Page 72 of Arrogant Bastard

I rub my hand down her arm, my brain firing with all the questions I want to throw at her. “Doesn’t explain why you left.”

She stays quiet for so long I think she’s not going to answer. “I didn’t trust my judgment. I’d taken two lives with little remorse when I’d been trained to tackle just such a situation without endangering life. I was on the wrong side of emotional.”

“There is…was a debriefing process for that. And I would’ve helped you get through it too.”

“But you…you were part of the problem,” she says in a bleak little voice that flays me.

Jesus. “What?”

She exhales heavily. “You…you overwhelmed me with…everything.”

I stiffen and can’t quite catch my breath, but I don’t defend myself. Because I can’t. The magnitude of my obsession staggered me too. The only problem was that I wholeheartedly embraced it. Immediately. Whereas she fought it. And is still fighting it.

“I’m not blaming you for any of it, Killian. I enjoyed being overwhelmed.”

Right. “But you didn’t trust me to take care of you. Not when it counted.”

She winces. “No. Don’t you get it? I didn’t trust myself to make the right call when it needed to be made.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I took matters into my own hands, and two people died. Well, I thought Galveston was dead too.” Her mouth twists in bitterness. “But I couldn’t even get that one right.”

“So your answer was to leave me without so much as a fuck-you?”

Her lowered gaze shutters even further. My instincts blare that I’m only getting partial disclosure. “That’s not everything, Faith. Is it? What else happened? Did Galveston touch you? Did he do anything—?”

She pales, and I want to kick my own ass for throwing out the unthinkable possibility.

“No. At least I don’t think so other than…what he did with the knife.” She takes a slow, steady breath. “Please, Killian, let this be enough.”

“Let it? Why?”

“I fucked up. Badly. Leaving was the only way I thought was right to make amends.”

Fury pounds through my veins. “Well, you thought wrong. You put us both through hell. How the fuck does that make anything right? And what was your intention? To hide away forever? Going from the club to your apartment and back again? What sort of life is that?”

She pulls away from me and wraps her arms around her middle. “What would you recommend then? I buy an island in Hawaii and spend the rest of my life sunning myself and drinking mai tais?”

I catch her chin in my hand. “Can the outrage. I know you’re hiding something more. What the hell aren’t you telling me?”

Her mouth quivers. “Can’t you just accept that this is the way it has to be?”

“Fuck no. You know me better than that.”

She yanks herself from my grasp. “I’m sorry, but the bottom line was that I didn’t want to be a spy anymore, and I was afraid you would talk me out of it. Getting away from you was the only option.”

“Faith—”

“I couldn’t risk the possibility that the next person to be killed would be you!” Her lips are pressed together in a tremulous white line.

My gut clenches at the words.

The percentage of Fallhurst Institute’s agents returning unscathed from the field was impressive. It was one of the first statistics I checked out before agreeing to join. But there were casualties too. In that line of work, it’s inevitable. So I know the risks she feared were real.

I search her face. I see that she believes it.

And yet…

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