Page 81 of Sniper's Pride

And then she was gone.

Griffin hadn’t known if he’d ever see her again.

And now she was snuggling up against him, surrendering herself into his arms as if she hadn’t been assaulted and kidnapped, then treated hideously by a whole bunch of other men. Bruised and battered. Forced to act like bait, take a few hits, then run for her life.

But she leaned into him as if none of that mattered as much as the feel of his shoulder against the less hurt side of her face.

Griffin felt humbled and exalted in turn.

He figured she’d hide her face when they walked past the man who’d kidnapped her, but this was Mariah. She never did a single thing he expected her to do. She lifted her head, stared at the man as he lay sprawled there, facedown in the grass, and didn’t avert her gaze at all.

“I should feel worse,” she said quietly. “That’s a human life.”

“That’s the man who would’ve killed you if he got his hands on you.”

“Probably. Though he had a lot of plans to hurt me first.” She considered. “A lot.”

“Then I wish I could take the shot all over again.”

She shifted her gaze to his, steady and blue. “I said Ishouldfeel worse. But I don’t.”

Griffin kept walking. Then felt the strangest sensation, and looked down to find her covering his heart with one hand. He was surprised he didn’t stagger.

“Do you carry the weight of that life?” she asked him.

He was torn open, again. When he didn’t think there could be anything left inside him to expose.

There was something howling in him, old ghosts, maybe. And not of pretty girls who told him lies, but the kind of tallies he’d stopped making a long time ago.

All of those compartments, crumbling into dust.

“I carry all of them,” he heard himself tell her, though he had never said that out loud in his life. “But that’s okay. It’s why I stay strong. I never carry more than I can lift.”

She didn’t move her hand. He felt her trace a pattern, but he couldn’t tell what it was. He didn’t want to know.

“But who carries you?”

He couldn’t answer her. Or he didn’t want to, and he wasn’t sure that his throat worked any longer anyway.

It was good that they reached the rest of the group then, and he could set Mariah down on her feet. He held onto her arm as she tested her balance, and he hated the way her sudden smile when she didn’t sag burst through him like some kind of heat lightning.

Lightning and sunshine, and he was a goner. He knew that now.

He forced himself to let her go, then watched as she walked carefully over to her mother to grab her in another fierce hug.

It was excellent practice, he assured himself, notmaking any eye contact with his brothers. He’d let her go. He could do it again.

Because he wasn’t the kind of man who could keep her.

He never had been. He never would be.

She had been a job, and the job was done.

And if Griffin was the one who had to live with that... Well, he was used to carrying all kinds of weight.

He would carry that, too.

Nineteen

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