Page 36 of Adoring Delaney

“Why are you telling me this? You never—”

“No more secrets.”

“What?” I muttered.

“Ask whatever you’d like. I’ll answer. I don’t want anymore secrets between us. But before we travel down that path, I want you to understand something. You know me, Laney. Just because you don’t know about the Navy or what my job was, doesn’t mean you don’t know the man I am. And I want you to really understand why I didn’t talk to you about any of it. It had nothing to do with me not trusting you. When I came home and was with you was the only time I felt like me. Like I belonged. I loved my brothers. We were a team and they were all good men. I do not regret my service. I do not regret being a SEAL. But I never wanted you to see me as Special Operator Lenox. I didn’t want that to touch you. I wanted simple. I wanted just you and me. I wanted to be your Carter. I wanted to be good enough for you and I was afraid if you knew what I’d done you wouldn’t think I was. So I kept it all from you. Ask all your questions, Laney. I’ll answer them all. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but never forget, you know me.”

My stomach tightened and felt funny.

“All I ask is you do it over dinner. I’m fucking starved. Your dad and mine kept me in meetings all day. And when I wasn’t going over schedules and course curriculum, Uncle Levi and Uncle Clark were running me around the compound. I had no time to break for lunch.”

“You’re serious?”

“About which part, being so hungry I could down five peanut butter sandwiches? Or the part about our dads being slave drivers?”

“You hate peanut butter.”

“Yeah, babe, I know. That should tell you how hungry I am. Can we get to dinner?”

I didn’t move to leave for dinner like he asked because my legs were shaking. Instead I continued to stare at him, using the mirror to do so. Maybe I could do this—or at least I could try if he was willing to finally open up. He’d said no more secrets, if he truly meant that then possibly, possibly there’d be a chance for us.

“Laney, baby?”

“Yeah, right. I’m ready.”

I finally let go of the counter, turned to face him, and he pushed off the doorjamb he’d been leaning against and stepped toward me.

“You look beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I murmured and shifted my eyes away from him. It was silly, I’d heard him tell me a millions times he thought I was beautiful but this time it felt different.

It felt like more.

“Eyes on me, Laney.” I didn’t want to look at him. For some asinine reason I now felt shy. This felt different than all the other times he’d stood in my bathroom.

His hand came up and went under my chin, forcing my attention back to him.

“Let’s go get dinner, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Everything’s gonna work out. Trust me.”

“If you say so,” I grumbled.

“It will. I promise.”

My back shot straight and I stepped away from him.

Now he wanted to promise me something? After all of this time, I was just supposed to follow blindly? I don’t think so.

“Don’t, Carter. Don’t make me promises. Just because we’re going out to dinner doesn’t mean I trust you. It doesn’t mean I think we can be together. All this means is I’m polite and you tricked me into agreeing to go out with you and it would be rude to stand you up. We’ll go on our date, but there’s no guarantee you’ll be getting a second one.”

His face went funny and it was a weird mix of hard and trying to hold back a smile. Whatever he was thinking was annoying and I wasn’t going to stand around and wait for him to explain.

It was time to go and get this night over with.

“Thanks.” I heard from behind me and turned to watch a very tall, very pretty woman walk through the door Carter was holding open. She looked kind of familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

---