Zoe’s first instinct was to bolt upright and ask a million questions, but Sawyer pressed a kiss to the top of her head and traced circles on her back and, somehow, she knew the story wasn’t over.
“I saw him once a year. Here.” He gestured to the dark and dusty cabin. “He won this place playing cards in Monte Carlo, so it was never on any records. Which meant it was safe. For him. For me.” His fingers were in her hair then, a soft and gentle sweep that made her eyelids heavy. “It was the only place he ever let me call him Dad.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to make you go someplace you hate.”
He shifted until they were lying face-to-face, his hand a warm weight on her hip.
“That’s the worst part. When I was a kid, I loved it. I couldn’t wait to come back. I used to think that, someday, I’d stay forever and never have to leave. Someday Mom would come too. Someday we’d be a family, but . . .”
She heard the words he didn’t say: spies don’t get a happy ending. And a little voice in the back of her mind whispered, but maybe they could?
“As I got older, I figured he was just some jerk who used my mother and threw her away. But I was wrong, I found out later. He used her for sex, sure. But, mostly, he used her for secrets.” He looked into the fire, unable to face her as he finished, “And what she got was me.”
Zoe wanted to tell him there were worse things to end up with. She wanted to say his story wasn’t over yet. She wanted to crawl through time and tell that little boy he wasn’t just some spy’s collateral damage—he was hers now. And she wasn’t giving him up without a fight.
“Mom died when I was nineteen. Car accident,” he added numbly. “I was so fucking alone. But a few months later I got a call. Evidently, my test scores impressed certain people and I fit a certain profile—had a certain set of skills. Turns out there was a reason my deadbeat dad paid for me to take martial arts and learn archery and do summer exchange programs abroad. By the time I found out what he was, it was too late to change what I am.”
“I like who you are.”
His fingers made a slow sweep across her skin. “I swore I’d never be like him, sweetheart. That I wouldn’t use women. Leave them damaged or broken. I swore . . . But then I met Helena.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Was tonight my fault?” Zoe saw it then—the ocean of pain and doubt Sawyer was swimming through, and she knew why he’d shared more in the last five minutes than he had in the entire time she’d known him.
“Is that what you think?” She didn’t know whether to be hurt or very, very angry.
“I followed in my father’s footsteps, but I don’t want to be like him.”
“You’re nothing like him.” She had to make him see, but all he did was push her hair away when it fell like a curtain around her face.
“That’s sweet, lady. But you don’t know him. Hell. You don’t even know me.”
“I know I wanted this. I know I wanted you. I know . . . I know you’d never hurt me.”
“I’ll kill any man who hurts you.” She felt his lips brush against her hairline, tracing over her fading bruise like he could heal it with a touch. “Even if that man is me.”
And then Sawyer closed his eyes. And slept.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Him
The first thing Sawyer thought when he opened his eyes was that he must be dead. It was far more likely than the alternative: that he had slept. That he had slept but hadn’t dreamed.
“Good morning.”
At the sound of the voice, he rolled and reached for his gun—was just starting to aim it when he felt cold air on his bare chest and remembered the room and the night and the woman who was dancing around the cabin’s kitchen, humming over the sound of frying food.
Zoe. Kitchen. Zoe. Humming. Zoe. Bathroom. Zoe. Bacon?
He uncocked his gun and rubbed his tired eyes. “What time is it?”
“Almost ten.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I must have made you sleepy.”
She looked sheepish. She might have blushed. But all Sawyer could think was no, you made me forget. And then he almost said exactly that because, evidently, sleep didn’t make him sharper. It made him sluggish and slow and sentimental—the three S’s that would probably get him killed.
When she cracked an egg in the pan, he heard the sizzle and his mouth began to water. “Breakfast is almost ready,” she called, so Sawyer pulled on his jeans and padded toward her in his bare feet, synapses starting to fire . . . slowly.