Page 64 of Criminally Yours

She nodded.

“I was certain I wasn’t good enough for you. I panicked that you’d look at me and realise I’d ruined your life. You’d see me as the mistake.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that.”

He dropped his head, studying anything but her. “You were an incredible person, intelligent, caring, and beautiful. You volunteered at dog shelters and with kids at the hospital, and you still achieved the top grades at college. I was a jock headed to university to study the easiest subjects. I was in awe of you, and every day we’d hang out, I’d wait for you to realise you could do better than me.”

“Look at me, Strike,” Millie snapped, but he kept his head down.

“And then we took that camping trip, and we kissed. In that moment, all my dreams came true, but the fearsworsened. I was terrified you’d find out I was a fraud or that I wasn’t good enough to be in your shadow,” Strike mumbled, his voice shaking and tears running down his cheeks.

A sob left Millie’s mouth. “You were the greatest person I’d ever met.”

Millie pulled the hood of her sleeping bag down. With trembling, pale fingers, she tucked strands of still wet hair behind her ears.

“You’re shaking,” Strike said. “You need to get warm.”

“I’m fine.” But her voice trembled.

“Get in my sleeping bag.”

Her face was a whisper away from his.

“You need to warm up and…” He closed his eyes and sighed sadly. “And I need you close so I’m not as damaged as I feel right now and so for a second I can believe you don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” she replied, her voice as gentle as the heart she kept showing him.

He opened his eyes. Even in the darkness, he could see the softness of her gaze.

“Is your sleeping bag big enough for two?” she stuttered.

“It’s big enough for us. Will you join me for tonight?” He unzipped the sleeping bag, his fingers trembling as she crawled out of hers. “It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”

But he wanted it to mean something, even as he internally kept pulling away. She’d said in the lake she was falling for him again, but there was too much pain between them.

“Okay.” She tucked herself into him so they spooned, and he zipped them up. “I don’t know what else to say. I need time to process all of this.”

He wondered if she’d press for more. There were details he was omitting, but she’d been through enough for tonight. “Take all the time you need. We’ve got a long drive tomorrow, so ask all the questions then or when we get to Cornwall.”

“And I need to talk to my family. I’m not saying you’ve lied, but I need to know why they did what they did.”

“They thought they were protecting you from your big bad neighbour who was obsessed with you.”

“It’s not enough of a reason. But I don’t think there ever will be enough of one.”

She exhaled slowly. He wanted to take all the hurt from her. She wrapped his arms around her. He squeezed her, sharing his warmth. “Will you tell me about one of your scars?”

“You haven’t heard enough emotional stuff tonight?”

She shivered, and he pulled her tighter to his chest. “After hearing about the past, I want to know what happened to you after you left, what made you become this man. I won’t force you, though.”

He sighed a juddering sigh. She’d finally faced her fears about the past and shared her pain with him. He wanted to do the same for her. He wanted her to understand why he still kept his barriers up. “Okay.”

He tightened his hold of her. Her body was soft and the comfort he needed. She threaded her fingers through his.

“The ones on my back are from an incident with my platoon. We were on a fact-finding mission. We were readying to leave the town when everything turned to shit. My squadron commander later told me I should’ve gotten out of there sooner, but I needed to rescue my team. It left me vulnerable, and a couple of us were captured.”

“Did anyone die during the incident?”