Page 90 of Caught from Behind

I smile at her. “I’m a big, tough hockey player. I can take a blow and keep going, especially if it means that we’re here now, doing this.”

“Holding a crying woman in the cold?” She’s going for light but fails miserably.

I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m holding the woman I’ve loved from the first time I saw her smile as she trusts me with another precious piece of herself.”

Her inhalation is so sharp it sounds fake.

And then she’s crying again, burying her face in my throat.

But that’s okay.

This is another type of trust, another gift from her to me.

My body is warm and my arms are strong.

I have tissues in my pocket and nowhere more important to be.

And…

I love her.

That’s enough for now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Ella

“Come on, chérie,” Riggs says a minute, an hour, an eternity later.

He shifts and scoops me up in his arms, keeping the blanket around me as he starts carrying me down the beach.

“I can walk,” I rasp, my throat so raw the words are barely distinguishable.

“I know you can,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t put me down, just continues holding me as he tromps through the sand and snow, making his way to the parking lot.

The closer one that was full when I parked earlier in the day.

“My car?—”

“Knox took it home,” he tells me, gaze coming down to my shocked one for a moment before focusing back on the path, carefully climbing the stairs that will take us to the lot. “My car’s here, baby.”

I see it now, the medium-sized SUV parked just a couple of spots away.

He approaches it without breaking pace, pulling the handle once to unlock the door, and then again to open it. “It’s cold in here,” he murmurs as he settles me on my seat, buckles me in, and then covers me with the blanket. “But it’ll warm up fast, I promise.”

I nod, even though I’m not feeling the cold, not really, not with the gentle way he held and carried me, the careful way he’d set me on the seat and buckled me in.

Fingers on my cheek, my jaw. “I’m here,” he says softly.

My lungs inflate in a rush, hearing the rest of what he’s left unsaid—that he loves me and that he’s not going anywhere.

I want to believe that…but how can I?

“There’s time yet,” he murmurs, cupping my jaw, kissing my forehead. “We have a lifetime ahead of us for me to prove it to you.”

I want that, perhaps more than I want my next breath.

And that has panic sinking its claws into my belly.

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