Page 86 of Hard Beat (Driven 7)
“I’m so sorry for doing this to you, for putting you through this, Tanner. You have to believe me when I say that it wasn’t an easy choice to make, knowing what it would do to you, but it was the only choice.” She reaches out and frames my face with her hands so that she can make sure I don’t look away when she speaks. I just stare and nod, wanting an explanation but not really needing one the longer we sit here. She could tell me that she was an alien with three heads and I wouldn’t care so long as she’s here right now.
“Kids, husband, the white picket fence… I’ve never wanted what I called a real life. Never. After my parents died —” She stops when my eyes flash up from where my fingers trace a line over her abdomen at the mention of one of the many things we talked about. “I broke cover. It just kind of happened that day. It was so easy with you to be myself after pretending for so long that I was someone else. I don’t know… The whole story I told you was true except that my first job after the newspaper was the CIA, not freelance.”
“You’re fascinating,” I murmur, the magnitude of her strength such a turn-on.
“Hardly,” she snorts in a self-deprecating fashion. “You need to know that the time I spent with you, the laughs we shared, opening up and telling you I love you was all me, all real… I never faked how I felt for you, even when we were arguing.”
Her comment draws a chuckle from me, and I just can’t take my eyes or my hands off her because I’m so afraid she will disappear if I do.
“The blast happened. There was chatter of cover being blown and then speculation that the opposition would think that maybe you were in on everything as well. I was out one night, Omid saw me. So stupid on my part really. I was careless, losing my edge. I couldn’t be sure he recognized me, but I’m pretty sure he did. I’d been tracking him for a while, thought he was playing both sides of the fence, and if he was the snitch, that meant that you were in danger too since he may have thought we were a team. It killed me to push you away, but I had to do it to keep you safe. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say I’m sorry enough for what I put you through.”
“Why use Rookie at the hospital, then?” I ask a question I’ve asked myself a million times but couldn’t figure out.
“The agency transferred me there, wanted me to use an alias while they set up the house and the cover there. Rookie Thomas was the first name that came to mind. A way to keep you close to me
. Subconsciously, a part of me hoped that you would come looking for me. I just didn’t expect it would be so quickly.” She sighs with a little shake of her head. “I shouldn’t have expected any less from you, really. I thought by the time you’d figured it out, we’d have moved out. It was stupid on my part for so many reasons. I put you in danger, put Dane and me in danger…”
I purse my lips and try to fathom what it was like on her end, because being left in the dark on my end sucked. “Does Dane know you’re alive?”
“No. No one could know except for my CIA handler to keep everyone safe. I’ll tell him, but you were first. I had to tell you first.”
“Is Beaux your real name?”
“Not anymore,” she murmurs with a trace of sadness in her eyes, and I angle my head and stare at her as I wait to find out what it is. “Blair Jane,” she says with the cutest scrunch of her nose, like she’s unsure of it. “So I can still go by BJ.”
“Blair,” I murmur, rolling the name around on my tongue. It feels so foreign, and I know it’ll take me a long time to get used to it, but it’s a lot easier getting used to a new name than to the hole in my heart from thinking she’s gone.
“I’ll still answer to Rookie, though,” she says, a smile spreading on her lips that stirs so many things within me – the strongest of them is peace.
“Good to know.” I lean forward and brush a kiss to her lips. “Because I’m bound to call you all of the above. I love you, Beaux Blair Rookie Whatever-your-name-is.” I finally get to say it, to tell her, and the only thing that I feel afterward is relief because I know she heard it this time.
I love the sound of her laugh, practically drugged with happiness and tinged with relief. “I love you too,” she says, wrapping her arms around me and holding tight.
“So what now, Bea—Blair?”
“I know it takes some getting used to. I might try my hand at real estate or something,” she says, causing me to lift my head up and look at her like she’s crazy. “You know what they say, location, location —”
“Location,” I finish for her with a laugh, appreciating the humor she’s trying to inject into this very surreal moment that I still don’t think my head or heart have caught up with just yet. “And while I don’t quite see that being your calling, at least I’d know you’re out of danger… but that’s not what I meant,” I tell her. “I mean, why get out now? Quit? Why do all of this?”
“Because I love you.” Her answer is spoken with such conviction, I have no doubt of its truth. “And because I always told myself that if there was ever a day I found myself thinking of the husband and kids and white picket fence, I had to give it up. I loved my job, Tanner. It saved me from so much, and I loved knowing I was making a difference in the grand scheme of things, but the one thing I never thought would happen, happened.”
“What?”
“I fell in love with you.” Her voice fades off softly, the emotion in it so strong, it flames the feelings within me to epic proportions. “Like head-over-heels, can’t-catch-your-breath, can’t-live-without-you kind of love. I tried to play cool, tried to act like I didn’t feel it, but my God, that first night? It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I wasn’t supposed to feel like that about you afterward… and I did, and it scared the shit out of me, so the only thing I knew to do was to frustrate you, make you want to push me away.”
“But you quit,” I tell her with a laugh.
“I did, didn’t I? Because you were so frustrating, and when you’re frustrating, going all alpha male, this is how it’s going to be, you are also so damn hot.” Her admission makes me smile and builds my ego all at once.
We stare in comfortable silence for a moment, the dust particles dancing around us in the sun’s rays as if they’re just as excited as I am, when something she said breaks through my scrambled thoughts. “You said I might not still want you here after I know the truth. I know the truth… Why would you think I’d tell you to leave when I feel exactly the same way?”
The shy smile returns along with tears welling in her eyes that I don’t quite understand. I shift again so that I can see her better, one leg hooked over hers, hand resting on her abdomen, and eyes fixed on hers. “Because I want it all, Tanner Thomas. I want late nights laughing and early mornings making love. I want memories and to lay down roots with you. I want you to teach me how to surf and for me to really show you how to shoot a gun,” she says with a smirk. “My history has been erased, and so I want to start making a new one with you. I want the white pickets, your last name… the little boy with skinned knees and sticky kisses. That time away from you after Landstuhl taught me that I want it all, and I know you don’t want some of those things, so…” Her voice fades off as she bites her bottom lip with hesitancy and averts her eyes.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I say, immediately needing to correct her way of thinking. “I want that too. All of it. I may not have the white pickets, but that’s an easy fix… and uh, I’m thinking a little girl instead… one that looks just like her mommy.” I rest my forehead to hers and just allow myself to feel this moment, feel her here, real and breathing against me, and I don’t think anything else will ever top this moment.
Her chuckle is low and deep and vibrates into my chest and against my lips. “In about eight months we’ll find out which one of us is right.”
I whip my head back to look at her with surprise, my lips opening to speak, but nothing comes out as I glance down to where my hand rests on her belly, a life I helped create growing somewhere beneath it.
