He kissed her hair and for a while said nothing.
Then at last he spoke. “Five days ago, I was ready to die. I was down to my last twenty-four hours, and I was ready to die. There was so much at stake—the whole operation. If the Zetas had known who and what I was . . . I was so afraid my mind would break before my body gave out. And then you were there, and everything changed. These past few days with you have been . . . There’s no woman on earth like you, Natalie.”
His words gave her hope.
She decided to risk it. “Back when I thought you were a criminal, I understood why we couldn’t be together. But now that I know the truth . . . If we’re both going to miss each other, why can’t we keep seeing each other?”
He turned onto his side to face her, his gaze level with hers, one hand cupping her cheek. “It’s not because I don’t care about you, Natalie. It just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be fair to you. You deserve to have a man who can truly be a part of your life, someone who comes home for dinner every night, who has time to play with the kids, who can grow old with you. I’m not that man.”
She could see in his eyes that he believed what he said. “Being a deputy U.S. marshal doesn’t mean you don’t get to have a life.”
That did it.
He turned away from her, sat up, put his feet on the carpeted floor. “Thisismy life, Natalie. I spend most of my days south of the line. I’m rarely home. When I am, it’s just to sleep, shower, refuel, and reload.”
She slid her hand up his back and sat up, draping her arm over his shoulder to caress his chest, her chin perched on his shoulder. “Lots of women have husbands who work long hours. Women whose men are in the military go months—”
“It’s not just that I’m gone all the time.” He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself. “Another DUSM, a guy who’d worked the line for a dozen years, disappeared a couple years ago. Somehow his cover was blown. Do you know what the cartels did to him? They butchered him and left his face—just his face—in a goddamned pizza box on his family’s front porch. His six-year-old son found it.”
“Oh, God!” Natalie felt her empty stomach drop.
Zach turned to face her, his gaze hard, his jaw tight. “I know what happens to women and kids when their husbands and fathers are killed in action or go MIA. I won’t do that to any woman, most especially not one who matters to me.”
“Well, if your job is so damned dangerous, why don’t you do something else?”
He laughed, shook his head. “Leave it to you to ask the tough questions.”
Then he stood, still naked, and began searching for his clothes. “I tried being a regular civilian. I tried for nine long months. It didn’t work.”
“Triedbeing a civilian? What does that mean?”
Zach looked over at Natalie, wondering how they’d gotten onto this topic in the first place. He so didnotwant to go here.
“Some men come home from combat.” He slid into his boxer briefs, adjusted himself, then reached for his pants.
“I . . . I can’t.”
That’s really all there was to it.
“I don’t understand.”
Of course, she didn’t.
He zipped his fly, looked up to see her shimmying into her nightgown, paradise vanishing behind a film of silk.
You must be out of your fucking mind to walk away from her, McBride.
Maybe. But it would be worse for her if he stayed.
“There’s something inside of me—it just doesn’t work. I went away to war, but I can’t seem to come back. I do all right out there where the adrenaline is high and the rules of engagement are clear—shoot to kill. But in the civilian world . . . You know what I spent those nine months doing? Drinking scotch and trying to get up the guts to eat my gun.”
“Oh, Zach. I’m so sorry.”
He couldn’t meet her gaze, a tight feeling in his chest. He’d never talked to anyone about this outside of the VA, and it made him feel like a fucking weak loser to admit it to her. But after what she’d done for him, she deserved the truth.
“If I left the service and we started dating, you’d look at me one day and wonder who in the hell I was, this patheticloserwho spends his days drunk and his nights in a cold sweat. Staying in the fight is the only way I know how to keep it together.”
She crossed the distance between them and pressed her hand to his bare chest, her voice soft. “That’s PTSD. I had to deal with it after the storm. But they can treat—”