“No. I’m going to stay with Julie.”
“Staying with Julie makes her more of a target,” he said. “You have to see that.”
“The police have to know about this now,” she said. “I’ll talk to them. I’m sure they want to talk to me. I’ll get protection.”
He closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms, his face buried in her neck, lips by her ear. “I swear to you, Lauren, that if you don’t leave here with me of your own free will, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here. Hate me if you have to but you’re going to be alive when this is over.”
She was trembling with his touch, with the warmth of his breath on her neck, with desire to turn back time and have him be who she’d thought he was. To have them be what she’d thought they were. “I can’t. I just... can’t.”
“She can stay at my place tonight,” Blake said from behind her. “Then you two can figure things out from there.”
Royce pulled back to look at her, his blue eyes hard with determination. “Choose. Me or Blake?”
“Blake.”
His chest expanded and then relaxed, before he took a step backwards. “We have to talk.”
“No. No, we don’t.” She turned to Blake. “Please get me out of here.”
His gaze lifted over her head to Royce’s and held a long moment before he stepped aside and waved her forward.
Once they were in the Ranger, darkness and silence was all there was, until finally, they pulled into the garage of their building and parked.
They sat there a moment, neither of them moving. “When I was in the ATF I fell in love with a woman, another agent.”
Shocked at his personal confession, she turned to look at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was clutching the steering wheel, staring at the concrete wall in front of them.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I... knew that.”
“So you know she was murdered.”
Her heart clenched. “Yes.”
His head jerked around, his gaze piercing hers, even in the darkness of the vehicle. “If Royce had asked me if he should have come clean with you, I wouldn’t have told him ‘no’ but ‘hell no’. You would have done what you did tonight. You would have pushed him away and made it damn near impossible for him to protect you. And you don’t take risks with someone’s life, especially not someone you care about the way he cares about you. You risk their anger, their inability to forgive you, but you don’t let them die.”
She could barely breathe with his words. “You blame yourself. You think you compromised on something that cost her life.”
“I know I did,” he said. “I let her die. He’s been a wreck, worried you would hate him, worried about protecting you. And that woman on the machine was nothing to him, Lauren. Nothing. You are. He has a past but so do you. We’re going upstairs and you aren’t staying with me. You’re staying with him. If you want to sleep in the guest room, then so be it, but you need to be with him, so you two can try and work this out.”
She started to cry, the second time in two days and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried before that. She hadn’t even cried when she’d found Roger in bed with his bimbo. Mad at her weakness, she swiped the tears, and shoved the door open.
Blake met her at the bed of the truck, and they walked in silence to the elevator and then the apartment. She waited for him to search the apartment, and then joined him. She stood inside the door, trying to decide what to do, unsure how she felt. No, she wasn’t unsure. She hurt. She hurt like she’d never hurt before.
Blake sat down on the couch and she walked into Royce’s room, ignoring the rumpled sheets and the spicy male scent of the man she knew she loved, the man she’d always known would break her heart, and gathered as many of her things as would fit in a bag. She needed space, she needed to think. She needed trust.
She walked out of the bedroom, heading to the spare room down a hallway to the left of the master. Blake was watching the news, and he didn’t look up, but when she was about to turn down the hall, the television went off.
“Lauren.”
She paused without turning. “I meant it when I said ‘what if’ destroys. It’s the bitch of all bitches. Don’t give her a chance to destroy you, or my brother.”
Chapter Eighteen
Lauren’s cell phone alarm buzzed near her head and her lashes shot open. She’d dozed off and on, but true deep sleep had never come. She turned off the alarm, emotion swelling insider her. Royce hadn’t come to her, and it hurt, which confused her. She had told him to stay away. She wanted him to stay away. She sat up. Oh God. What if something had happened? What if he never came home? She shot to her feet, tugging her long pajama top to her knees as she hurried down the hall and rounded the wall, to stop dead in her tracks. Royce and Blake were both there, fully dressed and sleeping the two chairs they occupied reclined back, the television on mute.
Lauren stared at Royce, his long hair half out of the clasp at his neck, the long, dark strands brushing his handsome, tension etched face. She inhaled and started to tiptoe to his bedroom, where she’d realized last night she’d left her purse and makeup, and pretty much everything she needed to get ready for work. She crept into his room, gently eased the door shut and then rushed to the bathroom.
Minutes later, she stepped into the shower, the hot water pouring relief into her stiff, tired muscles. She lingered, taking her time, not eager to get out and face the day, most likely filled with police and news people.