Page 123 of Locked and Loaded

"No." She looked up at him, and her eyes were bright with something that wasn't quite tears. "Six hours on a camel to tell you all the things I should have told you in Malta."

He set her down, his hands lingering on her waist for a moment longer than necessary. The camel made a noise of profound irritation and began investigating a nearby patch of scrub.

"The things you couldn't say," he prompted.

"The things I was too scared to say." She took a breath, and he watched her steady herself, watched her gather whatever she'd been rehearsing on the long ride through the sand. "You kept things from me. You managed me. You made decisions about my life without asking me, and it made me feel like I was something to be protected instead of someone to stand beside."

"I know."

"And then you found my sister." Her voice cracked on the last word, but she didn't look away. "You walked into a room full of monsters and slayed some of them, and you brought me Chloe, and you did it without fanfare, without asking for credit, without making it about you. You just handed her back to me and stepped away. I've been trying for months to figure out how to hold both of those things in my head at the same time, and I couldn't. Every time I tried, one of them slipped."

"Lennox."

"Let me finish." She put a hand on his chest, her palm flat against his sternum, and he felt the warmth of it through his shirt. "I was angry at you. I was so angry, and I was right to be angry. But the anger was also a shield. It was easier to be furious at you than to admit how terrified I was. Of losing Chloe. Of losing you. Of what it would mean if I let myself feel everything I was feeling."

She swallowed hard.

"When you walked into that hidden room at the gala, I felt something crack open in my chest. I didn't know what it was at the time. I think I did know, but I wasn't ready to name it. And then Chloe was there, and I had to be her sister, and there wasn't room for anything else."

"And now?" he asked simply, not daring to let hope bloom in his chest.

"Now Chloe is in therapy. She's staying with her mother. She's going to be okay. It's going to take a long time, but she's going to be okay." She looked up at him, and the hand on his chest curled into the fabric of his shirt. "And I've spent months staring at the ceiling at night, trying to figure out why I let you get on a plane to the Sahara without telling you the truth."

"Which is?" he prompted.

"That I missed you." Her voice was steady now, steadier than it had been since she'd climbed off the camel. "That I couldn't stop thinking about you. That every time I closed my eyes, I saw you walking toward that door, and every time I opened them, you weren't there. That I was so busy trying to protect myself from getting hurt that I almost talked myself out of the best thing that's ever happened to me."

She stepped closer, close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes and the faint line of sunburn across her nose and the way her lower lip was trembling just slightly.

"I don't need you to protect me, Dragan. I need you to love me. And I need to be brave enough to love you back. That's what I came here to say."

The desert was very quiet around them. The camel had stopped chewing. The wind had died. The sun was balanced on the edge of the horizon like it was waiting.

Dragan reached up and cupped her face in his hands. His thumbs traced the line of her cheekbones, the same gesture she'd used with Chloe on the terrace, and he felt her lean into his touch like she'd been waiting for it.

"I've missed you every day," he said. "Every hour. I came out here to clear my head, and all I did was think about you. The way you looked at me in the courtyard when you left. The things you didn't say. The things I should have said."

"Which were?"

"That I'm sorry." His voice was low, rough at the edges. "For keeping things from you. For believing I knew what was best for you instead of trusting you. For being so afraid of losing you that I almost pushed you away." He tilted her face up toward his. "That I love you. That I've loved you since you kissed me as a ploy to steal that damn key. That I've never met anyone like you, and I don't want to."

She let out a breath that was half laugh and half sob. "You love me."

"I love you."

"I rode a camel for six hours to hear that."

"I know." A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, the first real smile she'd seen on his face since the last time they’d left this desert. "The camel looks like it regrets every decision that led to this moment."

"The camel is not alone in that." But she was smiling now too, and her hands were on his chest, and the space between them had shrunk to nothing. "Say it again."

"I love you."

She kissed him.

The sun slipped below the horizon. The sky went from gold to copper to a deep, impossible violet. The camel made a sound that was either approval or indigestion, and somewhere in the distance, the first stars were beginning to show.

Lennox pulled back just far enough to look at him. Her eyes were wet, and her smile was real, the kind that reached all the way up to her eyes and crinkled the corners.