it?
I wasn't the woman I was a couple of weeks ago. So much had changed. Parts of me had opened up. I let down guards. I learned new skills, explored new passions.
I learned that a man could be a hard and a soft place, somehow, at the same time. I learned that they could actually want me for more than a night. And that I could want them for more than that as well.
I couldn't think like the Miller from a few weeks ago. Because I wasn't her anymore.
"Mills," Quin tried, voice going softer, eyes pleading with me. "You have to leave with me. You see that, right? You have to come home."
"Chernev is holding a grudge against me," I told him, unable to say what he wanted to hear.
"And you more than anyone else, knows that we are equipped not only to keep you safe, but to chase that bastard down, and take him out. I know you have some sort of... feelings for that man in there," he said, casting angry eyes at the house. "But you know that we are better at this than he is."
That was likely true.
We were, after all, the people that men and women like Christopher turned to when they couldn't solve their own problems. Precisely because we were good at it, because we could produce the results desired.
And if Quin—not to mention Smith and Gunner and Kai and Lincoln and Ranger—wanted Chernev rooted out and strung up, that was exactly what they would get. They wouldn't rest until it happened.
"You have a life, Miller," he tried, voice softer, more coaxing. "I get you maybe had some fun with this guy, but you need to come back to your life."
The thing was, he was right, wasn't he?
I had a job.
I had a home.
I had friends.
I had a life.
And it was half the world away.
And I knew better than to put my everything into a man. I'd seen the blowback of that many, many times in my career. When it ended. And, let's face it, it usually ended. The deck was stacked against love and relationships. People changed. Life tore them apart. And there would be devastation and uncertainty.
And if I were stupid enough to throw everything I had worked so hard for, fought tooth and nail for, to be with a man who might eventually toss me aside, I would be left with absolutely nothing.
Nothing.
To do what?
Start all over again?
A year, five, ten, twenty years older?
It wouldn't even be possible.
Yes, I felt different. And, yes, I cared more deeply for Christopher Adamos than any other man I'd ever met.
Was that worth everything else?
It was romantic to think so.
But it was also foolish.
And I was far too old to pin my future on girlhood hopes and wishes instead of adult facts and certainty.
"I know," I whispered, my voice a vague, pathetic imitation of surety.
I'd never been more conflicted.
I'd never been less sure of myself.
"Hey, no," Quin said, voice choked as he looked at me, making me realize my eyes had flooded, tears threatening to brim over and slip down my cheeks. "Don't do that," he demanded, sounding hopeless.
I'd seen this man handle crying women almost on the daily. He'd done it with diplomacy, with calm professionalism.
All that was stripped away now, though.
He was just a man faced with feminine tears. And he had no idea what to do or say about them.
"Christ, Mills, I don't know what to do with that," he admitted, eyes wide. "I, ah, you know what, I'll send him out," he decided, rushing away, doing what bosses did best—delegating.
I turned away from the windows, looking off the deck, the stunning landscape blurry through the water in my eyes.
I felt Christopher before I heard him. His body moving in behind me, close, but not touching.
"You're going," Christopher said, his voice small, impossible to interpret.
The sound of his voice managed to rip away the control I'd been holding on to, made the floodgates fail, made the tears flow, bringing with them this awful, choked whimpering noise I had never heard myself make before.
At that, his hands sank into my hips, turning me, wrapping me up, crushing me to his chest.
"I know," he murmured into my hair, lips pressing there. "I know," he repeated, one hand running up and down my spine as my soul purged the uncertainty, the fear, the potential loss about to shake my world.
A long time later, so long that I am embarrassed even to consider how much time