The Unwanted

moves, still lives.” He passed a hand over his scarred chest, hidden by his shirt. “And they got me out. It took them longer to get to me but they did get me out. Nobody died. For the most part, it was a clean op.”

Gaping at him, the scars she’d seen so vivid in her mind, she wondered if he’d lost his mind.

“How can you call that a clean op?”

“Because my screwup didn’t blow a sixteen-month op down the drain,” he said flatly. “And we were lucky. I figured out fast that I had to find a way to fix things before I hurt somebody other than myself.”

It was a slap in the face—unintentional, yes. Deserved…oh, yes. But she recoiled from it all the same.

“Hurt somebody…” she echoed, her voice thick. “You mean like I did.”

His lashes flickered. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Passing her hand over her mouth, she managed to take the three steps it took to reach the couch and then she sank down onto the cushions. Drawing her knees to her chest, she pressed her face against them and tried to breathe past the pain wracking her.

“Destin—”

“I would rather that bastard had killed me than her,” she said quietly.

Silence stretched out, heavy and oppressive. As seconds ticked away without him saying anything, she finally looked up and met his dark eyes. Resting her cheek on her knees, she swallowed and forced the words out. “It would have been worth it…to me. She didn’t deserve to die because I wasn’t good enough.”

“Then you understand why I figure it was a clean-enough op.” Closing the distance between them, he sank to the ground by the couch.

She tensed as he lifted a hand, but all he did was curl it around her ankle, his thumb absently stroking her skin. “But what happened wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“Yeah, it was.” He continued to stare at her, dark eyes hooded. “I couldn’t let go of that one connection. I lied to myself and said I didn’t know how, that it was just a part of me now. But it was all bullshit. Once I made myself do it, I was able to lock you out. I felt like I’d shattered a part of myself but I did it. It hurt, every day, but I was able to do my job, able to function…without hurting anybody, without risking them. I don’t know if I can explain—”

She covered his mouth with her hand. “You don’t have to. I felt it too. Told myself it was because you weren’t really gone, you know. Insisted you’d come back. And then one day, you were gone…and I lost it. That was when things got bad for me. It spiraled out of control until the day I fucked up…and a girl died.”

Because she was watching his face so very closely, she saw it, saw that very moment when he understood and she saw when that understanding bloomed into a raw, gut-wrenching sort of guilt.

He closed his hand around her wrist and pressed a kiss to her palm. Then he tugged it down and sighed, staring at nothing. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.”

Shifting around on the couch, she turned to face him, one leg on either side of his body. Caleb moved in closer, sliding his arms around her body, tugging her closer to the edge of the couch. “I had no choice but to leave when I did,” he said gruffly. “I was moving closer and closer to the edge—it was too hard to tell where you ended and I began for a while. And if we’re going to do the job we do, we need to know our limits, our strengths. The way we were going, we would have fucked things up bad, probably for ourselves and others. We did that, but it could have been worse.”

Something tripped inside her and the pain in her heart spread. There had been tiny, hairline cracks there already but now…now they were getting worse. So much worse.

“So does this mean we’re done, then?” she said, forcing herself to give him a weak smile. “It’s the whole, we’re bad for each other thing, in a way that will cost lives sort of way?”

“No.” He reached up and brushed her hair back. “We were like that. But we’re different people now. Stronger.”

The ache in her heart continued to spread, though. It almost sounded like he was saying they deserved another chance. Like she deserved another chance. Shaking her head, she caught his wrist and guided his hand down. “Maybe we’re different, maybe we’re stronger. But I’m still the reason a girl lost her life, Caleb.”

“You’re the woman who was trying to save her…the reason she died is because a sick monster killed her. He’s the one who grabbed her, he’s the one who killed her. Nobody made him do it, Destin.”

He hooked a hand over the back of her neck and tugged her closer. As he pressed his brow to hers, she stared into his eyes. She wanted to believe that. Wanted to let go of some of the pain she lived with, but she couldn’t. “We don’t live easy lives, Destin. We make choices, live with things, see things, feel things that nobody should have to live with. It fucks us up and we know this…we’re going to make mistakes. But if we let it trip us up, then even more people get hurt, because sooner or later, we’ll freeze and then we give up. What good are we then?”

Chapter Ten

It was the most he could offer her. As they left the hotel, he knew it hadn’t been enough, but what else was he supposed to do?

It had been months after his fuckup before he had come to grips with things. And he’d only caused his own injury. There were times when he woke up in a cold sweat still, thinking he was back in that dark hole and it wouldn’t be long before they came back in, carrying a hot piece of iron they’d use to brand his flesh.

He suspected her nightmares were far worse.

As if they hadn’t been bad enough already…and shit, she hadn’t even come to grips with those yet.

He bit back a sigh as they climbed into the car. Destin slid him a look. “What are you so grim about?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Oh, come on…”

Skimming a hand back over his hair, he shrugged restlessly before fastening the seat belt. Destin started the car but instead of backing out, she just waited there and turned her gaze his way like she wasn’t going to do anything else until he talked.

“I was just thinking about the nightmares this must have given you,” he said, keeping his voice neutral. “It’s not like you ever slept all that well anyway.”

Her lids flickered. “That’s not everything.”

“No. But we don’t have time to get into it, do we?”

The skin around her eyes went tight. “You’re still caught up on that, aren’t you?”

He didn’t have to explain it. She already knew what he was thinking, where his mind had gone. He’d only approached it a few times—those dark, tormented dreams of hers…sometimes an ability as strong as Destin’s had its roots in trauma. A deep, hidden trauma. She knew that, theoretically. Logically, though, when he’d tried to connect those dreams of hers to her ability…she never wanted to talk about it.

And now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t like she’d wanted to talk about this anyway. He stroked a hand down her face. “We’ve got a job to do, Destin. We’ve wasted enough time around here today.”

“Why are you so certain?” she demanded.

It caught him off-guard. Staring at her, he tried to figure out how to approach this. Brush it off, answer her? He shook his head. “This isn’t the time, Destin.”

“You brought it up.” She jutted her chin up and glared at him.

“Destin, I’ve seen it,” he said, wishing he’d never said a damn thing. She didn’t need this in her head right now. “You can’t remember…but some part of you does and every time you dreamed it, you pulled me in. I can’t block it out the way you can.”

At his words, what little color remained in her face drained away until she was chalk-white, her gaze too dark in her wan face. “No…” Then she clamped her mouth shut. “You know what? We don’t have time for this right