Page 130 of Buried Too Deep

He chuckled and it was just wicked enough to make her smile, too. “I definitely want to feel, but I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

She smacked his chest lightly, her cheeks on fire. “You know what I meant.”

He brought her closer, tugging until she was curled up on his lap. “I know. And my answer is the same, without the dirty double meaning. I definitely want to feel. I’ve missed out on a lot. I’m tired of missing out. I keep sticking my toe back into the water, y’know? Testing to see if I can handle it.”

“Can you?”

“Better than I could two years ago.”

“What happened two years ago, Phin?”

“I met Stone. And then Delores, of course. I’d been just existing. Moving from one town to the next. Crashing wherever I could find a semisafe place to sleep. I was homeless sometimes.” He huffed a mirthless laugh. “I know where the soup kitchens and food pantries are in a lot of Florida towns.”

Her heart hurt even more to hear this. But this hurt was tinged with hope, because Phin wasn’t that man anymore. At least not now. Hopefully not ever again.

“Do you think that makes me think less of you?”

He rested his cheek on the top of her head, the movement weary. “It should.”

“It doesn’t. Phin, you entered the military as an eighteen-year-old boy with depression. Clearly you saw some things that have taken up residence in your head. You worry that you’re going to hurt someone, but, as far as I understand it, you only hit one guy in a bar after he started it and then shot you. You haven’t hurt anyone. I’m not sure that you could.”

“I wanted to kill that little bastard last night,” he growled. “Trying to burn your house down.”

That admission should not be hot. But it was. Swallowing that back, she patted his chest again. “But you didn’t. You and Stone restrained him and held him for the cops.”

She pulled back far enough to meet his gaze. She wanted to know why he was so worried that he’d hurt someone. She wanted to know what he’d seen that had so devastated his mind. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but this wasn’t the right time. He’d tell her those parts of his story in his own time, or he wouldn’t. “How did you meet Stone two years ago?”

The relief flashing in his eyes was unmistakable, and she was glad she hadn’t asked the more difficult questions.

“Stone’s brother Marcus is married to my sister, Scarlett.”

“The cop.”

“The homicide detective,” he corrected, his pride too cute. “Stone’s good at figuring things out.”

“Not hard to believe. He has facial recognition software on his laptop and knows how to use it. You and Antoine said that he’d been an investigative journalist. I need to look up some of his work. I haven’t had a free minute to do that.”

“I’ll send you some links. Or I’m sure Delores has all his articles on her phone.”

Cora smiled. “I’m sure she does. I like her a lot. She bubbles joy and contentment.”

“She does now. She went through a lot of therapy after she was nearly killed. Which was how she met Stone. He watched over her during her recovery.”

Cora had to set aside her horror at hearing that Delores had nearly been killed. She didn’t want to distract Phin. “I guess that’s why he’s so protective of her. He’s protective of you, too.”

“He is. He’s a good guy, with a lot of his own demons. He gets through each day by helping someone else. One day, two years ago, it was me.”

“I’m glad,” she whispered.

Phin smiled at her, a gentle thing that lightened her heavy heart. “Me too. When he met Scarlett, she’d been looking for me. Unsuccessfully.”

“Stone found you.”

“He did. Someone at one of the VA facilities in Miami remembered seeing me come in for my meds.”

“Meds? For depression?”

“Yeah. I’d tried so many since I’d gotten out of the army, but none worked. Finally, a Miami doc tried one that clicked. It was such a relief to be able to think. To plan my life out past an hour at a time.”

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