Page 80 of Wyatt

If he’d stabbed her in the chest, it would have hurt less.

He sat up, put his feet on the floor, his hands rubbing his head as if trying to pry the words from his mind. “I knew…I knew it was wrong. I mean—yeah, I loved you—wow, I loved you, but all my life I’d been raised to wait, you know? Until marriage? And even though I’d lived away from home for years, I still knew that. And sure, I was probably the only virgin on my college team, but …” He finally looked at her. “It meant something to me, Cookie. It meanteverythingto me. And yet, I walked away from you with so much shame I could hardly breathe. I thought my father could see right through me to what we did, and I practically sprinted back to college. But I loved you so much, I was at war with myself. I longed to see you. And I was terrified I’d screwed things up so badly between us that you’d never talk to me again.”

He blew out a breath. “And then you were there. I so wanted to make everything perfect and golden between us—like it was before…but I didn’t know how, so I thought I’d propose. We’d get married and then everything would be put right, and I could stop walking around with this cannonball on my chest, you know?”

She just stared at him, stuck on the wordsshameandproposeand most of all,regret.

He regretted making love to her.

Regretted, probably, Mikka.

She tightened her jaw, willing herself not to cry. Because he’d been angry with her, frustrated, and even accusatory.

But he hadn’t once said he was glad he’d met Mikka.

“And then RJ got the call about Dad.”

She remembered that too well. Halfway through the third period of the game. He’d been found out in the field, riding fence by himself. A heart attack.

RJ had waited until the end of the game—a win—until she told Wyatt. He’d turned stoic and cold and hadn’t even cried at the funeral.

Now, his eyes sheened with tears.

“I just had to run. To forget—so the day after the funeral I hopped a bus for the juniors, up in Edmonton.” He looked up at her. “And you went to Russia. Pregnant.”

She nodded.

“Oh, Coco, I’m so sorry. You must have been freaking out.”

She drew in a breath, not even sure how to start. “I was. But it wasn’t the first time I had to start over. Or was alone and afraid.”

He flinched, and she didn’t care. Steeled her voice. “I came to America because I was nearly kidnapped.”

He stared at her with something of horror in his eyes.

“I was ten years old. Back then, my mother lived in Moscow—she and my father weren’t married, but I saw him often. He was in the military and he’d show up when he was on leave, sometimes for weeks at a time. Then he got elected to the Duma, as a part of the liberal party, and suddenly, my mother and I were put under FSB guard. I had a driver to and from school. We moved to a secure building, and for the first time I realized that I was different. I was in an English-immersion school, but my mother pulled me out and began to tutor me at home. The one thing she still let me attend was art classes.”

She unlatched her arms and put her legs down. “One day, I had a different driver. I didn’t recognize him, but he was nice to me. He drove me to a café and told me that we’d get ice cream. I was ten—and maybe he thought I wouldn’t know better, but something felt off. So when we went into the café, I went to the bathroom and locked it. When he found out, he tried to get in, but I started screaming. He turned off the lights in the café to force me to come out, but I refused.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the darkness outside the window. “I still remember sitting there in the dark, listening to him yell, banging on the door.”

Wyatt’s reflection stared back at her, his jaw tight.

“I heard shots and it wasn’t until I recognized my father’s voice that I unlocked the door. The man who tried to take me was dead—he’d been shot. And so had three other people—co-conspirators, I think, but I don’t know.”

She looked at Wyatt now. He was leaning forward, his hands folded, looking at them.

“We left for Montana a few days later, and I didn’t see my father again until I was eighteen.”

“You were told to say he’d died for your own protection,” Wyatt said quietly.

“He said it was up to me to keep myself—and him—safe. So, I kept his secret.”

“And that’s why you hid Mikka.”

“My father is now a very powerful man. People could use Mikka—”

“Or you—”

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