Page 254 of Her Reluctant Hero
A thought struck her then. “That’s why you don’t want to be the focus of my article.”
He glanced over at her. “What?”
“You think I’m not seeing you for who you are, that I’m trying to make you better than you are.” Her words came faster as her thoughts tumbled over themselves. No one had put him first in his life. Their expectations were more important than knowing the man for himself. Did he understand this? Did he see a connection with her in her relationship with Dan?
Frustration tightened every line of his body. “There you go, analyzing me again.”
“No, but this is huge.” Her fervor reverberated through the cab and she shifted with a bounce toward him. “People have pushed you to be what you aren’t, and you think I’m doing the same thing.”
“I think you tried with your husband. I think you wanted him to be anything but what he was. I bet he picked up on it.”
Tears burned her eyes, all of a sudden. “I hated him being a cop. I hated him out there facing people every day who held no respect for human life. But I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Is it a comfort to you? Being right?”
“He left me!” The tears were choking her now, burning her nose as she fought them back. Because if she started crying, she wouldn’t stop. “That job was more important to him than I was, and he picked it over me, and it killed him. He was the only, he was the only—” Her breath came too fast, she couldn’t form the words, glared out the window, the scenery whipping past, blurred by her tears. “I loved him with everything in me. What was wrong with me that he couldn’t love me back the same way?” That no one could. Gabe would be no different. His job would come first. He’d said that was something he and Jen had in common. Why was it wrong of her to want more?
“You think it was a conscious decision? Did he think, ‘Hell, I’ll show her, I’ll go out and get shot in the face?’”
“Of course he didn’t.”
“Of course he didn’t. He was a good guy.”
She whipped her head around, swiping the tears from her face, no longer worried what he thought. “What makes you say that?”
The expression in his dark eyes was gentle. “You loved him.”
She couldn’t see that look, not when she was hurting so bad. “He might still be alive.”
“What?” Gabe’s surprise echoed through the cab.
“If I hadn’t been there. If he hadn’t known I was there. If I’d been anywhere else that night.”
“You wouldn’t have been with him when he died.”
“It’s not like he died in my arms.” She felt the weight of his body in her arms, smelled his blood. She squeezed her eyes against the image of blood everywhere. “He was dead before I got to him. And it’s my fault. I have to live with it.”
Gabe was quiet awhile, blaming her too, no doubt. “So are you writing these articles to assuage your guilt, or to revel in it?”
Shock edged past her pain. “What?”
“Are these articles your penance?”
When she opened her mouth to answer, she had no idea what to say. This wasn’t her penance. When she’d started writing them, she’d done it to be closer to Dan, to try to understand. Okay, maybe too little, too late, but that was how she’d stumbled onto this series.
Not to make up for her decisions, but to understand his. And now to understand Gabe.
She turned back to look out the window, hiding the tears that threatened. But so far, she understood even less. Herself least of all.
