please. Promise me, Leland. You could marry Cassel or something.”
He scrunches his nose up.
“And you could call Henry Daddy and my mom Ma. And…” It hurts to think that if I died Leland wouldn’t be able to handle it. The idea of him being alone pains me, but I need to show him that he’s not. There are so many people out there who love him and care about him.
I carefully lean into him and brush a kiss across his lips. “There’s more to the world than just me. Promise me you wouldn’t give up if I left it.”
“I can’t promise anything,” he says quietly as he avoids looking at me.
I don’t know what to do. While it makes me happy to be loved so dearly, the idea of Leland thinking there’s nothing left for him beyond me hurts. If I’d died during this… he would have stopped at nothing to find the man who did it and then what?
I squeeze him even though it makes my wound ache to do so because I just can’t think about losing him. And with that thought, I realize how hard it had to have been for him after I’d been shot. It sounds like he was the first one on scene and had to deal with me bleeding out.
He’s quiet as I take his unhurt hand and hold it closely. Leland is rarely quiet. Especially when something’s wrong. I feel like we’ve head-dived past the “Talks too much because he doesn’t know how to handle the situation” to “Dead silence because he’s broken and used up too many emotions.”
“How about after all this is done, we’ll do something super fun?” I say.
“No, you’re not allowed to leave your safe bubble,” he says.
I decide to ignore that and not inquire any further on what a “safe bubble” is. The scary thing is that Leland has the money to make this all happen. “What if… when I get feeling better, I pose in your gun room?”
He instantly smiles but just that quick it crashes and burns. “No, I can’t allow you around anything harmful. I’m going to remove all the knives from the house. I’ll lock all my guns up. Even the one under your pillow. And then I’m going to pad the sex dungeon and put bubble wrap on all the edges and make the walls bombproof and then seal up the door and I’ll just shoot little bundles of food down to you.”
“Well… that sounds depressing and slightly manic. What if, instead of all of that, we track down this guy together, and then once he’s been arrested, I’ll be safe again?”
“Ah, I should call someone and get you a toilet down there. You can’t drown in a toilet, right? Right?”
This isn’t going well.
I squeeze his hand. “Leland, please listen to me.”
He refuses to look at me.
“Look into my eyes.”
“I can’t! It makes me confused and slightly horny,” he says.
“That’s fine, but I need eye contact.”
He keeps his head tucked away from me. “Hmm…”
“Please look at me.”
“But I can see a tip of your nip from here,” he says.
“Leland.”
He grumbles loudly before catching my eyes. “Yes, Fiancé?”
“Repeat after me. ‘I will not put myself in danger, and we will talk through everything together before we do anything.’”
“Okay. ‘You will not put yourself in danger, and we will talk through everything before I bring out the grenade launcher,’” he says.
I squeeze his hand. “You live to make my life difficult.”
“You live to make my life difficult,” he repeats.
“Why do you repeat the stuff that doesn’t matter?” I ask.
“Why do you repeat the stuff that doesn’t matter?” he asks. “How long am I supposed to repeat what you say? It’s kind of getting weird at this point. Say something sexy.”
“Um… I like your face.”
“Aw, I like your face too,” he says before squeezing my hand and closing his eyes as if he’s going to take a nap. He probably is really tired since he spent the entire night tearing the city apart. But I’m also positive he’s just feigning a nap so he can stop listening to me.
“Please. I can only marry a man who I trust will tell me everything and won’t run off into danger.”
That stops him. “Excuse me, what?” he asks, eyes huge.
“Please?”
He sighs and snuggles against me. “I promise, bubble man.”
“You’re not putting me in a bubble.”
“Sexy bubble man.”
I sigh, but he has a grin on his face even though his eyes are closed again. We should probably separate, but