Like a fucking man breaking into my fucking kitchen.
“You’re going to grate your fingers if you keep that up,” Tammy murmured, taking the metal contraption and the dredges of the onion from my hand before nudging me out of the way this time. “I didn’t think that you would be the type of person to get all broody.”
“You were scared,” I said.
That was more than enough reason for the brood.
“Yeah,” she said, wincing. “Don’t rub it in.” A shudder. “I can’t believe I screamed like that. It was just a freaking man with a camera, and I—” She shook her head. “The guys are going to give me so much shit.”
And here she was, making jokes, cooking, totally not upset with the guards. In fact, she’d just said, “Sometimes things go wrong,” and had shrugged.
Shrugged!
Meanwhile, I was reliving that scream, a bundle of jagged thumbtacks, each stabbing into me repeatedly as I remembered the terror I’d felt in hearing it.
“They do,” I said, “and they’ll answer to me.”
Tammy turned, her hands still mixing in the bowl. “God, they’d give me shit for that, too.” She rose on tiptoe, brushed her lips over mine. “But I’ll still enjoy every moment of it.”
I wanted another kiss.
This one deeper and longer and more intense than the peck.
I wanted to take Tammy back to the bedroom, after I kicked everyone out of the house, and spend the evening with her showing her how much she meant to me.
But she just shooed me away again, and so I went back to brooding over my beer, and knowing that I couldn’t send anyone away, not when they were the means to keeping the woman who held my heart safe.
Maggie, who’d shown up about thirty minutes after the police, appeared in the kitchen and took one look at my face before tugging me close and hugging me tight. “Thank you,” she whispered into my ear. She stepped back, rested a hip against the table.
“For what?”
She squeezed my hand. “For caring.”
My eyes had drifted to Tammy as she worked, looking completely relaxed and unperturbed despite the events, despite the influx of people in the house. She was fucking incredible, and I didn’t know how anyone would have a hard time caring for her.
She was . . . well, she didn’t just hold my heart. She was my heart.
It had happened in a split second, my draw to her—sharp words, instant chemistry, a striptease trailed by a gun—and my falling deep had happened just as fast. A body shielding me, focused not on herself afterward, quiet competence and strength and courage.
The night before had tugged me further down the rabbit hole, and the scream this morning, knowing how quickly a life could be snuffed out . . .
One injection too many.
A knife sailing through the air.
One scream.
And I’d known that I was in love with Tammy Conners.
She was both exactly like me and completely different. She was strong and smart and had a giant heart. She’d been hurt, sometimes she replied with barbs when things got too scary, but she’d also met me more than halfway with sharing the painful things about her past.
And I knew there wasn’t another woman I could be with who would understand that inner pain so precisely, who knew what it was like to long for something and long and long and to always be left empty and wanting.
I hadn’t found someone before her because they couldn’t know what that was like.
But Tammy did.
Which meant that she understood exactly what it took for me to let her in.
And I understood right back.
I stood up, brushed past Maggie, barely aware enough to offer a half-apology for my abruptness.
Then I was across the room, taking Tammy in my arms.
She pushed against my chest. “Tal,” she began, laughing lightly. “I need to—”
I kissed her.
Deep, as though by taking her mouth, feeling her lips on mine, my tongue dipping into her mouth, that I could imprint her onto my soul. That if only I kissed her long enough, held her tight enough that I’d always be able to feel her on my skin.
Only when my lungs were screaming for air did I manage to tear myself away. I cupped her cheek.
“I love you,” I whispered.
She froze, glanced at me then down to her hands. “I—I—” A sharp shake of her head. “I ruined your shirt.”
My gaze dropped to my shirt, saw that it had been smeared with raw meat. “I don’t care.” I tilted her head back up, stared into those beautiful hazel eyes, and said again, “I love you.”
Her pupils dilated; her lips parted.
I felt her breath on my skin.
“B-but . . . how?”
I pulled her a little closer. “But how could I not?” I said, and then I kissed her again, ignoring the voices in the front room, finally able to halt the rending that was tearing through me over what had happened to her because of me. Finally able to quiet the voices in my head and just be with her in this moment.
“Tal,” she whispered. “I—I—”
“Shh,” I said. “I don’t need you to say it back. I don’t need you to say anything. It’s in my heart, and it’s without strings. I love you, Hazel Eyes, and I’m not letting you go.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed several times.
Then, abruptly, she pushed against my chest, not gently, but firmly. “Let me go,” she said. “Let me—”
Heart sinking, I dropped my arms.
She turned away, and I watched as she walked to the sink and washed her hands, scrubbing fiercely and rapidly. I braced myself as she spun back to face me, her eyes flashing.
“How dare you?” She poked a finger into my chest, finding a bit of non-meat-covered
