Thank you.”
Her focus left my face, her eyes dropping to the ground. “Um, we could probably go grab a seat in the living room.”
“I’ll do this however you want,” I returned, hoping it offered her some sense of reassurance.
Without looking at me again, Reagan walked past and made her way toward the living room. I followed behind her, and I could admit I allowed my gaze to drift down over her curves. My fingers twitched with a need to touch her. If nothing else, I was glad to see that she’d put on the weight she’d lost following two weeks of being starved.
After we both sat down—Reagan kept her distance by sitting at the far end of the couch from me—I asked, “Did you want to take some time to eat your dinner first? I’m happy to wait.”
Admittedly, I was using a bit of a stall tactic. It wasn’t that I wasn’t eager to share the truth about everything with her. It was that I had this sinking feeling she’d kick me out as soon as I finished. If there was a way I could prolong my time with her, even if it meant watching her eat her dinner in silence, I’d happily delay the conversation.
Her hand went to her stomach as she shook her head. “No. No, I think I’d rather wait until you say what you’ve got to say.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
This was it.
I could only hope everything I told her would be enough to convince her that I was a man who did what he had to do to protect her, to save her.
So, I inhaled deeply, gave her one last long look, and began. “I guess I should start with telling you about my job. You asked me more than a year ago, and I chose to keep the information to myself. The truth is, I work at a place called Harper Security Ops. We’re a team of over twenty former military who focus on different areas of expertise. We’ve got a team of private investigators, a group who handle bodyguard and private security services, a squad who teaches self-defense and tactical training, and a crew that handles kidnap and ransom cases. I’m part of the kidnap and ransom unit, so my job involves rescuing individuals who’ve been kidnapped. Nixon, Mallory’s husband, works on that team with me.”
Surprise flashed in her eyes, her lips parting slightly. She hesitated a beat before she asked, “Why wouldn’t you have told me all of that when I asked you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a particularly good reason, Reagan. I guess there was a very small part of me that didn’t want you to worry about the kind of work that I did and think that it was dangerous. But the bigger reason I kept it to myself was because I believed if I shared too much with you, it’d make things complicated between us.”
“You knew what I did for a living,” she reasoned.
Nodding, I confirmed, “I know. But I guess it felt different because I got that information from you without ever seeking it out. You handed me a business card, so it wasn’t like I could avoid knowing.”
She sighed, the sadness leaking into her features. “You never would have asked if I hadn’t volunteered it the way I had.”
It wasn’t a question she’d asked. Just a statement. Proof that she understood precisely the lengths I’d been willing to go to just to prove I wasn’t interested in more than what we’d originally agreed upon having between us.
“I’m not proud of my decision to keep you in the dark,” I declared. “I realize now how big of a mistake it was. Of course, that choice led to me being able to do what I did when we learned that you had gone missing.”
She swallowed hard, the uncertainty consuming her.
“I’ll never forget the terror I felt when I realized you’d been kidnapped. I showed up here, excited about getting to spend some time with you, and your front door was cracked. For just a few seconds, I thought about how I always told you to be careful about taking in your surroundings, never thinking I needed to tell you not to have your front door open for anyone to walk in. But when I came inside and you weren’t here, I feared the worst had happened. I’d left work an hour earlier after talking to Landen, one of the private investigators. Several women had been reported missing, and the family of one of those women decided to hire a private investigator. Landen knew that once he figured out where the women were being taken, I was ready to go in. I just never expected you would be one of the women involved.”
I reached into my pocket, noting the way Reagan’s body tensed and didn’t relax until I pulled out her phone and keys. She took them from me. “I looked all over the place, trying to figure out what happened to these.”
“I’m sorry. I took your phone when I realized there was video footage of your kidnapping.”
Her eyes dropped to the phone, her entire frame going visibly solid.
“I removed it. I have it in case it’s ever needed for evidence for any reason, but I didn’t think you’d ever want to relive it.”
Reagan’s eyes softened. “Thank you.”
A long bout of silence stretched between us before I returned to the story. “It took eight days to find you. They are, without question, the eight worst days of my whole life. I spent those days living in fear of never seeing you again. And it was over the course of those days that I realized the truth I’d been refusing to acknowledge for far too long. My worst fear was that we wouldn’t find you until it was too late, and I’d never be able to tell you what you meant to me.”
I sighed, an unwelcome feeling of torment washing over me as I recalled what it had been like not knowing the state of Reagan.
Tears had since filled her eyes, but she remained quiet.
“I was ready to go in immediately, guns blazing, to get you out.” Reagan’s head tipped to the side as she tugged lightly on her ear. “But no matter how much my only focus and concern was you, there was a bigger job to be done. And it was the team around me that got me to see that. Unfortunately, knowing the size of the operation, we needed to be strategic to pull off the rescue, and the guys thought it’d be three or four days before we could make that happen. I refused to wait that long, so I came up with the idea to go in as a buyer. I knew it would likely cost me everything with you, but it was worth taking that risk for me to know that you were alive. I was willing to let you believe I was the bad guy if it meant I could be there, keeping you safe.
“We were supposed to be there another day before the team would come in, but you woke up that morning and told me about your parents abandoning you as a baby. That’s when I made the decision to change the plan. I wasn’t going to put you through more than you’d already been through. So, I walked out of the room and made calls to the guys to tell them what they needed to know. They fought me on it, begged me to be patient, but I refused. I told them that you’d be getting out that evening, and they needed to have someone there to get you to safety. Since I didn’t know how trusting you’d be of anyone, I told Nixon to bring Mallory with him. As for the rest of the team, I told them they could wait if they wanted, but you weren’t going to be there another day longer. Luckily, they did what they had to do. Only after Nixon had confirmed you were safe did everyone—my team at Harper Security and the Steel Ridge Police Department—go in and take those men down.”
Reagan’s brow furrowed and released, her nose twitching. One look at her told me she had thoughts she couldn’t hold back. So, I waited, confident she’d eventually say whatever was on her mind.
“Why didn’t Nixon and Mallory tell me the truth?”
“I asked them not to. I told them to make sure you were safe and taken care of, but that I wanted to be the one to tell you everything.”
She nodded slowly. “Could you have left?”
“When?”
“After I got out. Could you have just left under the guise of going to find me, especially if you knew the rest of the team was going to be coming in to take down that operation?”
I answered her honestly. “Yes. Yes, I could have.”
“So, if I mattered so much to you, why didn’t you leave to be with me and tell me the truth, then? Why didn’t you do whatever you had to do to be there for me?”
The last thing I wanted to do was lie to her, but I wasn’t quite sure how she’d respond to me telling her the truth. I considered what to do, and ultimately, I decided that if this was the last opportunity that I’d have to speak to her, then she needed to know everything.
“When I went into that place, my sole goal was to get you out safely,” I confessed. “And while that remained my number one priority after I arrived, things changed for me once I was there. I had other things I needed to take care of.”
Reagan squinted, trying to work out what those things were. “Was it getting the other women out safely?”
“I mean, indirectly, yes. But I was confident that would have happened if I left. Vengefulness is what kept me there. I wasn’t going to leave that place until justice was served for what was done to you.”
“What do you mean? What did you do?”
Reagan and I shared a long, intense look. She held her breath the entire time.
“I found Javier, and I broke every single one of his fingers for touching you,” I admitted. “And no sooner had I done that, Chris showed up. And I remembered how he and Javier had decided to beat you into submission, so I gave them both a taste of their own medicine.”
Tears slid down Reagan’s cheeks, and she pinched the bridge of her nose to contain her emotions. “I couldn’t understand how you could just stand there watching while he touched me.”
“It wasn’t easy, Reagan. I swear it to you. The amount of mental gymnastics I did to contain the rage I felt is immeasurable. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry he ever laid a finger on you at all, but especially like that. I know it probably doesn’t mean much now, but I couldn’t leave there to be with you and let that go unpunished.”
Reagan dropped her gaze to her lap, where she was now absentmindedly stroking one thumb over the other. Tears dripped down onto her clasped hands and her clothes. I was, once again, left having to control the urge to do what I wanted, which was to pull her into my arms and promise her that everything would be okay.
I promised her I’d allow her to decide what happened here after she got the truth from me, so all I could do was hold my breath and wait.
“I don’t know the right words to say to you now that you’ve shared all this,” she croaked. “I’m grateful to you for the risks you took to rescue me, Hart. I hope you understand that. But I’ve spent two months hating you. Two months of not understanding how you could have done what you did. Obviously, it all makes sense now. I can look back and think about the things you said and did in there, and I can see that you’re telling me the truth about what happened. But two months? You allowed me to think these horrible things about you in there. Why didn’t you tell me when we were alone? I’m in therapy now, just trying to deal with the fallout from all of this.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Reagan. I thought you were safer not knowing. I’ve never had to infiltrate an organization like that one, Reagan. The men seemed very accommodating whenever you were around me, but I could tell they still had some hesitancy surrounding me. If they thought for one second that I wasn’t who I was pretending to be, I couldn’t be sure how they’d respond. And risking you wasn’t an option. So, I figured it was better for you to still have some fear around me. Plus, I don’t think you would have done what you needed to do to escape if you thought the best of me.”
She offered a nod of acceptance in response, clearly an admission that I’d assumed correctly about how she’d have responded if there wasn’t that hint of fear and determination lingering.
“How long was it before you left that place?” she asked.
“A few hours after you were out.”
Reagan flinched, the color draining from her face. “So, why now? Why did it take you two months to come and try to rectify this? If everything you said to me at my front door is the truth, why would you risk waiting so long? You said that coming to see me sooner than now was the only thing that didn’t go as planned. Why not?”
She was so angry at me. Even after everything I’d shared with her, she was still so furious. I didn’t know why I thought some of that fury would have dissipated by now. Maybe it had all just been wishful thinking. Maybe I was simply so desperate to have her forgiveness so we could move past this together. Maybe it was because I was terrified that she’d never love me back.
I wasn’t sure giving her the answer to her question would change anything, but I gave it to her anyway. “I was in the hospital recovering from a surgery following a stab wound to the gut.”
Her hand flew to her mouth as she gasped. “What? What happened?”
I waved my hand in the air dismissively. “What happened doesn’t matter. It’s gruesome, and I’m not keen to relive those details or make you feel a certain way about me being stabbed. It is what it is, and I’d do it all over again for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you after all of that, Reagan. I hate that you were alone. And I mean it with everything I have when I tell you that if it had been physically possible, I never would have let a single day go by without coming to you.”
For the first time since I’d shown up at her front door, Reagan’s eyes drifted over my body. It was as though she was trying to discern if I was truly okay, and there was a small part of me that felt a flicker of hope at that. Maybe she didn’t hate me completely.
“Are you okay?”
Nodding, I answered, “Mostly. I’m getting there.”
“I’m glad about that,” she whispered.
Reagan’s gaze darted around, and she avoided eye contact for several beats. She shifted her body on the couch, fidgeted with her hands, and ultimately pressed her lips together in a slight grimace.
“I don’t know what to say, Hart. I… I guess I owe you an apology for?—”
“You don’t owe me anything, Reagan. There’s nothing to apologize for. I just wanted you to know the truth about the whole situation, about who I am.”
She bit the corner of her lip nervously. “I said some horrible things to you.”
“The situation you were in wasn’t exactly normal. I think it’s understandable for you to have reacted the way you did. I don’t hold that against you.”
She shrank back against the cushion. “This is a lot to take in. I… I wasn’t expecting any of this.”
God, all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her and feel her close to me. “I know.”
“I don’t know what you’re expecting now, but I’m not sure if I can go back to things being the way they were between us.”
My stomach sank. “I’m not looking for that to happen. I know it’s not what we agreed upon originally, but things changed for me with you. I fell in love with you, Reagan. I want more than what we had. I want to give you everything.”
Tears filled her eyes, the devastation on her face plain as day. Before she even spoke one word, I knew she wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to hear. “I feel like an awful person to say this to you after everything you’ve just told me, but I need time. I wasn’t expecting any of this, and for the last two and a half months, I haven’t had any good feelings toward you. This terrifies me. All of it—everything that happened and what you’re telling me now.”
Part of me was regretting telling her I’d leave if she didn’t want me to stick around after I told her the truth. It was going to kill me to have to walk away from her. “Tell me what I can do to make this right.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Hart. This is just so painful.”
As painful as it had been, I’d endure being stabbed all over again to not feel this level of fear about losing her. “Please, Reagan.”
“I wish I could say what you want to hear, but I’m not there. And it feels terrible to say that to you. I’ll be forever grateful for what you did.”
My heart felt like it was in my throat. I had to leave. If I didn’t go now, she’d have to drag me out. So, I stood and shoved my hands into my pockets. “I should go.”
“I’m sorry, Hart.”
I tipped my chin up harshly to suppress the overwhelming sense of defeat before I moved toward her front door. When I made it there, I put a hand on the knob and turned to face her. “Even knowing this would be the outcome, I’d do it all over again just to be sure you were okay and to get you back home safely.”
She pressed her lips together and sniffled.
“In case you didn’t know, they were all arrested, so you’re safe. You don’t have to worry about any of them coming after you again. I made sure of that.”
Tears escaped and spilled down her cheeks. “Thank you.”
“Take care of yourself, Reagan.”
Her voice was barely a whisper. “You, too.”
A moment later, I pulled open the door and walked out, my heart in tatters.