Dungeon Games (Masters and Mercenaries #6.5)(64)

She did not need to do this tonight. “Bab…Karina, go to bed. It’s okay. We can talk in the morning. Or not.”

Her lips curled to the sweetest smile. “Because you don’t care?”

That wasn’t the truth. “I care. I care a lot. I just…Karina, you’re crying.”

He’d f*cked up again. She’d been through hell and only now was she crying. He’d been the one to bring her low.

“I’m worried that you won’t love me when I tell you my story, and I love you so much I think I’ll die if you can’t love me back.”

His heart skipped a beat. “What?”

She turned to him and patted the seat beside her. “I said I love you. Please listen to me and then you can tell me if you think you might be able to love me back.”

He loved her. He loved her with every fiber of his being. The story she was about to tell him wouldn’t change that in the slightest. He didn’t care. He loved the Karina who sat in front of him, the Karina who—if he had any say in it—would bear his children and hold his hand when they were old and gray. He loved the Karina who was strong and beautiful and who could save herself.

But this was her story to tell and he was going to listen.

She seemed to take his silence as acquiescence. “I have no idea who my dad is. He could be alive or dead. I don’t know. I went into foster care. I was okay for a long time. I got adopted. Her name was Marcy Giles and she was so nice. I was fourteen when she died. Car accident this time. I had a sister by then. Regina. She was two years older than me and I tried so hard to keep us together. There was no blood between us. Regina was born with Downs. Marcy didn’t care. I didn’t care. The state did. She died when I was sixteen. I only found out because I ran away to her halfway house.”

So much death for someone so young. He couldn’t stop himself. She was naked and offering herself to him. Not in a sexual way. She was giving him her pain so he could understand her. So he could take a piece of it into himself and make it less of a burden on her heart. He reached for her because this story was best told when she was in his arms, safe, loved.

He would take all of her pain and halve it because she belonged to him. Her pain, her soul, was a beautiful half of his. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to you?”

She sank into him, her shoulder finding his neck. Trusting. Her arms wound around him. No hesitation. She was his. “I got shuffled around. Some of my foster parents were good. Some weren’t so good. A couple…they used their position against me.”

He tightened his arms around her. She’d been abused. He wanted to go back and protect her but all he could really do was love the woman she was, to worship her for her beauty, her survival. There was something so strong, so vivid about the woman she was now. “I love you.”

Her head turned up. “Don’t say that yet.”

He already knew what she was going to say. He’d figured it out long ago. Emotion welled inside him. “I will love you until I can’t breathe anymore. And long after. I believe, Karina. I believe there is a heaven and if I go first, I will wait for you. Don’t say you can’t go there. God is greater than we make him. Bigger than we think he is.”

“I did drugs. A lot of them.”

So many people would have. “It doesn’t matter.”

His faith could take them far past where her legacy could. She’d been dealt a bad card. He had a full deck and he would share it with her.

“Derek, I did hard stuff.”

A deep peace settled over him. She trusted him. She was talking to him. Now he had to make her believe because they had a shot—a shot at life together, a shot at love, and that was all either of them could ask for. There were no guarantees. She could die tomorrow. She could change. She could fall away from him.

So many things could go wrong but he needed one thing, just one thing to go right. “I love you.”

“I was arrested twice and the only reason I don’t have an adult record is because Kevin sent me to rehab.”

She thought she could turn him away? He was made of stronger stuff than that. It was time to turn his back on his marriage. That had been crap but he’d seen real love. He saw it when his father looked at his mother. And he f*cking saw it in the mirror because he was in love with her and that wouldn’t stop. It was a terminal condition. He would love her forever. “It doesn’t matter because I love you.”

“Derek, you don’t understand. It was bad. My rehab was awful. I couldn’t keep anything down for days. I wanted to die.”

“I’m glad you didn’t because I love you.” There was only one truth and he was going to make her believe.

“When Kevin found me I was living in a house where they cooked meth and ran drugs, and I was two steps away from selling my body because I didn’t care. The drugs were all that mattered.”

He pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. She was his love. So brave. So smart. “I love you.”

Slowly, so slowly, her arms wrapped around him and they were together in a way they had never been before. Halves of a whole. He was the boy who had everything and still felt hollow and she was the girl with nothing who had so much to give.

Together they were complete.

She started talking. She told him about how alone she’d felt, how she’d been kicked to the curb at seventeen and found herself in a meth house. She’d had nowhere to go, but somehow she’d helped the people around her. She talked about the deal she’d made with Kevin. It sounded easy, but he knew damn well how much strength it had taken.