Page 20 of Cruel Love

“Where did you get this one?” I ask.

“Dani, don’t—”

“Where?”

He looks at me with hesitant eyes. “Kabul,” he answers. “Start of my first tour. Got into a sniper battle. I walked away. He didn’t.”

I grip his shirt and slip the buttons free one-by-one. His hands twitch at his sides but he doesn’t try to stop me. He keeps his eyes on me as mine explore his damaged skin. That damned black cobra stares back at me as I lay my hands on his abs. I feel downward for the thick line on the left side of his ribcage.

“And this one?” I ask.

“Madrid,” he answers slowly. “I thought he was sleeping. I dropped my guard for a second and...”

I draw the line with my fingertip, filling in the rest of it myself. “What did you do to him?”

He doesn’t blink. He looks me right in the eyes as he says it. “I slit his throat,” he says, his lips slightly parted. “His mistress walked in. She saw everything. She couldn’t have been older than I was and I…” He swallows hard. “I did what was expected of me.”

His voice drops as my bottom lip trembles.

I walk around him and pull the shirt off his back. A few dozen gashes greet me along his shoulder blades, some fresher than others. Those happened in Denver when he took a bullet for me and shielded my body with his as we crashed through a window. I drove for ten hours with him in the passenger’s seat bleeding and dying beside me, not sure if he’d survive the night.

“Dani...”

I ignore him and crawl my fingers down his spine to find the discolored patch of skin at the small of his back.

“This one?” I ask.

“Stab wound,” he says. “A training exercise.”

“Training exercise?”

He reaches behind for my hand. “It wasn’t unusual for the squad leaders to pit the rookies against each other... for entertainment. They called it training, but...”

I cringe and tug my hand away. Agents really are just pawns to these people. It wasn’t just their enemies looking to kill Fox. He could have been killed at any time by any of them just to amuse their squad leaders for an afternoon.

I step around to face him again and reach for his belt. Fox lays his hand on my cheek to brush a tear away but another one instantly tumbles free.

“Dani, stop,” he whispers.

I push his zipper down.

Fox grabs my hands. “I’ve been hit by cars,” he says. “I’ve been shot twelve times — at least. I’ve woken up with no recollection of how I got there. Days completely gone from memory that I’ll never get back. I could have ended it at any time. A few people I knew did.”

“Why didn’t you?” I ask.

He forces my palms flat against his chest. “Do you feel that?” he asks.

A light thump teases my fingers. His heart is pounding, matching the erratic beat of blood in my ears.

“My life didn’t belong to me,” he says. “It didn’t belong to Mercer or the Boss. Dani, my life belonged to you.”

I look down as more tears fall.

Fox lays a hand beneath my chin and guides my eyes back up. “I knew that I owed it to you to stay alive. The chances of seeing you ever again were nonexistent, but I thought that if you knew I was still alive, you’d want me to fight and survive. You’d want me to keep breathing, even if only for the sake of existing in the same world together. Was I wrong?”

I exhale slowly. “No,” I answer.

He holds my face in his hands. “I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done things that I can’t take back, things that hurt you, and I’m sorry. I wish I could say there’d come a time in our lives when I’ll stop hurting you, but I’m not sure I can promise that. Not in a world where Snake Eyes still exists.”

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