Page 101 of The Villain

I bit into my cheek so hard it bled; the metallic taste oozed over my tongue but did nothing to stop the pain in my chest. “Dare…”

“She looked at me and said she didn’t want to.”

I cried out then, as if my own heart were present in that moment, and felt a thousandth of her pain. I’d been broken when my mom died. Adrift. But if I’d lost Dare that way…I would’ve drowned. Sank to the very pit of grief with an anchor of my adoration. To lose them both…

“The next day, I got your message that your mom passed, and I couldn’t…” He swore low, his big body trembling in the air around us. “I just couldn’t, Athena. I thought of how I’d left you…and I thought of that soldier’s wife. And I just…I realized I’d rather live with you hating me than risk hurting you. You didn’t deserve to lose anyone else in your life.”

I couldn’t see. Not because of an injury but because of emotion. I’d been drowning in loss, but so had he. And guilt.And fear.Tears tumbled down my cheeks unchecked, and my chest couldn’t catch a steady breath.

“Dare…”

“I wouldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t,” he rasped. “And after that mission, the day we came home with Ryan’s body, yeah, I made a lot of fucking mistakes. I carried all that guilt…but not for this—not for you. I did it all for you because it could’ve been my body beneath that flag.”

I didn’t know what happened first—if I reached for him or he pulled for me. All that mattered was that I was cocooned in the warmth of his chest when I started to sob.

“I’m not sorry,” he repeated over and over again, and ironically, it was the non-apology that had me forgiving him.

“I don’t want you to be,” I finally managed to say as I tipped my head back to look at him. “I don’t want you to be sorry.”

For him to be sorry, he would have to be someone else. Someone who wasn’t driven by protectiveness and loyalty and sacrifice. Someone who didn’t have those qualities woven into their very DNA that he’d risk my hatred and his own happiness if it meant keeping my heart safe.

“But you have to know,” he began again, his voice even thicker than before as he brushed my hair back from where it matted to my cheek. “You have to know that day on the lawn, I never wanted to say goodbye to you. Never planned on it. That day on the lawn, I wanted our forever, and I never stopped.”

“Dare…” I tipped my head, aching for him to kiss me, but he pulled back.The stars dotting the rapidly darkening sky were reflected in his eyes, a constellation of hope knitted together by his words.

“You asked for the truth.”

“And you gave it to me.”

“No, I told you what happened, but this…” He released my face to reach behind him for whatever he’d shoved into his pocket earlier. “This is the truth.” It was arolled leather notebook, worn and wounded with age. And then he handed it to me.

I held it, my fingers hesitant to peel it open.

“It’s all for you. Always has been.”

Carefully, I peeled open the worn cover, underneath, loose pages started to slide free. I stopped them before they fell, unfolding the top one to a sight that stopped my heart.

Athena,

I don’t know how to deal with death, but I don’t have a choice now, really.

My eyes sped over the sentences—a letter written but unsent. With every word, my heart beat faster, reading about what he’d gone through. All the things he wanted to tell me. And when I finished one page, the next opened to more of the same. Letter after letter after letter.

Athena,

I’m so sorry about your mom. She was such a fighter. Braver than half the guys here. And so are you. Still, I wish I was with you. Holding you. I’m so sorry.

And then the folded papers became pages in his journal. One he’d taken with him overseas. The entries weren’t every day, but there weren’t more than a handful between entries. And they were all written to me.

Athena,

He’s gone, and it should’ve been me. It should’ve been me in that cold, lonely box. At least then I’d feel justifiedfor leaving you.

“I was so used to writing to you…I just couldn’t stop,” Dare murmured. “And when we came back, the therapist said I should journal,” he breathed out. “I couldn’t write to myself—couldn’t face myself. So, I kept writing to you.”

Years of letters. Some pages of handwriting. Others no more than a sentence. Some scrawled in a hurry, others printed slow, like the sentences on the paper were his only way to escape. I wanted to read them all. I wanted to sit and savor every word that this man had penned so I would know what he’d been through and who he was. Except I’d always known the kind of man he was. It was why, even when I didn’t understand it, I hadn’t hated him.

“I never stopped loving you, Athena…I just wanted to spare you from pain. I needed to believe I was leaving you to a better life.”

---