Page 48 of A Beta Protects

“Because you’re a Marine?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “This is something else.”

In Missouri, he spent two months dodging me, then he joined the Marines. Yet, the moment I’ve arrived in Wylder, he’s bent over backwards giving me everything I might need and want.

“Did you mean what you said before? That you joined the Marines because of me?”

He nods, takes a deep breath and releases it. “For purely selfish reasons. I wanted something that was not mine to have. Except that thing was not a thing, but a person. A woman I wanted the first time I saw her.”

The memory of our first meeting slams into me.

I’m stepping out of Bryce’s car, cradling Aaron’s favorite macaroni salad. My eyes connect with Dom’s and his hand tightens around his bottle of beer.

Bryce offers Dom his hand, but Dom doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy staring at me. Then he wrenches his gaze away and takes the first opportunity to leave.

“Me?”

Dom said it before, and I refused to believe he would want someone like me. That years later, he still wants me.

He slowly nods.

He couldn’t get away from me in town.

So he went to war.

And I sent him care packages every month thinking I was helping. Instead, all I was doing was reminding him of me when he was trying to forget me.

"In Missouri, when I first met you, I wanted you.” What I’m about to admit isn’t right, but it’s the truth. “I told myself I was sending you the care packages because I didn’t want you to have nothing to open, but that isn’t why I sent them. My reasons were selfish. I wanted you. Not Bryce."

His eyes slam shut and a hard tremble shakes his body.

Concerned, I take a step toward him. "Dom?"

He wrenches his eyes open. Anguish fills them.

I ask a question I think I already know the answer to. "If I hadn't married Bryce, Would I have been with you all this time?"

After the longest second in the world, he nods. “Yes.”

I drop my head, hiding the tears I want to shed.

"Kira?"

I lift my chin.

His hand is still there, hovering between us.

I take a step down the porch and the tips of his fingers brush my cheek. He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I don’t want to go inside.”

“You don’t?”

I shake my head and take another step down. We’re as close as we can be without standing on the same step. There’s no way we could do that with what’s nudging my lower belly.

“Kira…” he breathes, sounding tortured. “I can’t walk away from you this time.”

“So don’t.”

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