Page 50 of Hunted in Hope Town

He took his time with his response, looking down at his plate. “I’m not sure I could if I wanted to. I didn’t leave on the best terms. Once my medical leave was up…they tried to work with me, they gave me the Alaska cover, but I couldn’t actually be there. I had to be here. So I quit. They don’t usually take quitters back.”

She sat back down next to him, needing to reassure him. “But they would. You were such a good agent.” She reached out and put her hand over his in what felt like a natural move. Like there was a part of her—the part she’d forgotten—that hadn’t experienced two years without him. “Once we’re safe, you could…”

He was looking down at her hand over his. Then shook his head, and it broke her heart.

“That job meant so much to you.” And she felt like she’d somehow taken it away from him, even though it wasn’t her fault, she knew.

He shook his head. “Too much. It meant too much to me.” He put his other hand over hers. “Nothing means more to me than you. I won’t let it. Not again. If this is a second chance, I swear to God—”

She pressed her mouth to his before he could finish. Overcome with emotion. Overcome with love. Overcome with the need to have him not…hurt over this.

“We’ll figure it out,” she said firmly. A promise to herself as much as him. “Together.” Maybe he was right, and they could wait on that. Threat first. Future later.

As long as they were together.

But that didn’t seem to ease the look of pain on his face any. “You don’t have to be stuck with me,” he said gruffly. “You need to know that.”

Stuck. She didn’t know how he could think that. “Did you go on that last assignment because you thought I was stuck with you?”

“No, I just needed… I needed…” He couldn’t seem to articulate what he needed. Because it hadn’t been about need. It had been about fear, and he didn’t want to admit that to himself. Even after all this time.

She opened her mouth to say it, then shut it. She didn’t want to do what she’d done before—hide everything that might upset him, but there was a time and a place. She’d already told him what she thought, so why repeat herself when he knew?

“You think I was afraid of becoming a father,” he said stiffly, surprising her by bringing it up.

She held his gaze seriously, determined to meet the moment, not fear it. “I do.”

“That was not a cognizant thought I had.”

“It doesn’t make it untrue,” she told him gently.

He didn’t move away immediately, but she could feel him withdraw. He took his hand off hers, shifted so there was more space between them.

She could let him withdraw. She could fall back into that old habit so easily. But she hadn’t suffered two years of trauma to fall back. She took the hand he’d withdrawn.

“You felt indebted to Jason, but you didn’t love him. If he loved you, he didn’t show it. It’s pretty damn natural if you had some concerns about fatherhood.”

“And I’m telling you, I didn’t think about that.”

“Because you shy away from the things that scare you. You bury them in work. In being…useful and helpful and doing good things, and scary things, so you feel brave there when you’re not inside.”

Carefully he pulled his hand away from hers again, pushed to his feet. He opened his mouth, no doubt to make an excuse to leave. Probably to go work, but something she said must have gotten through to him, because he didn’t end up saying anything.

He shut his mouth and stood there, looking a little lost.

So Kirsten did something she’d never done before. She pushed. “You were both put in an extreme situation, with tragedy at its center, you and Jason after your mother died. But fatherhood doesn’t have to be that way.”

He looked down at her then, angry and hurting. “But what if it is? What if tragedy is all there is?” he demanded.

She swallowed, because she understood that… He had experienced these past two years so much differently than she had. Yes, they’d both suffered, but his was a knowing kind of suffering. A trauma and a tragedy that had a different heft than hers.

And still…here they were. Together. She stood, faced him. “Then at least we have each other. That’s not a tragedy.” She cupped his face. Wouldn’t let him look away. “I love you.”

Some of that tension in him softened. “I love you too.” He swallowed hard. “But I don’t know how to be what you need.”

Need. What did she need? He seemed to think there was something more, and there never had been. “Then just be what I want. Yourself.”

Chapter Sixteen