Made For Loving You (Rescue My Heart Book 3), Kait Nolan [good non fiction books to read TXT] 📗

Paisley picked up the card and set it aside, moving back to the vegetables with the oil. “You like parsnips, right?”

He exhaled a slow, controlled breath, working to level his system. “I don’t know if I’ve ever had them. Aren’t they basically just white carrots?”

“No. They’re sweet when roasted but a little sharper. I like them for something different, and they’ll taste divine with the pan sauce from the chicken.”

Ty edged behind her, dropping a kiss to the juncture of her neck and shoulder as a distraction as he reached for the invitation.

“You really need to give Bethany an answer, even if it’s to decline.”

His hand froze and the world narrowed. One moment ticked into four before he found his voice. “You’ve already seen it?”

“Yeah.”

Why should that easy answer make him feel so exposed? She’d probably found it when cooking something else since she’d been here. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t think it was my place.”

“And now it is?” He stepped away from her, knowing his voice was too hard, too sharp, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. She was shining a light on his biggest wound, and it made him want to lash out. That shit belonged to the dark.

Paisley turned, the easy humor gone from her face. “You made it my place when you changed the rules. You said it yourself—we aren’t ever going to be casual. This relationship extends beyond the bedroom, Galahad. You’ve just spent the last several days going over my life with a fine-toothed comb, but I know very little of yours.”

There was truth to what she was saying. And Ty was willing to tell her almost anything. Anything but this.

She reached out, laying a tentative hand on his arm. “I know this is one of those things you said will never heal. I’m not trying to get you to slice open a vein here, but if we’re going to make it this time, I need more than these carefully curated pieces of you.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” That made it sound like it was deliberate and about her. He didn’t talk about this with anyone.

“We each had a life the last eighteen years. You can’t just redact all of yours.”

God, there were days when he wished he could. How much better would it feel to wipe out the memories that haunted him? Even as he thought it, the guilt spewed up, clogging his throat. Wiping out the memories would be to wipe out Garrett. Memories were the only thing he had left. And she wanted him to trot that shit out for conversation? “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I think I do. I’m not here to force you into reliving the trauma. I don’t need to know all the details. But I’m not some stranger or a well-meaning shrink. I knew Garrett. I know what he meant to you. And I know that his death is eating you alive. You’ve been losing yourself in my case, in me. But I see it underneath, and I’m afraid if we don’t acknowledge the ghost in the room, it’s going to fester until it becomes something we can’t survive.”

He didn’t know how to acknowledge that ghost without falling back into darkness. He’d worked too damned hard to claw his way back out to risk that again. To risk taking her down with him.

She stepped closer, cupping his cheek. “I don’t want to lose you because we can’t talk to each other. You believing that you couldn’t did not end well for us before.”

Ty closed his eyes at the old pain in her voice. He hadn’t known how to talk to her about his choice to go into the Army. And there’d been a big part of him that had held back because she’d had the power to change his mind. But he knew the silence had hurt her almost as much as the breaking up. Because she’d believed they’d shared almost everything. Why should that have changed for her?

Ty opened his eyes, taking in the expression of earnest yearning in her face. She wanted so desperately for him to trust her, to give her this piece of himself. He could see, too, the underlying expectation that he wouldn’t, and in that doubt, he recognized the seed of their destruction. She needed more than surface. He’d known that, hadn’t he? It was why he’d tried—poorly—to resist the siren song of what she offered. But he’d thought they’d have more time.

It was hardly the first time he’d been wrong on that front. Time was a precious and fickle commodity. It seemed theirs was up.

She couldn’t possibly understand that in asking him to open this wound, he’d absolutely destroy her view of him as a hero. But he didn’t deserve to have her keep looking at him like that. It wasn’t who he was, and she needed to know the hot mess she was taking on before they got in any deeper. He’d promised himself he’d do right by her. Maybe it would better for her this way.

He’d have preferred going through Ranger School again with one arm tied behind his back than talking about any of this shit. He didn’t know how to handle the grief in any other way besides ignoring it or channeling it into something else. He’d given up trying to drown it after Harrison stopped him from taking the coward’s way out. Running from this, shoving it under the bed like a corpse, was just another step down the coward’s path. He might be a failure, but he wasn’t a coward.

“We were in a convoy.” The words were like razors in his throat. “Doesn’t matter where or why. It was a typical part of the job. Typical day. We were a little over a month into our deployment, settling into the rhythm, such as it was. Garrett was hyped. He’d just had a video call with Bethany, which always pumped him up, but this was more than usual. I