Page 66 of Zorro

She’d learned it early. That goodness was safety. That if she was polished, calm, exceptional, she’d be loved. No wonder Rob had felt like a solution. He didn’t love her either but at least he expected what she’d already been taught to give.

If she was facing that, understanding that she had been conditioned to look at love this way, then she had to look also at her fear.

She’d been so foolish in the past. So eager to jump into marriage with a man who had no idea what it meant, a man whose ego drowned under the weight of her competence. He’d needed the limelight, but not her. She let him have it and he’d stolen from her.

Could she be rushing too fast into this thing with Zorro? She let her heart rise here instead of her mind, and it melted with the knowledge that Zorro had done nothing…nothing since the moment they met to hurt her. He’d always tried to understand, and she knew now that was what caused so much anger, turmoil, and those devastating, tormenting dreams about him. No. What she felt for Zorro was…recognition. It wasn’t mutual service or idealism. It wasn’t admiration wrapped in martyrdom.

It was raw. Real. God, even now. His voice haunted her. His voice tempted her. To hope.

To reach. To do something reckless. Something that would feel like living.

He’d texted her again, but she’d refused to open the messages, the pinging driving need and longing into her heart, but she knew if she read those messages, she would break completely into pieces that only he could put back together. She might do that anyway when she read them, but now she was dedicating her headspace to working out just exactly who she wanted to be, and that woman in Niamey, even the one who kissed him in the Philippines, just wasn’t who she was now. Not after the fire of Rob’s duplicity and disregard for her in any way. She was someone new, someone else, and she was beginning to really like this woman.

She reached into her pocket and touched the keycard for the umpteenth time since he’d slipped it beneath the door. A physical promise. A whispered invitation. I’m here when you’re ready.

When she heard his door close across the hall, her shoulders slumped. She moved toward the bed and sat down, the first tear slipped loose.

Her sorrow was for the woman who had once believed so blindly. For the marriage that wasn’t real. For the betrayal that didn’t just happen in hotel rooms, it had started long before that. It had ended before Afghanistan…Oh, God. It had never really started…Rob had never been there for her in any way. She just hadn’t seen it.

Rob, with his polished charm and paper-thin ego, had pulled her under, and she’d let him. He hadn’t destroyed her. But he had mocked her. Used her. Resented her. In the end, when all was said and done, he’d left behind a ghost, who was now nothing more than a faint echo.

She dropped onto the bed, knees tucked, tears falling freely now. But not for him. For her.

For the version of herself who’d had no clue what passion was, or that the kind of man Zorro was had existed. In that moment, as Rob faded away to emptiness, Zorro was there to fill her full to bursting.

But she wasn’t ready yet. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, just for a small reprieve.

The fact that he had called her out, so subtly, so sweetly, on that gurney back in the Philippines, was a flag she’d ignored. A flag she now saw clearly for what it was. He hadn’t just wanted an answer.

He had craved her. Not just the kiss, but the why. Why would the woman who pushed him away kiss him when he was wounded, half-conscious, helpless? He could have been annoyed. Angry. Confrontational. He had every right. But he hadn’t been any of those things.

Her breath hitched as the tears came faster, heavier, like a current breaking through. He’d just been Martinez. Warm. Sweet. Gentle. That, that, was what undid her.

She snuggled deeper into the blanket, exhaustion finally dragging her toward the soft edge of sleep. The place where defenses softened and dreams formed. There, in that hazy in-between, she was suddenly, vividly aware of something she had no more energy to deny.

She was falling in love with him.

She knew the difference.

She had a concrete past to compare it to now. A marriage built on absence, on silence, on being too much and not enough all at once. This wasn’t that. This was everything. With that realization came the heat.

Not just the need for his body, though damn, his body. That lean, hard, sculpted force of nature. But for the mouth that teased her and challenged her. For those eyes that saw everything. For the man who looked out through them.

She ached for the essence of Mateo Martinez, the himness of him, the weight of his presence, the steadiness in his voice, the heat behind his teasing, the soul that lived beneath every patient smile, and that goddamned, irresistible, knee-melting grin.

Not the operator. Not the medic. Not the uniform.

Just him.

The desire wasn’t just heat, it was clarity. It was the fall, want, and understanding, woven into a tidal wave that crashed through every lie she had ever told herself about what love was supposed to feel like.

She’d been given a second chance. The brutal truth about Rob had broken something, and, thank God, but it had also made space. Space to want without shame. To love without performance. To choose without apology. All she knew, as sleep took her down into velvet darkness, was this…Love wasn’t what she thought it was.

Thank God again.

This…this aching, breathtaking, soul-filling truth was so goddamn beautiful….

She couldn’t even breathe.

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