Page 55 of Hunted in Hope Town

He didn’t want to lose it because he was so focused on keeping them safe this time.

“What?” she asked him, interrupting his thoughts and making him realize he’d been staring at her pretty intently while he’d been thinking these thoughts.

“You’d make a really good mom.” Maybe it was a terrible way to broach the subject, but he didn’t know a better way to do this.

She stilled and didn’t look at him. “I’ve always wanted to be,” she said. Carefully.

“And it doesn’t scare you? That…you didn’t have a good one. That we don’t know what that really looks like?”

She took her time answering him, studying his face in a way he didn’t know what to do with. But he didn’t look away. He wanted to give her what she needed.

Fear be damned.

“No, not really. Maybe it’s my background in teaching. Maybe it’s loving you. Maybe it’s that she never made sense to me. I tried so hard to take care of both Mom and my sister, to make things okay. And she never did the same. I’m not like her. I couldn’t put anyone in danger the way she put me and Erica in danger. So whatever fears I have, and they certainly exist, they aren’t that I’d be like her. I don’t have to be like anyone. I get to choose my own destiny. I got out of there. I found you. I’ve always believed you and I could make anything work we put our minds to.”

He’d believed that once and lost it somewhere along the way. She made him want to believe it again. And he knew the only way to do that was to do the opposite of what he’d been doing those last few months before he’d gone on the assignment that had threatened everything. Even now.

He’d been pulling in, withdrawing. Thrown too much into work and not enough into her, because putting work into his marriage meant facing all those things he feared.

He’d prefer a gun—then and now—but losing Kirsten made him realize that was really damn stupid. He’d face anything for her.

“Maybe I was afraid. Terrified. I don’t know what to do with fear. I’ve felt it plenty, but it’s always just been…you shove it away and get through whatever you’re afraid of. But the FBI gave me somewhere else to go. Anytime I was afraid, there was somewhere I could go that was black and white, more or less. Life and death. Not…all these screwed up, mixed-up feelings that didn’t have anywhere to go.”

“They had somewhere to go,” she said. A note of hurt in her voice. “You could have talked to me.”

“I know I could have, but at the time I just…didn’t know how. I ran before I even allowed myself to really feel them. Understand them. Because feeling them…meant facing that I always lose the things that matter.”

She didn’t speak right away, so he had to sit in that…that truth. That fear. This thing he’d been avoiding for so long that saying the words felt worse than avoiding. He tended to jump headfirst into loss rather than be blindsided the way he had been for so much of his childhood.

He was about to stand up, tell her to forget it. Find something to do.

But she pulled a chair next to him, slid her hand across his shoulder and into a kind of half hug where she met his gaze.

“I don’t know how to tell you that you won’t lose. Loss is a part of life. And it’s awful.”

It wasn’t comforting, but it was illuminating because…it wasn’t unique, loss. Maybe he’d gone through life thinking he was uniquely targeted, but…all of his work should have taught him otherwise. Maybe he’d lost both his parents young, but he’d been given a lot of love too.

And so many people hadn’t.

“I didn’t want any kid of mine to feel like I did,” he managed to scratch out. “But I guess we all…have to deal with our own challenges.”

Kirsten nodded. She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I happen to think you’ll make an excellent father if you decide that’s what you want.”

It filled him with dread, and terror, and yet…the thought of her with a child. Their child. That wasn’t scary. Doing it with her wasn’t terrifying.

He had to clear his throat to speak. “I guess we have to…figure this out first. Make it safe.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but a notification popped up on his phone. It was the security system he’d tapped into.

Someone was outside.

He shoved to his feet. “Keep the door locked until I come back,” he told her. He reached down and pulled the gun from his ankle holster.

She was standing. “Ellis.”

“I mean it. Trust me. Please.”

She blinked at what were clearly tears in her eyes and nodded.