Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(88)

She’d put up with a lot from him. And the last thing he was going to do was take the coward’s way out and say he was sorry over text, a letter, or a computer screen.

He half expected her to not listen, and tell him it was too late that she had moved on. Hell, for all he knew there was some guy in her bed, tracing the fire blush, and that would be fine.

No, it wouldn’t be.

But it would let him know for sure, one way or another. If she made it through this, and still cared about him, even a fraction of what he felt for her—there was no end to them. Nothing could destroy what had pulled them together long before they understood the world was cruel.

Now all the shit between them, the hell he’d caused had been overshadowed. He wanted to look at her, the one person who had never given up, stood by him and believed him when he said Nolan was not gone, and for her to tell him they were wrong.

It didn’t happen. One look in her blue eyes, and he knew it was final.

Declan staggered forward and fell on his knees before her. His arms encircled her and he buried his face next to her and shook with silent tears.

It took her a second, only because she was having a hard time balancing out the magnitude of his presence, but her arms fell around his shoulders as she held him tighter.

Long moments later, he rose in one fluid motion and took her lips like they were the air he needed. She did kiss him back, and for precious heart racing moments it was as if no time at all had passed.

But things were different now, and right as he went to pick her up, when she knew he was seconds away from using her body to help him forget it all, she stopped him and stepped back, catching her breath.

Declan turned sharply, and rushed his hands through his short cut and he bent forward on his knees and cussed.

“I said I was sorry,” he said as his chest heaved. He couldn’t deal with this without her. He knew he couldn’t now.

“That’s all you said,” she managed to say.

Declan stood up straighter and glanced at Dawson’s new truck and shook his head in a pissed sway, sure now there someone else in Justice’s bed.

He turned sharply around. “That was it? That easy for you? Out of sight out of mind?”

“Don’t you f*cking blame me for this!” she yelled. “I told you not to leave!”

With a sardonic shake of his head he looked away. “You needed better.”

“So you said,” Justice said as her entire body tensed. She could see the war he just fought in his eyes, the pain there, the years it put on his soul and she knew he just walked into another. At the same time, she had some more earth shattering news to give him and she had no idea how he’d take it.

“You chose to listen to me?” he raged. “Hours after I beat the shit out of my brothers, my father. After I told them to never f*cking come near me again—you. After they tried to f*cking bury my brother!”

“He’s gone...” Justice said, knowing Declan’s emotions were still set on a year ago. He wasn’t on track with the notion that time had kept moving here. It always took him a minute to understand under the best of circumstances.

Declan shook his head and turned. He still couldn’t believe it, not after hearing it, not after driving by and seeing the taped off riverbank, not after he saw all the flowers on the side of the road. He still felt Nolan. He did. His God given Rawlings instinct felt him.

“You let them bury the idea of him, let me go and put another man in your bed,” Declan accused in a dark tone.

“Yeah, I did.”

Declan looked right at Justice, and she was sure then she watched his soul shatter. She was sure he did love her still, just as much if not more today then before.

“They needed to move on, Declan.”

Before he could leave she gripped his arm, and pulled him to face her. “The letters gave them hope, the letters are the reason we have closure today.”

He jerked his arm away. “No.”

“Declan.”

He shook his head. “You moved on.”

“Don’t move,” she said sternly then she ran to her porch, then inside. Both Dawson and Bell looked up, Justice shook her head. “Take him upstairs right now,” she said then she flung open the drawer in the kitchen and pulled out not only Nolan’s letters but also things she had wanted to give Declan, send to him, but was too sacred to do so.

When she came out, under a minute later, he was still there. His head was bowed. In his mind, he was sure the driver of that Silverado was going to come out and leave. When he didn’t, the finality of all this hit him in his chest.

Justice stood a few feet away and held out Nolan’s letters. “These helped your family...they’ll help you. His voice, Declan.”

Declan didn’t look at her when he took them. With his head down he shifted through the stack, seeing the dates on the bottom corner, ones that were long gone.

The first date fell when he would have still been in boot camp.

Declan didn’t want to read it in front of her, to be there a second longer, but his fingertips slid the short paper up, he recognized it. The paper came from a pad Declan had in his truck, in his glove box.

Yeah, so I just dropped your ass off and you were looking like a man with a few regrets. Let me lay it out for you, bro. This is your gig now and when it’s over you’ll figure out where the rest of it is. My money is on the great town of Bradyville. Don’t roll your eyes at me. You only got the wild idea to leave when Mom did. You wanted something to fight and saw the perfect path. That’s good. That’s right. But now your dumb ass has figured out girls do not all suck. Some stay, they stay forever because they are just as loyal as your f*cking ass. I wasn’t sure about you and Justice, not right now with her dad being all crazy, you leaving, but after this morning, when I saw you with her, I was. She makes you care, that says something. I’m officially taking my take away. Go slow, take your time. Give her the space she needs when she asks for it. And don’t say stupid shit you’re going to regret.