Page 19 of Healing Bonds

We were both so lost, and my soul was screaming in pain on behalf of Ryan.

“I lost fifteen men in that ambush.” I sucked in a sharp breath of air, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Fifteen of my brothers—people I had known for four years!” Ryan shouted, suddenly standing up in a flash, ripping his hand from mine to pace the room.

“Ry, baby, it’s okay.” I was quick to stand and reach for him, my voice shaking with nerves.

“Don’t you understand?” His fingers yanked through the strands of hair on his head. “It’s all my fault because I couldn’t think fast enough! All of my training was useless!” He halted his fast-paced strides and loomed over me, nostrils flared, eyes wide and crazed like a bull ready to charge at me, and his hands were balled into fists at his side.

If he had been anyone else, I might have been scared, but this was my Ryan, the man I had been hopelessly in love with for years. He would never hurt me, that I was sure of. Taking a deep breath, I reached for him, my hand resting on his chest right above his rapidly thumping heart, a fast yet steady beat under my fingertips. His body stilled under my touch, tension evaporating from his shoulders as he sucked in a deep breath, then exhaled loudly, his hot breath brushing against my face.

Slowly, I added my other hand and flattened out my fingers, feeling his muscles ripple under the thin fabric of his shirt.

“I love you,” I whispered, leaning forward to kiss his neck. He swallowed loudly against my lips at the base of his throat, a shudder rolling through his body as he calmed down even further. “I will always love you.” My lips brushed the soft skin of his neck as I placed another feather-light kiss, trying to make him feel my love, to make him understand that I was here, that I was never going anywhere. I would never abandon him.

A sound of pure anguish escaped his lips as he grabbed onto my arms, his thick fingers curling around my wrists. I prepared myself for his rejection, but it didn’t come, so I pulled away to look into his eyes.

“There’s more … so much more.” He leaned his forehead against mine, bending himself down to reach me, closing his eyes with a sigh. “I’ve done worse. I’ve taken innocent lives to save my brothers.”

His grip on me tightened when I lifted my hands from his firm chest. “I don’t care,” I told him fiercely. “I love you, Ryan.”

He shook his head with a sad smile, his beautiful, blue eyes glossed over with pain. My heart wept for him. “You don’t understand, Amber.” He drew in a ragged breath. “I’ve killed innocent women and children, and when I close my eyes, they’re all I can see and hear, their screams of terror as I raised my gun?—”

“Stop! No more! Stop it, Ryan!” I shook my wrists free of his grasp and took a step closer into his chest, glaring up at him with rage boiling in my blood. “Iloveyou and all of your demons, just like you love mine. It doesn’t fucking matter what you did there. Stop trying to push me away. I amyourspitfire. Nothing you say or did could ever scare me away from you, and don’t you ever fucking forget it.”

He was slightly taken aback by my harsh tone, but the more he spoke, the angrier I became with his lack of trust in me. As if I would ever—could ever—leave him. He was a broken shell of a man, but he wasmyman, and I would be damned if he didn’t let me help him heal.

“Ryan, I’m telling you this one last time, and you better open your fucking ears up because I don’t like to repeat things twice.” A smile twitched at his lips at my brash words, but the anger boiling in my blood didn’t simmer. “I fucking love you and everything you are. You made choices to keep your ass alive tocome back home to me—to me, Ryan!” I paused to jab a finger against my chest, tears of pure rage escaping my eyes. His hands momentarily tightened on my arms in response to the tears on my face. “I don’t care who you killed as long you ended up back here. Because, Ryan, Ican’tlive without you, and nobody understands or loves me the way that you do.” I was panting, my chest rapidly rising and falling as I looked into his blue eyes, waiting for some type of response.

“I will love you until my last dying breath, Amber Phillips, but I can’t promise perfection during the next few years. I can’t promise you that the same man that you fell in love with all those years ago will be here with you because I don’t know where he went.”

“I don’t want him, Ryan. I wantyou.” I curled against his broad chest, and his burly arms wrapped around me, keeping me flush against his hard body. The tension left his body in one long exhale when I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung to him. “I love you, Ryan.Only you.”

“Ry, I’m so sorry,” Celine whispered at his back, her arms wrapping around her body to contain her sobs. Ace stood behind her, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes soft as he looked down at Celine.

Ryan let me go with a soft kiss to my temple before turning to his distraught sister and pulling her into his arms for a bone-crushing hug. She cried loudly in his arms, whispering how sorry she was over and over until eventually, she was just drained.

“I wish you would have let me in sooner,” she eventually mumbled before pulling away, black streaks of mascara running down her flushed cheeks. “You’re my big brother. I’m never going to turn my back on you.”

Ryan chuckled, smoothing her blonde hair down where it got stuck to his beard. “Never, huh?” he teased, trying to lighten the mood.

“Unless you go after Ace again, then I’ll never speak to you again.” She smiled at Ace, who slid up behind her, caging her body against his as he wrapped his arm around her.

“I was just being a good brother, Cece.” Ryan shrugged. “Someone had to scare the boys away. It wasn’t like Dad would.”

“Right!” I snorted, taking my place back in Ryan’s arms. I rested my head on his chest just below his chin. “You were just an overprotective brother, who wanted his sister to be a lonely cat lady for the rest of her days.” Celine chuckled, her eyes twinkling as she looked up at her husband.

“Fine, you got me, spitfire. I was just an asshole, I guess.”

“You guess?” Celine and I shrieked in unison, causing both men to laugh. But then, Ryan’s lips met mine, and for a split second, everything felt right in my world again.

Chapter Eight

ACE

Tense silence filled the cab of my truck on the drive home. Celine was curled into herself, her feet perched on the seat with her arms around her legs. Her pretty face was buried in her knees as she continued to quietly cry over her brother and everything he had gone through.

And because I had also kept secrets from her. But it wasn’t my shit to tell. I hated that it put a rift between us, but Ryan had vented to me because he felt like he had no one else to turn to. And I wouldn’t betray his trust like that. Besides, like him, some of the shit he told me… they weren’t ready for yet.

Every time I rested my hand on her thigh, she flinched away, a soft noise of discontent filling the silence. The fifteen-minute drive to our house felt eternal with my wife giving me the cold shoulder.

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