“I don’t know. That’s the biggest problem here. You won’t tell me what’s going on, so I’m being forced to guess.”
Guilt flashed through her gaze along with no small amount of condemnation. “That’s rich coming from the master of deflection. I haven’t pressed you to tell me what happened in Iraq. Have I?” Her voice rose as she crucified him on the cross of his own making. “I thought we were taking it slow. Waiting until the fragile bonds of trust were woven into a support system that we could both agree would hold the weight of the truth. Was I alone in thinking that?”
“I told you,” he ground out. “That’s not something I can discuss—”
“And I accepted that! You know how hard that is for me?” She jumped off the couch, hands on her hips as she faced him down. “I live in constant fear that you’re going to leave, just like my dad did. Like Isaac did. Like you did the first time. But I stuck it out. I’m still sticking it out, even though you’re not giving me any reason to. Give me a reason, Charlie.”
God, she was so strong and beautiful that his chest hurt. She was every inch the woman who could handle him, just like Rachel had said that night outside the restaurant.
So why was he picking this fight when he’d rather sweep her into his arms and spend the next nine hundred hours naked with her? Because that was the thing he wanted to do. But it wasn’t the right thing. “You shouldn’t accept that.”
That caught her off guard. “What?”
He loved her, yet he held back from fully committing to her, sniffing around for reasons to end things again so he could avoid being hurt when he found out her angle. Selfish women were his downfall. But she kept surprising him, twisting what he’d assumed was the truth until he didn’t know what he believed anymore. After all, he’d totally glossed over the fact that she’d gone to Anderson to try and fix the problems she’d caused.
If he pressed her, she’d tell him the truth. That he believed. And he couldn’t reciprocate. Jared’s parting words echoed in his head. Against his will. But he couldn’t unhear them. Charlie hadn’t been strong enough for her, together enough. She’d likely never go back to Jared, but that wasn’t the issue—it was that she’d stay with Charlie and she shouldn’t.
“You deserve better, Audra. You always have. I wasn’t there for you when Isaac died. I can’t promise I’ll be there for you in the future. You shouldn’t settle for that.”
Pain flashed through her eyes, and then she whisked it away. “You can’t tell me what to do, Charlie.”
Something pricked at his eyelids. No he couldn’t, nor did he want to. But neither could he stand knowing that he’d probably hurt her again. “I have to go.”
Tears shone in her eyes as she nodded. “I figured that was coming. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Of course she would be. She’d been preparing for him to flake out. If that wasn’t a conviction of his character and a tribute to her strength, he didn’t know what was.
He wanted to tell her he’d be back, that he was going to find a way to be worthy of her. But that would require a miracle, if it was even possible to fix what was broken inside.
The reasons he needed to try were legion.
He owed his team a solid and centered leader who could handle the threats against their well-being, not the least of which was the potential loss of their business license, and right now everything was swirling together in what promised to be a massive triggering of his PTSD symptoms that he didn’t want her to witness.
It was time to order the chaos once and for all.
Instead of returning to Duchess Island, where there was nothing but reminders of how he’d failed his team, Charlie took a cab to the airport. It was worth whatever astronomical amount of money he had to pay to get out of the Caribbean before he hopped back into bed with Audra. She’d welcome him, he had no doubt, but sex wasn’t the answer to these deep-seated problems. It complicated everything, especially the threat of binding them together permanently via an unexpected pregnancy.
She deserved better than a default proposal owing to his annoying tendency to do the right thing. The next time the word “marriage” came out of his mouth, she’d know it was because