Page 212 of The Darkest Chase

Micah looks stricken before he glances away.

“I wanted to kill that fuck,” he clips. “So badly I can still feel his pulse in my fingertips. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that technically, we need him alive for his testimony. I just wanted him dead. Your life was more important, though. Hands down.”

Tentatively, I risk resting one hand on his chest.

He looks so dangerous in his tactical gear, but it’s only a small part of his allure tonight.

“I told you,” I whisper. “That’s not who you are.”

“Yeah. Guess you know it better than I do.” He covers my hand with his. “Talia, I—fuck. I said a lot of shitty things I didn’t mean. None of it. It was never about using you or convenience. I never should have let you think that. I never should have used that to hurt you. I wasn’t faking. I never was. Just because I faked my identity a little, no. With you, woman, it was as real as it gets.”

Holy hell.

I’m so stunned I don’t know what to say.

After the way he sledgehammered my heart, those words can’t just pick it up and piece it back together like there are no cracks at all.

But sometimes a broken thing shines brighter when every fragment catches the light, doesn’t it? Just like a diamond.

When I don’t respond, Micah’s brows pinch together.

“Are you okay? You’re not having another attack from the shock, are you?”

“What shock?” I ask faintly.

“…me being honest for once?”

I giggle.

“Um, I think that might kill you more than me,” I point out dryly, leaning into the curve of his arm. “I think I get why you said the things you did. Why you ran. Why you hurt me. But I never stopped having feelings for you even with that, Micah. I trusted you to come for me today.”

“I never would have left you with him. I couldn’t.”

He takes a shaky breath.

Maybe he’s right and I do know him better than he knows himself, because I know his patterns.

I know how he looks away, looks down, then finally looks back at me with his lips tight and nervous when he wants to say something from the heart, pulling it out slowly like a knife lodged in his ribs.

“I never learned how to love. Not really,” Micah says. The wind teases his arctic fox hair, making it stand wild and rakish. “The only person in my life I ever truly loved was my brother, and that…” He shakes his head. “He died. No warning and no goodbye. Jet was the only person I knew how to love, and he died on me.”

“That doesn’t mean everyone you love will always die.”

“But it means the part of me that can love died with him,” Micah growls. “All I had left was hate after that. Think I even hated myself, because of how Jet protected me. When we were kids, he took the abuse while I hid from our father and I let him, when it should have been me. When all you have is hate so deep you don’t know how to stop, you forget how to love anything at all.”

I just smile, nudging the big German Shepherd lightly with my toe and getting a warm, wet lick to my calf.

“Nope,” I say. “Rolf says you’re a liar.”

“Rolf talks, huh? Guess he’s a bigger hero tonight than I thought.” Micah arches a skeptical brow.

“Micah Ainsley,” I proclaim, pulling the mask down around my neck. “You love that goofy dog more than you love yourself. You dote on him. You saved him from being retired and bored to death. You know all his little habits, his moods, everything about him—and you know he’d do anything for you, even charging into battle.” I laugh. It’s getting easier to breathe now. “They say you never trust a person who doesn’t like animals. And as much as you love Rolf, I trust you’re still able to love things with two legs, too.” My fingers curl against his chest. “Maybe you need to start over. Start with you. Forgive yourself for all the things you couldn’t control.”

“With Xavier in custody, I might be able to work on forgiveness, but I’m not sure loving myself will ever be possible.” Micah’s lips twist.

I love you, so it must be, I want to scream.

But I’m afraid to. There’s a new fear that I’m misreading what he’s trying to say, what he’s implying. Fear that he’s about to break me all over again.

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