vehicles in the convoy veered off to the side of the road and did the same. No one exited their vehicles to see why we had stopped, but sat parked and waiting on us.
I climbed across the seat and was in Arjen’s lap within seconds, but neither of us went for the explicit wild sex that was capable of popping up between us. The hot stuff was at the surface of my mind, but I decided to put it on hold to discuss something much more important.
My hand slid across Arjen’s chest and up to his stubbled chin as his heavy gaze met mine. I pointed at his ear.
“Can you turn your earpiece off?”
He did so without dropping his gaze from mine.
“Back there, you said you loved me?”
I needed to know if the presence of death had spurred his words. The infectious smile he flashed me caused one to rise up on my lips.
“For those of us that have never had anything to love other than death, danger, and destruction, we feel it harder, deeper, more intensely than those that have had it all their lives. I would build your dreams with my bare hands to make you happy, Mecca.”
His arms tightened around me. “I love you deep enough to die for you ten times over.”
“I love you too,” I blurted, the words rushing as fast as my beating heart. They were the most meaningful words I had ever spoken to anyone other than Desiree. I assumed I would have trouble saying something so profound, but the truth had spilled free without a doubt.
At my words, Arjen closed his eyes. He appeared to meditate for a moment before a deep smile appeared. The sight of him smiling with his eyes closed, rejoicing on what I had admitted, sank in as deeply as the love he had professed to me.
Forehead to forehead, we sat and breathed each other in, no words, only a buzzing swirl of our emotions, and an outpouring of our affections for each other.
A soft, lingering kiss breathed enough contentment into me to make me forget about the shoot-out, and the instant family I inherited. Arjen eased back, staring into my eyes.
“Mecca, we promised that we would be honest with one another. Will you tell me what Silvia was talking about when she mentioned you never letting it be a disability? What was she talking about?”
I attempted but failed to swallow the damn brick lodged in my throat. Eventually, I would be forced to tell him the secret I had lived with, the one I had managed to keep hidden most of my life.
Although, I would have preferred to have had this conversation in the comfort of our house, Arjen needed to know. It should have been the first thing I revealed to him, but I had never allowed anything to dictate my life.
“You asked me a few times if this necklace held meaning. It does.”
He glanced down at it before returning his gaze back to mine.
“It gives me something that millions of people take for granted every day.”
His face tightened in confusion.
“It gives me sound.”
His piercing gaze deepened. I pointed at my necklace, specifically at the small circular pendant.
“This contains the microphone, circuit board, receiver, and antenna.”
I turned my head and pointed at my earring, the piercing in the inner conch of my right ear to be exact.
“This is the receiver.”
He sat for a paused moment putting my words together in his head. When his eyes went wide, I knew he knew my secret.
“I’m hard of hearing. I’ve been deaf in my left ear since birth. I begin losing my hearing in my right when I was fourteen, after I was beaten and left in that dumpster. The only person that knows is Desiree. Raymond never paid enough attention to notice that anything was wrong. Without a hearing aid, I can hardly hear the sound of my own voice.”
He scratched the back of his head, staring intensely into my eyes before his gaze drop to the necklace and was lifted back to my ear.
“Mecca,” he whispered, swallowing hard with his eyes locked on mine now.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t look at me like that, Arjen. It’s why I’ve never told anyone. It’s why I’ve been hiding this since I was a kid. A lot of my teachers, and even the guys I ran with on the streets thought I was being an asshole, not listening and being hardheaded. My problem was that I didn’t hear them