Page 106 of Delta Force Defender

“Everything,” she told him, and she didn’t look away. She didn’t hide. She held his gaze, and she let him see whatever he wanted to see. She let herself... open. “I want absolutely everything, Isaac.”

He looked away, down toward the rock, but this time, it wasn’t to tighten that jaw she was afraid might shatter one day. It wasn’t to look over to where Horatio waited on land, as if he were guarding them. This time, Isaac was breathing too hard.

As if he were running when he was standing still.

Tears pricked at her eyes, another thing that she wouldnormally dive into the cold water rather than let someone else see, but this was Isaac. And she wasdoing this, so she did nothing. She didn’t blink them away. She didn’t wipe at her face.

“The first night I saw you,” she said quietly, “we walked down here after we left the Fairweather. We stood on this rock, just like this.” Her throat was dry, and swallowing didn’t help, so she pushed on. “I said I couldn’t imagine coming from a place like this. And you said, it’s not the winter that ruins you. It’s the summer. Because you can resign yourself to winter, but summer reminds you how to hope for better. And then there you are when fall blows in, left to pick up the pieces and start all over again.”

He made a low noise. “I know what I said.”

“You made it sound like you were joking when you said it. I’m pretty sure I laughed. But you weren’t joking, were you?”

“It was something my father used to say. He thought it was funny.” He cut his gaze to hers. “We’re really going to talk about the weather?”

“It’s not really about the weather, is it?” She tilted her head as she looked up at him, and if there was vulnerability in him, he was hiding it well. “It’s the way you see the world. It’s allendurance. Struggle and pain and hopelessness. And any little sliver you have of something better you treat like the enemy.”

“It takes real guts for you, of all people, to stand here and say something like that.”

“I had to act that way. You didn’t.”

“You concealed your identity from me forfive years,” he belted out at her.

So loud that back on shore, Horatio whined.

But Caradine had to bite back a smile. Because Isaac Gentry had just shouted at her. Right out here in the open, displaying a shocking lack of his much-vaunted control for anyone to hear and see.

What had happened in her hotel room in Boston wasn’t a fluke.

“You’re the only person I ever wanted to tell,” she told him, solemnly, because it was true. “I came close to telling you a thousand times.”

“But you didn’t. And then you ran. You let me think you were dead. Youwanted meto think you were dead.”

She studied his face as he said that. The wildness in his eyes, like a storm.

“You can endure anything, can’t you?” she said softly. “Except the possibility that you might be happy.”

Isaac muttered something under his breath.

Caradine decided to take that as encouragement. “All my worst fears came true this summer, Isaac. They found me. And worse, you discovered who I really was.”

“How could that be worse?”

“Because, Captain America, I’ve spent my whole life thinking it was only a matter of time before the ugliness in me spilled over. And then corroded everything around me. I’d already watched it happen. That was what being a member of my family did to people.”

He looked astonished then, and it was gratifying. “That’s ridiculous.”

“For years I’ve been sure that at any moment, that switch could flip. That when I least expected it, I could just... turn into a murderous sociopath. Burn down houses filled with people I knew. Commit unspeakable acts of violence. That was the other reason Lindsay and I split up after Phoenix. We were responsible for what happened to those people. We had to live with that—and with the worry that one false step and we’d sink even further, and maybe start doing hideous things like that ourselves.”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“Youhopeit doesn’t work like that. So did I, but I went off on my own anyway, just in case.” She smiled when he looked like he was going to argue with her. “Butthen I went to Hawaii. And I discovered that my baby sister—the one who I’d always thought was more likely to turn bad, because she was the one who’d given in to Dad—hadn’t justsurvivedour time apart. She’dthrived. Made a life. Lindsay got married and had a baby.”

Caradine shook her head, aware that there was moisture on her cheeks but doing nothing to hide it. “All that time that she’s spent living, I’ve been hiding away up here. Because I thought that at any second,boom. I would turn into my father.”

Isaac was staring at her now. There on that rock that, despite herself, she had always considered theirs.

Because it was the first place he’d kissed her.

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