Page 19 of Run

“It doesn’t matter. I dealt with them.”

“It does matter.” Tentatively, she reached out and traced the damage along his ribs with a barely there touch. “You matter.”

David held her wrist to halt her exploration. “You can’t say something like that to a man like me.”

“I don’t understand,” she said as she searched his expression for answers.

All she saw was a man who seemed bewildered by his own reactions. A man who was used to being hurt and coping with it on his own. Her heart physically ached at the thought, making her want to press soft kisses to each and every injury—as though that would make it all better.

“Elle,” he said evenly. “Men like me, we’re nothing more than blunt instruments. There’s nothing about us that can’t be replaced. Nothing that would be mourned if we were gone. We’re trained to suffer for the cause, and we’re good at it, but we don’t matter. Never think that we do. It’ll just end up with you getting hurt.”

“No.” She shook her head, unable to believe what he was telling her. All the while seeing that he meant every word. It was clear, he thought he was educating her in the reality of life. Breaking an awful truth to her as gently as possible.

Well, he was wrong.

“Don’t say that,” she scolded. “You matter. Everybody matters. You believe that, don’t you?”

He studied her for a second. “You’re a helluva girl, Ellie Blue,” he said as he shrugged back into his sweater.

“That’s a non-answer if ever I’ve heard one,” she muttered.

“Go sit with the others.” He opened the door for her. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I can help with your injuries. Let me care for you the way you did for me.”

“I’ve got this,” he said.

“No, really I—”

He raised his voice to call out to the team. “Can somebody come get Elle? She’s unsteady on her feet. A cup of sugary tea would help too.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth before Ryan appeared. “Do I need to carry you?” he asked Elle.

“No.” Her reply was terse.

“Yep.” Ryan put an arm around her shoulders and led her from the room. “That’s her hangry face. Don’t worry, we have Snickers.”

But David wasn’t worried. He’d already closed the door.

* * *

As soon ashe’d locked the bathroom door, David let out a shaky breath and grasped the edges of the sink. Holding on tight, arms tense and straight, he stared at his reflection in the mirror.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked himself.

Elle would never understand his place in the world, while he’d accepted it long ago. He shouldn’t even have brought the subject up with her. But more than that, he shouldn’t have touched her. And he sure as hell shouldn’t have been flirting.

“You’re being an asshole,” he told himself.

Especially when he knew he couldn’t go there with Elle. They didn’t have a future together and all he was doing was teasing them both. Yet, he couldn’t seem to stay away from her either. It was torture. Hanging his head, he let out a low groan.Irresistible.That’s what she’d been since the moment he’d set eyes on her. And talking to her had only made it worse. He never should have agreed to that first meeting in South America. Up until then, he’d been able to keep it professional.

A vision of Elle appeared in his mind. She sat tailor-style on the hood of a beat-up SUV in Middle-of-Nowhere, Peru. It was nighttime, and he’d been brought in to help Lake Benson’s team retrieve a kidnap victim. Elle’s bright blue hair had bounced around as she explained how she’d hacked an unhackable closed system. Then she’d asked him which agency he worked with and, when he didn’t give an answer, had requested some fingerprints and DNA so she could do some digging into his background. Like a fool, he’d left her a sample of his DNA after the mission ended. All because he couldn’t resist playing with the fearless blue-haired girl.

He’d known then that he had to stay away from her. And he had. Until the need to see her, hear her…touch her had become too great. He’d told himself he was only chasing her down to warn her to stop searching for him—a feeble excuse at best. The truth was, he’d been weak. She was a light in the darkness of his life. The warm, flickering flame of a candle behind glass. Enticing him to come closer, to sit awhile, to relax. When relaxing in his profession could get him killed.

Or worse—get her killed.

And he couldn’t be responsible for the death of another person he cared about.