Mal squats down, hands on my knees. “You hit me because I backed you into a corner. Like I knew you would, but I did it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because this needed to fucking happen. You want me gone from your life, it’s done. But I can’t take a step away from you until I know it’syouwho wants that. Not the part of you that’s still bleeding out from whatever the fuck has happened to you.”
We’re eye-level. His gaze is steady. Brutal. Honest in the only way Mal knows how to be.
I try to look away. Fail. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Don’t I?”
No.
He doesn’t.
Hecan’t.
I take a breath.
Mal speaks first. “My best friend died because of me.”
Vinnie. The soldier from the photos stuffed in his bag. “I bet he didn’t.”
“He did.” Mal grips my knees tighter, then brings a clenched fist to his chest. “This thing in my heart—I knew it was there and I never told anyone. Never did anything about it, even when it got worse.”
“Mal, that’s not a crime.”
“Say my name again.”
“Mal.”
“Hmm.” Mal wets his bottom lip. “I hear that in my sleep.”
“You don’t sleep.”
“I do when I’m with you. It fucking kills me that I don’t bring the same calm to your existence.”
He has no idea that the nights he’s slept beside me are the most peaceful I’ve felt since masked men came through the window of my childhood home and set my life on fire.
Tell him.
But I’m too entrenched in the story he’s half told me. In everything else I need to know about him before I can breathe again.
I pry his hand from his chest. “Lie down with me?”
Thunder rolls as he stares, making it feel like a winter’s evening more than whatever time it is on a summer’s day. It’s cold enough—I’mcold enough, and the shiver that wracks me has Mal in motion.
He gestures for me to lie down and make room for him. Then he stretches out beside me and for as long as all I think about is how good it feels to be so close to him, the malnourished ache throbbing in every part of my body…it feels like it’s happening to someone else.
Mal shifts onto his side. His hair falls into his face, but it’s mine he brushes back, his fingertips grazing my cheekbone. “I know I’m being all extra about your business, but it doesn’t have to be now. You can sleep if you want.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re fucking not.”
“How did your friend die?”
Mal’s face shutters. He forces himself open again. “Took a bullet he’d have seen coming if my shit hadn’t distracted him. Then my whole team got blown up because I couldn’t get it together enough to carry him out.”