Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(44)

And then it was over. He pulled back.

He touched his lips. “Doll...”

I looked at the ground. “I know. I confuse you.”

He drew in a breath. But he didn’t say anything.

I went back to our table. Someone had left the check for us. I shuffled cash into the black leather folder.

Griffin was behind me. “I was going to get that.”

I turned to him. “It’s okay. It’s not like this was a date or something.”

He furrowed his brow. “Wasn’t it?”

I straightened, smoothing out my skirt. “Should we go back to the hotel?”

He sighed, sounding frustrated. He seized my hand and dragged me out of the restaurant. “Let’s walk.”

It was much warmer at night here in Austin than it had been in West Virginia. I let Griffin lead me up the sidewalk. I looked at the shops we’d visited earlier in the day. Most were closed now.

“I don’t know how to start talking about this,” said Griffin.

“Talking about what?”

“I don’t think you’re a murderer.”

Oh. That. I felt my stomach turn inside out. “I’m glad you don’t. But maybe we shouldn’t talk about it anymore. It only makes us angry and ugly.”

He didn’t say anything. “All right. Fine. Let’s go back to the hotel.” He let go of my hand and turned around on the sidewalk.

I caught him by the shoulder. “Wait.” He seemed so defeated. I didn’t want to cut him off if it was important to him. “Do you have something you want to say?”

He cupped my cheek with his palm. “I don’t know. I wanted you to know that I don’t think that. You yelled it at me right before I ran off, and we haven’t talked since then.”

“But you said I killed your child.”

His jaw worked. “That was how it felt. To me, it felt like something... something that I was supposed to protect... died.”

I pulled away from him. “And you blame me.”

He grabbed my arm and forced me to face him. “No. No, doll, I blamed myself.”

There was a lump growing in my throat. My face twisted as I fought tears. “But you said I was selfish, and you called me names—”

“I never should have done that. I was angry at myself, and I took it out on you.”

I tried hard not to cry. He was apologizing? He was taking it back? He didn’t think I was selfish?

He craned his neck up at the sky. “I hate Jolene French with every fiber of my being, but sometimes some of the things she said help me. We had to become efficient at killing at Op Wraith.”

“And she taught you to turn off,” I said. I’d seen Griffin hard and emotionless. It was terrifying. “But you weren’t turned off. You were angry.”

“If the turning off didn’t work,” he said, “then she taught me other mind tricks. She said that it was hard wired biologically into men to want be protectors. If I had trouble killing people, I had to reframe the action in my mind as a protective action.”

At least this was distracting me from crying, but I didn’t understand why he was telling me this. “Okay.”

He shrugged, meeting my gaze again. “I think that’s why I freaked out. Because I’m hard wired to try to protect my own offspring. It’s biological.”

“So you get a pass?” I couldn’t believe him.

He rubbed the top of his head. “I’m not trying to make excuses for myself.”

“It sounds like it.”

“I’m saying I wasn’t thinking rationally. And then... with you in danger all the time it was very confusing. Because I still want to protect you, Leigh. Like with every fiber of my being. Because I’m in love with you. But I didn’t know how to reconcile that feeling with my anger and distrust.”

I put my hands on my hips. “You know, Griffin, you’ve really got to stop sneaking in how much you love me into things that sound like veiled insults. And you’ve got to stop doing it on the street at night too.”

He smiled. A careful smile. “Was that a joke, doll?”

“You remember how you told me that you loved me the first time?”

His smile widened.

“No man likes to see the woman he loves dancing naked in front of drunk people,” I said. “Or something like that.”

“No man does,” he said, his arm going around my waist, pulling me close.

I put my palm against the firmness of his chest. “Griffin...” I murmured softly.

He kissed me again. He nudged his tongue into my mouth and teased a moan from my lips. He kissed me the way he knew I liked it. His kiss was like coming home.

“If you’d been there, I don’t think that...”

“If I’d been there, things would have been different. But I wasn’t there. And that isn’t how things went.”

“No,” I said.

“I won’t leave again,” he said. “I swear. I won’t leave unless you throw me out.”

I smiled.

“As long as you still want me, that is.”

I kissed him.

*

Griffin pushed me back on the bed in our hotel room. Next to us, the polka dot wallpaper cheerily looked down on us. I reached up for him, and he settled against me, his body pressing into mine, my hips cradling him, my arms holding him.