Page 83 of Holiday Hostage
I should have thrown myself down the steps as soon as Jack spoke.
I should have made it easier for them to walk away from the obligation of returning me to Dad.
“No, Payton.” Maverick’s tight grip held me together even as my heart broke into a million pieces.
I sobbed uncontrollably, my body quaking from the loss.
Tucker gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “He wouldn’t want you to give up your life for him. None of them would.”
Maverick nodded. “He’s right. We’d all die for you, Payton. You have to live. That’s what matters.”
“The hell it does.” I sagged forward, Maverick’s grip the only thing holding me up as my knees buckled.
I had to pull it together.
They deserved better than a woman who fell apart in the middle of a crisis.
Where was my fighting spirit?
Where was the woman who’d split Tarron’s and Reed’s lips when I thought they were my enemy?
I needed to find her. Fast.
Because I couldn’t live with this well of grief swamping my soul with excruciating pain.
I sucked in a breath, then another.
“Can you get Payton to Anchorage?” Maverick’s question roared in my ears.
Surely I’d heard him wrong.
He couldn’t be asking Tucker to take on the mission without him.
What about Reed?
The question thrummed in my mind. What did they plan on doing?
Tucker nodded. “Yes. I can do that.” He shot a look over his shoulder, toward the porch where Reed’s cursing soared louder and louder.
“Good.” Maverick rattled off the coordinates for our extraction site. “Get her there. Ride with her. Don’t stop for anything until she’s with her father.”
Tucker’s jaw hardened, and he slung the rifle over his shoulder and stuck out his hand. “You have my word.”
Reed burst into the kitchen behind his father, cheeks red from the cold and the anger that turned his expression harder than stone.
“He’s still out there, but he’s moving toward the front.”
“You have to go. Now.” Maverick shoved his pistol into the holster and framed my face in his hands. “Go, Payton. LetTucker get you out of here. Reed and I will hold them off as long as we can.”
“Please.” I sucked a breath through the ache caving in my chest. “I can’t leave you.” Not now. Not ever. Words failed me before I told him everything in my heart.
He kissed me.
Not with the sweet, tender kiss of a goodbye, but with the heart-pounding delight of forever.
His fingers worked into my hair, and he swept his tongue into my mouth when I opened for him.
The kiss turned almost angry, the heat of his body radiating in waves that crested over me.
