Page 65 of Redemption
She cranes her head back, stunned as her mouth falls open. “Bullshit.”
I look right back at her, praying she sees the sincerity in my eyes. “It’s the truth, whether you believe me or not.” She scoffs, but I continue despite her suspicions, intent on getting her to see my side of things rather than her ill-perceived, half-blind version of what happened. “Think back to what I was doing back at Tryon. How protective I was. You didn’t know it at the time, but I was trying to help you escape. To help the woman they were searching for escape. The video feed on that particular drone isn’t the greatest; I can see relative figures and heat signatures, sometimes general characteristics, but everything else is kind of hard to distinguish. I had no idea it was you until I went around back and saw you there.” I feel the fight begin to leave her limbs as she listens to my hurried explanation. While she might still be on high alert, her shoulders relax slightly as my words filter through her anger. I loosen my hold a little, hoping the sincerity in my voice will get her to understand and finally trust me. “I couldn’t believe it myself, but there you were. And all I could think about was getting you far... far away from thisgodforsaken place, but no... all you wanted to do was race right back into the lion’s den.”
With my arms still slightly wrapped around hers, she lifts her hands only to smack them back down against her thighs. “To get my guys! They’re mine and I’m theirs, and I can’t just leave them like you did to me!”
Fuck... that hurts.
Her words force me to drop my arms completely and let her go. Thankfully, despite being free from my grasp to do whatever she wants—including leaving my ass in the dust—she stays where she is, intent on listening, her gaze never straying from mine. Good. Because everything she knows about me, including what happened back then, is only one-sided, and she doesn’t understand the reasoning behind what I did at all.
“First of all, let’s make one thing crystal clear. I left you to protect you. To keep you safe and to let you live your life without the constant burden of military bullshit.” I want to push forward, to press closer, pin her against the wall, and pull her back into my arms, but I force myself to remain where I stand. In neutral territory. In a place where she can focus on what I’m telling her versus what she perceives the meaning to be. My voice gets deeper with the truth I know she understands deep down but refuses to acknowledge. “Did you honestly think we’d have one hundred percent say in where we got stationed? What about when I inevitably deployed? Or if I, for some reason, didn’t make it back from deployment?”
Her eyes gloss over as I reveal what a life in the military would have been like. Unpredictable. Ruthless. The majority of couples don’t even stay together due to the hardships found in such a relationship. I loved her so much I wanted her to be free from all of that. Free to live her life outside the confines ofwhat the government regulates and allows. Free to experience her youth without me holding her back. I know she would have followed me to the ends of the earth. Given up everything for me.
Lived her life... for me.
I wanted her to live for herself.
To be dumb and courageous. To find out who she really was deep down under everything society tried to tell her she ought to be.
I loved her so much I ended up letting her go.
And now I’m about to do the same thing all over again for the same reason.
She dismisses my theoretical questions with a quick shake of her head and an angry swipe against her cheek. “It doesn’t matter anymore. You left, and now, somehow, you’re back and... and working for the same people who took everything I have in my life now.” She steels her gaze, planting her feet in front of me with absolutely no room for negotiations. “You led those guys straight to them. Regardless of your implied intentions, can I even trust you to keep your word?”
“Alessandra...,” I sigh at her determination. Not with frustration but with contentment, simply happy she’s not racing out the door and away from me anymore. “As I said before, I had no idea you were there, let alone your association with those guys, just that there was a female in the party being hunted, and that I needed to get you out. You were the priority that day. You, Alessandra. I have and will always do what I can to protect you...,” her hackles immediately rise, but I continue speaking before she can rain down her fury again, “while also doing my best to help you reunite with your group. I told you I’d do that, and I’m not about to go back on that promise.”
Reluctantly, she drops her hard glare, her composure crumbling before my eyes. “I have to do this, Darius,” she implores, tears filling her gaze and almost bringing me to my knees at the sight. “I have to. If I don’t get them back... If I don’t—"
I hold a hand up, urging her to take a breath as well as a seat on the couch and allow me to lay it all out there for her. “Alessandra, the last thing I want is for you to be unhappy. So, I promise you, if those guys make you happy, I’ll deliver them right to you. I swear it.” She takes a shaky breath at my declaration but allows me to take a seat next to her, as well as her hand.
“Believe me, regardless of what you think, you will never have a reason to fear me. Yes, I might work for them and have for some time, but I promise it’s not what you think. Helping you escape from the extraction team in the garden, concealing you under my ghillie suit until they all left, and then protecting you all the while since? It proves I’m not like them. I don’t agree with their preachings and, as such, have helped dozens of people escape their reign over the past few months. You were about to be the next person on my list to save from their entrapment, the next on my list to escape and run as far away from this place as I could get you... Until I saw your face, and then... And then... All I wanted to do was pull you into my arms and never let you go because you were fucking alive when, all this time, I thought you were dead.” My vision blurs, my voice catching at the memories of all of those I lost and, after realizing the virus’ capabilities and overwhelming reach, thinking she was amongst them as well. Another casualty to the contagion. I have many regrets from the past year and many regrets from all the years prior. But, as I look into the eyes of the woman who’s been my world longer than she even realizes, I refuse to add to the pile.
I turn and kneel on the floor in front of her, supplicating myself to her whims as I ghost my hands against the sides of her calves, my fingertips barely grazing her flesh. She’s surprised by the familiarity but doesn’t move away from my touch, giving me the courage to lay my soul bare at her feet. “I wanted to press my lips to yours the moment I saw you in that garden, to show you just how much my love for you survived over all these years.”
It’s as if she bends herself towards me, magnetized to my words just as I am to her. At her lingering gasp, my palms slowly climb the length of her legs, enraptured by the feel of her, until I reach her knees and pause, ready to lay myself bare at her feet. “I still want to do that now.” Our gazes connect, bringing our entire past back to life. As if I never left her there in that terminal. As if there weren’t years between us. As if there weren’t other people in her life now. None of it matters.
Not right now.
Not in this moment.
Not when I’m dying to say, “I loved you just as much when we were apart as when we were together.” My palm rises to her cheek, and I’m elated when she presses her face into my hand when I brokenly whisper, “I have never stopped loving you, Mi Alma.” My jaw tightens with the unbearable truth, however, and my hand drops back down to my side where it belongs.
“But I know... It’s not my place to, anymore.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Aly
Dare’s soft touch glides along the tops and sides of my knees, his fingertips barely touching, yet it feels like he’s ignited a spark of fire within me. His palm lifts to my cheek, and I can’t help but press into his warmth, remembering all those times I used to love it when he did this all those years before. His eyes suddenly turn solemn as his hand falls, leaving me cold and saddened by the loss.
“But I know... It’s not my place to anymore.”
As if he wasn’t just melting my frigid heart while laying his on my lap, he turns away and stands, offering his hand to help me also rise to my feet. His voice is gruff with fatigue, barely a whisper when he says, “Come on. We need to get some sleep.”
Night crept up on us faster than we prepared for, and although I hate to admit it, between the loss of my family, walking all fucking day, and Mother Nature reaping her vengeance on my poor uterus, I’m exhausted.
“Unfortunately, there’s only one bed, but you go ahead and take it. I’ll stay on the couch and keep watch,” Dare says, walking me over to the bedroom. When we come to the door, he opens it and enters but pauses, holding me back on the threshold, saying, “Hold on.”
