Page 89 of Take Me Back
“I had to protect you.”
“By lying to me?”
Dane finally breaks eye contact and looks at the tan-colored panels of the ceiling of the jet.
“I should never have been with you to begin with. Shouldn’t have asked to see you again after Mexico. Hell, I shouldn’t have stayed at that resort longer than the two days I was supposed to be there, but I couldn’t leave.”
His laugh is forced, and my heart sinks.Does he regret it all?But Dane continues.
“Rome wanted to kick my ass for disobeying orders, but I told him to go fuck himself because I’d just met the woman I was going to marry, and I wasn’t letting her go.” He looks down at me, seeing the confusion on my face. “I didn’t think I had a choice. None of us had been in relationships since we started with the team, and it was an unwritten rule that you stayed unattached, because that opened up a whole mess of complications that weren’t worth it.”
Dane meets my gaze and swallows. “But you were worth it, and I knew I would make it work any way I could. If I were a better man, maybe I could’ve walked away from you and let you find someone else, but I knew from that first night you were mine and I’d do whatever it took to keep you in my life. I should apologize for that, but I can’t. The only thing I can apologize for is not telling you everything from the beginning. I didn’t want to drag the best part of my life down into the darkness.”
“Was any of it true? The stories you told me? Was it all a lie?”
His grip on my hand tightens. “The only thing I outright lied to you about was my job. Everything else was the truth or as close to the truth as I could manage. I hated lying to you, but I figured the guilt was worth it to keep you safe.”
Something else occurred to me, and I jerked back, pulling my hand from his. “Is your name even Dane Cross? Are we even really married?”
“Yes. Absolutely fucking yes to both.” He must sense the question I’m going to ask next, because he continues. “When I traveled back and forth to my missions, I used an alias. I was so fucking careful to make sure no one from that world could find a trail back to you. The only way someone could have connected the dots was from the inside.”
I nod, feeling somewhat reassured that at least noteverythingwas a lie, but I have to know the rest of it. “Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”
Dane inhales and lets the air out. “I wanted to, but you were in no shape to hear it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I walked away from my team and working in the field a year ago because I left them hanging, and we lost one of our men and two clients.”
“When Benjie died,” I say, understanding dawning.
Chapter 42
Dane
None of this is easy to tell Kat, but the weight is lifting with every confession. The only thing I can hope is that my lies won’t cost me everything. I’ve just gotten her back, and the promise of what the future holds if we can weather this storm is more than I’ve ever hoped for.
So I tell her what happened while I was sitting in that airport. Watching Luis fall to his death with a six-year-old boy, and the mom diving after them.
“I wasn’t there when you needed me, and I wasn’t there for my team either. I failed everyone, all in the same fucking day. I’ve never felt so helpless as I did sitting in that airport. There was nothing I could do for anyone. When I came home, I vowed I’d make things right between us. I would tell you everything ... but I couldn’t.”
Unshed tears gather in Kat’s eyes. “Because I was already in self-preservation mode.”
I nod. “You were barely holding it together. You needed those walls to make you feel safe, so I let you have them. Let you stay behind them until you found your strength. I fucked up. I should’ve been your strength, and I wasn’t.”
“And when I told you to leave and you did ...” Her words come out slow and measured, as though she’s putting together the pieces.
“I went to Luis’s funeral, and then the next day, I stood on the hill and watched a man bury his wife and son from a hundred yards away because he swore to Rome he’d have anyone who worked for him arrested if they showed.”
Kat’s hand finds her way back into mine. “And you needed me, and I wasn’t there for you either.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t tell you. You didn’t know.”
“I’m your wife, and when you’re going through hell, I should be by your side. I vowed I would stand with you for better or for worse.”
“And I started this whole thing on a lie.”
“I never told you I could have ALS and be sentencing us to something horrific.” Her shoulders straighten and her lips press together. “We both kept secrets. Maybe I wasn’t hiding a different life, but I’m not innocent in this either.”
