ask, one I instinctively knew she’d shy away from.
“Yes, Maverick.”
“I don’t think I’m going to get better. I think this is the new me.” I’d always been good at reading people, and I sensed a gentleness about her that resonated with me deeply.
I didn’t want to hurt her more than necessary. Either emotionally or physically.
What was the point of putting her through this when I either wouldn’t remember or I’d end up blowing my brains out when everything grew to be too much?
Too many brothers, my fellow soldiers, had taken their lives, and for the first time, I understood.
Death was peaceful.
At the moment, there was no peace for me.
When I heard the lounger creak as her slight weight shifted, I expected her to leave me alone, to head back into the poolhouse, but she surprised me. She moved toward me, crouching at my side even as she lifted the towel and moved beneath it. Uncaring that I or it were damp, she pressed her face to my arm, and it spoke to how guilty I felt, how cruel I’d been, that I didn’t flinch away.
I didn’t know her.
I didn’t want her touch.
But she deserved that kindness.
“The new you is someone I want to get to know.”
The question was, however, did I want to get to know her?
My love for Nic was a powerful force inside me, an entity of its own that beat with a pulse. But he was gone. Dead. Had been for years even if my brain was only registering that now.
Alessa was here.
She hadn’t run away.
She wasn’t making me feel like a pile of shit even though I deserved it.
So many of my men had received ‘Dear John’ letters, to the point where mail wasn’t something to look forward to when you had a girl, it was something to be wary of. Something to fear.
We’d bitched about those feckless cunts, had called them out, yet here Alessa was. Doing the exact opposite of running. How could I fault her for that when I’d judged those other women?
How could I turn her away when she wanted me?
Me, a wreck of a man. My head like stew. Suffering with something that made me collapse like a pansy in a pool, and who was lying shivering under the sea of stars because the prospect of getting up, of moving, was enough to make me sob like a little girl.
“What if I’m not worth knowing?” I rasped. “Alessa, I don’t have good odds. This CTE is degenerative. It’s not going to go away, and it isn’t going to get better.”
“Are you going to kill yourself?”
The question should have surprised me, but I’d taunted her with the label of mind reader earlier, and I’d done so for a reason. She tended to appear when I wanted a coffee and disappear when I wanted to be alone. She knew when I was hungry and seemed to sense what I was going to say before I even fucking said it.
In all honesty, it was irritating as fuck, but it told me how much she studied me. How much I meant to her.
“I see this ending that way,” I told her gruffly, expecting harsh words and bitter recriminations. Instead, I felt the warmth of her tears against my arm, and her silence was more painful than the ice pick to my head of before.
“I would like to be there for you to help you see that it doesn’t have to end at all. You’re still young, Maverick.”
“Not as young as you. What are you? Twenty?”
“Twenty-four.”
Jesus.
Talk about robbing the cradle.
I sighed. “Why the hell do you want to be tied to an old man like me for, Alessa? There has to be another brother who can help you get your residency—”
“Maverick, don’t you see yet? The residency doesn’t matter. Whether I stay here or not is irrelevant. Before the clubhouse crashed, I somehow thought you’d come with me to Ukraine. Maybe I was wrong, but I could see you coming with me if I was tossed out.” She released a shaky sigh, one that sounded choked from her tears. She wasn’t the only one who felt choked up. “Whether we’re here or there, it didn’t matter to me. All that counted was you, me, and what we had together.”
“Fuck, Alessa, I’m so sorry,” I vented on a long exhalation. “I’m so sorry I went into that clubhouse.”
“It was important to you,” she whispered, once again not letting me beat myself up over this.
Proving, yet again, that