Unleashed (23 page)

His dark eyelashes cast shadows on his cheeks as he broke their stare.

“Or how about after you were deployed for three months,” she continued, “when I had no idea where you were and if you were ever coming back?” And knowing that when he did come back, he’d be even more closed off than before. It would take her weeks, months, to chip away at his defenses and get him to let her back in. By then he’d be deployed again, and they’d have to start all over.

But she would have dealt with that, would have dealt with almost anything to be with him. Because she loved him, and she loved the baby growing inside her.

Tears stung her eyes and she angrily wiped them away. “I was going to tell you in person when you came out to visit. And then when I had the miscarriage…it,”
was awful, and scary and left me feeling like someone had sucked the joy out of me
. “It wasn’t something I wanted to drop on you over the phone.”

She waited for him to say something. Offer an excuse for his behavior, both that night and the months before. Hell, maybe even offer an apology for her loss.

Their loss.

But he didn’t say anything, just stared silently, his gray eyes flat and lifeless, his mouth pulled in a tight, grim line.

The silence was awful, and soon words came spilling out to fill it. “After your mom disappeared it was like everything was a test. You wanted to see how hard you could push me, always making me prove that I wouldn’t crack like she did.” Caroline thought about what they’d discovered in the past few days and gave a short, humorless laugh. “Like you
thought
she did. And I took it. I took all of it because I loved you, and I thought I was strong enough to change you back into the person I fell in love with.” She thought he flinched, a subtle tightening of his muscles, but it happened so fast she must have been imagining it.

He drained the last of his beer and wordlessly opened another.

“You want to know the really stupid thing? After I left you that morning, I kept thinking you would come after me. I’d always been the one to smooth things over after a fight, make everything okay again, but I thought maybe if you realized you were going to lose me forever you’d care enough to come after me.” The pain in her chest was so fierce she was surprised her shirt wasn’t soaked with blood. She shouldn’t be talking about this. And it shouldn’t hurt this much anymore. His continued silence only made it more severe. She lashed out, wanting to find some hidden chink in his armor. “But I guess you were glad to rid yourself of the needy psycho bitch before I could do to you what your mom did to your dad. Oh, wait, I guess you were wrong about her too.”

She searched his face for any reaction and got none. A brick wall had come down around him, hard and impervious.

What was she expecting? That suddenly Danny would see her side of the story and beg her forgiveness?

Would she give in if he did?

Luckily it didn’t look like she’d have to answer that question because Danny had turned away without a word to stare out the window over the kitchen sink.

Unable to bear being in the same room with him, Caroline retrieved her suitcase and retreated to the spare bedroom to try to stem the bitter flow of blood that came from picking old wounds.

Stop her. Grab her. Hold her. Tell her you’re sorry. Tell her if you only knew, if she’d told you. Stop her. Grab her
.

Danny couldn’t make his body obey his brain’s frantic orders as he watched Caroline disappear down the short, dark hallway. He felt like he’d been hit by a Taser, Caroline’s revelation so jolting it left him paralyzed, unable to move or speak.

Pregnant. She’d been pregnant. With his baby. Their baby. And she’d lost it. Alone.

Jesus.

He wanted to scream and cry and smash things, but all he could do was sink to to the floor as his legs buckled underneath him.

Wrong. Fuck. He was so wrong about so many things.

So many choices he’d made based on things that weren’t true. And he’d been so convinced he was right. Thought he knew the score everywhere, all the time. Because of his mom’s disappearance, he’d let himself believe that any woman, anywhere, could up and leave her husband and children.

Caroline was right. He’d tested her. Pushed hard to see what she’d put up with. Even though she’d stuck by him and pulled him through one of the hardest times in his life, he didn’t trust she’d be around for the long haul. And even though he was just a kid, he’d known, deep in his gut, that Caroline was the one for the the long haul. But that didn’t stop him from trying to push her away, to test her mettle to see if she could really hack it.

He’d let it be known that he was doing what he wanted with his life, and she could either come along for the ride or get off the train. Despite her misgivings about him joining the Army Rangers, and later the Special Forces, she’d stuck by him then, too.

Jesus, he was such a jackass.

A baby
.

Blood roared in his ears and the wood paneled walls of his house seemed to close in on him. He staggered to his feet and lurched for the door, needing an escape, knowing there was none. He couldn’t get away from Caroline and leave her unprotected.

And he sure as shit couldn’t escape from his own mistakes.

He burst out the sliding glass door to his deck. He looked out at the redwood forest, haloed in silver by the light of the nearly full moon. Through the trees he could make out the lights of the valley below, and beyond that the bay and the hills across the water.

It was the exact same view he’d seen every day and every night in the four years that he’d lived there. How could the world look the same when everything felt so different? There was a hot, aching sensation in his chest, like he was being stabbed from the inside out.

Everything he’d packed away, pain at his mother’s apparent betrayal, his hurt that Caroline could shove him aside for something as trivial as him going on a bender with his brothers, came shooting to the surface like a geyser. Made all the more painful because he’d been wrong about all of it.

His mother he could almost forgive himself for. Even the police had been convinced she’d left of her own accord. Hell, even his father had accepted that Anne had left them. She’d taken off with a suitcase and a wad of cash, for fuck’s sake.

Cash and clothes that he now realized were meant to help Emily Parrish and her unborn child. Guilt threatened to rip him apart. His mother had died trying to help a young girl in a terrible bind, and Danny had spent the past eighteen years convincing himself and anyone else who would listen that his mother wasn’t worth a second thought.

I’m sorry, Mom, for everything I said, everything I thought. You deserved better than that. Better than me
.

As did Caroline.

He replayed that last visit home as the knot in his stomach tightened another notch. He’d just gotten back from a grueling mission in Central America, one where one of his guys had died. By the time he was on his flight to San Francisco, he still hadn’t come down from combat mode, still edgy and alert and ready for a fight. When Caroline had pressed him on when he was coming back, when he was going to pick her up, he’d snapped at her and told her to get off his ass about it.

He’d immediately regretted it, but asshole that he was, of course he couldn’t apologize. He knew he needed to calm down, get hold of himself before he saw her, or who knew what he was liable to say. He didn’t want to explain why he was so messed up after that mission, didn’t want to tell Caroline about how the memory of his buddy lying on the ground with his intestines spilling out kept him from sleeping.

What he saw out there was ugly and evil, and he didn’t want to bring it home to Caroline. So instead he’d gone out with Derek and Ethan who’d managed to coordinate their leaves with his. They were in the military too, they understood the need to go out and get shitfaced and tell gory tales to offset the horror of what he’d seen.

Caroline hadn’t understood. And when she’d lashed out, he’d lashed right back. “
I don’t need any of your emotionally needy bullshit
.”

A lump swelled in his throat.

“I thought maybe if you realized you were going to lose me forever you’d care enough to come after me.”

Arrogant fuck that he was, he’d expected her to call him within a couple hours of their fight. When he’d boarded a plane back to Fort Bragg four days later, he still couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard from her.

Twelve years later he wished he could go back and kick his own ass for being such a dipshit.

It all could have been so different. It
should
have been so different.

For once Danny was forced to acknowledge that there was nothing he could do to fix it. He couldn’t change the past and take away Caroline’s hurt and make things turn out the way they should have. So he sat on his deck and stared unseeing into the night as his world imploded around him.

Caroline tossed and turned in the double bed for a few hours before she finally gave up and threw back the covers. She didn’t hear Danny moving around the house. Maybe she could sneak into the kitchen and find a bottle of vodka or scotch—anything to help her shut her mind down and go to sleep.

Goosebumps popped up on her skin as soon as she stepped into the hall. Danny’s house was like a meat locker.

Figured. He was so cold blooded he probably didn’t even feel it. She was still reeling from his response—or non-response—to her revelation. She wanted to kick herself for telling him at all. But she’d needed to strike out, shake him up, let him know that she didn’t deserve all the blame in breaking them up.

Turned out she didn’t shake him up. And she hurt even worse knowing how little he cared about her and the baby she’d lost.

She blinked back tears as she walked into the front room. Her teeth chattered as a cold wind blew through the room. The curtains shading the sliding glass door fluttered. At some point Danny had left the door wide open.

Weird, since he was such a stickler for security, even way out here in the boondocks. She went to the door and looked outside. A large, dark form was seated in a deck chair, and she gave a startled gasp before her brain registered it was Danny. She started to duck back inside, but was halted by his quiet, almost stilted voice.

“Did you know what it was?” He turned to face her, the hard planes of his face illuminated by the silver glow of the moon. “The baby? Did you know if it was a boy or a girl?” His voice sounded tight, like he was being choked.

Or fighting back tears.

But this was Danny Taggart, a man who would sooner pluck his eyes from his head than let a single tear fall.

She took a step onto the deck without thinking. “It was too early, only twelve weeks.”

“Were you uh, okay? I mean, was James’s vasectomy the only reason—”

“I’m perfectly healthy,” she reassured, taking another step closer to his chair. “My eggs might be getting a little stale, but otherwise I should be able to have children if I want.”

“Good.” She could see his dark head nod jerkily. “That’s good.” He was dressed only in a long sleeved T-shirt and jeans, but he didn’t seem to notice the cold as he stared off into the moonlit forest surrounding his house. He turned to face her then, and even in the darkness she could feel the intensity of his stare. “You should be a mom, Caroline. You should have been one already.” His voice caught and he turned away, but she didn’t miss the telltale scrubbing of his fists against his eyes.

Crying? No way. Had she finally gotten to him?

She didn’t feel anything close to triumph at the knowledge. All she felt was a deep, black ache that threatened to consume her. Old pain she’d struggled to keep at bay from the moment she saw him again came bubbling to the surface, washing over her. Worse because she could feel his pain too, rolling off him in dark waves.

He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head to his hands. “I thought I had it all figured out. I knew exactly what was going on. With my mom. With you.” He sat up and shook his head. “I didn’t know a fucking thing. Not a goddamn thing.”

For a man like Danny who thought he knew everything, it must feel like his world was ending. Caroline stepped closer, unable to help herself. She prided herself on being smarter than average, and a smart woman would have left him to his brooding. A smart woman would have known she didn’t owe him a lick of comfort or sympathy, that he’d lost that right when he’d closed himself off and pushed her away. His ignorance was no excuse.

But Caroline had always been monumentally stupid when it came to Danny Taggart. She’d always been drawn to him, especially when he got like this. He was like a big battle scarred jungle cat, tempting her to pull his head into her lap, stroke his hair, do whatever she could to take away his pain. Never mind that he could kill her with one careless swipe of his paw.

So when he reached out one, big, shaking hand like he was reaching for a lifeline, she released a helpless sob and let him pull her over to him. He grabbed her around the waist in a desperate grip and buried his face against her stomach. He burrowed his head like a little kid seeking comfort.

Tears burned at the backs of her eyes as Caroline folded herself over him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and bending until her face was buried against his hair. Huge muscles bunched tight under her fingers, like he was afraid if he relaxed even one sinew he’d fly apart.

She knew the feeling well.

“Caroline,” he said, his voice muffled against her tank top, “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Caroline straightened a little, struggling not to burst into sobs. Twelve years. For twelve years she’d waited for that apology. She felt like she was being ripped down the middle.

In a last ditch effort at self-preservation she tried to break free of his hold. She needed to get away from him. Sleeping with him was bad enough. She was afraid if she stayed with him she’d start remembering all the reasons she’d loved Danny Taggart to the point of madness, and all the reasons he still had this crazy pull on her.