Page 59 of Secret Stalker

“I know, I know. Sorry. It’s just so beautiful.” She slowly closed the lid and replaced the box in the drawer. After tossing the T-shirt onto the king-size four-poster bed, she crossed to Max again and took his reluctant hand in hers. “Can we sit down, just for a few minutes? I need to tell you what I should have told you years ago.”

The struggle inside him was evident in the expressions on his face. Unlike a lot of tough guys, Max didn’t do stoic very well. He was tough, yet sensitive, always caring. It was one of the things she’d always admired about him, one of the reasons she’d known he’d be an excellent cop—because he cared.

Although the master bedroom was large, it was neat and sparse, like the rest of the house. There was only one chair, on the right side of the bed. So she tugged his hand, urging him toward the bed with her. She let his hand go and had to climb up on the blasted thing, it was so high. Then she turned around and patted the spot beside her.

He looked like he was trying not to laugh, and finally gave in to a grin. “You look like Tinker Bell climbing up on that bed.”

She shook her head. “I never did understand your fascination with fairies.”

“Not with fairies. Just you.” His smile dimmed and he sat beside her. “Whatever you think you need to say, you don’t. I don’t have any expectations of us getting back together. There’s no reason for you to feel uncomfortable or worry that I’m going to hit on you.”

“You kissed me in the family room.”

“Momentary insanity. I recovered. It won’t happen again.”

She looked down at her hands, trying not to let him see that his words had struck their target. Her heart. She braced herself and forced herself to look up, not to cower and not to run again when the going got tough.

“It’s time I faced my past,” she said. “I’ve already told you about the night of my birthday in regards to Bobby Caldwell. But I didn’t tell you everything, not the part about us.”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “You don’t have to do this, Bex. It really doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It does matter. I hurt you, and that was never my intention, in spite of how it must have seemed. All I ask is that you listen. It won’t take long. I just want to explain why I said no.”

He shrugged as if he didn’t care. But his gaze was riveted on her and he didn’t protest anymore.

“You’d been hinting about that night for a while, talking about how special it would be, how important it was. It didn’t take a genius to figure out you were probably going to propose. We’d certainly talked about the possibility of spending the rest of our lives together often enough. I think we both always assumed we’d end up together. I certainly thought I’d be your wife one day, that we’d build a life together, create our own little family.”

His breathing hitched, but he didn’t move, just kept watching her.

“I don’t know if you remember, but Chief Thornton had come to the school earlier that week for one of his career day speeches. And just like every year before, you hung on his every word. And after it was over, you talked about your big dream, of being a police officer here in Destiny, of being a detective and working your way onto the SWAT team. It’s the only dream you ever really wanted.”

His jaw tightened, but again he said nothing.

She sighed. “Anyway, I knew how important that was to you. And I also knew that if that dream was ever taken away, it would utterly destroy you.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “You’d already gotten in trouble fighting Bobby many times to try to protect me. That was okay while you were still a minor. But you turned eighteen two weeks before I did. If you fought Bobby again, you could have been charged as an adult. And that would have given you a criminal record. I couldn’t let that happen.”

He frowned. “Bex—”

“Wait. Let me finish. There’s more to it than that. I was afraid for your life. The situation with Bobby kept getting worse, and I didn’t know what was going to happen or what to do. All I knew for sure was that Bobby was winning the war. And he was evil and told me many times that if he couldn’t have me no one would. If I had married you, Bobby would have killed you. I know it. I couldn’t live knowing that I had caused your death.”

He stared at her incredulously. “You told me no because you thought I couldn’t protect myself?”

“What? No, I mean, yes. But you make it sound so simple. It wasn’t. I truly thought Bobby would kill you if I didn’t end things between us.”

Tears splashed down her cheeks onto her hands. She impatiently wiped them away. “But even if I was wrong, if Bobby tried to hurt you and you ended up killing him instead, that would have destroyed you just as completely. Because it could have destroyed your dream of becoming a police officer. What if you were convicted of manslaughter or something like that? Thornton wouldn’t have allowed you on the police force with a record. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t live with myself knowing you’d grow to hate me a little bit every day we were together, realizing that I was the reason you’d given up what you truly loved.”

His hand firmly tilted her chin up so she’d look at him. The anger that flashed in his eyes startled her.

“Are you saying you turned down my proposal to protect me? Either from Bobby or from myself?”

She tried to nod, but couldn’t, so she whispered, “Yes.”

He swore and stood up, his boots ringing against the floor as he paced in front of the bed like a caged tiger. “All this time, I thought maybe you’d played me. That you didn’t really love me.”

She blinked in shock. “I’ve always loved you.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“I know. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

He stopped pacing in front of her. “You may have loved me, but you sure as hell didn’t know me.”

“Excuse me?”

He braced his hands on the bed on either side of her. “Do you honestly think that being a cop was my biggest dream? That what I truly loved, more than anything else, was the idea of being a detective and a SWAT officer? Sure, I wanted to be a cop. And I wanted to stay in my hometown to do it. But a career wasn’t the love of my life. You were. I’d have given everything I had for you and never regretted it for a single second. Ten years, Bex. For ten years I’ve been asking myself what I did wrong, what was there about me that made me unworthy of you. I couldn’t figure it out. I thought, maybe, one day, if you ever came back, you’d tell me about this horrible thing that I’d done to you and it would make the lightbulb click in my mind. I’d be like, oh, wow, that’s what I did. And then I’d apologize and do everything I could to make it right. But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

He thumped his chest. “I did everything I could for you, loved you with every ounce of my being. And you didn’t love me enough to even have a freaking conversation over your fears so we could work through it. You know what, Bexley? If you’d just asked me what I wanted, I’d have told you that we could move away somewhere, start over in another town. I’d have gone anywhere, done anything and been happy, as long as I was with you. Instead, you didn’t trust me, or love me enough to give me a chance. You didn’t give me my dream by leaving me. You stole my dream, Bex. Because being a cop wasn’t my dream. Being with you was.”

He whirled around and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

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