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He heaved himself up. Paced the tiny space. “Why are you believing this guy? I know you have history. I get that. But it’s been almost fifteen years. He shows up out of nowhere and you’re ready to jump in and help him?”
“He’s not just some guy, Fenn. He’s…he was important to me. And if what he’s saying is true?—”
“If,” he interrupted, his voice rising. “That’s a big if, Kate. We have no proof. No evidence. Just his word.”
“And what reason would he have to lie?” She shot back, her own frustration evident.
His pulse pounded along the side of his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s working for the Consortium. Maybe this is all some elaborate trap.”
Kate shook her head, her expression softening. “I know it’s hard to trust him. But I have to believe that there’s still some good in him. That he wouldn’t come to me for help unless he really needed it.”
Fenn sighed, running a hand through his hair. He knew Kate was right. As much as he hated to admit it, they had to at least hear the guy out. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
Or the overblown action hero.
“You’re right.” He took her hands in his. “You call the shots.”
She nodded decisively. “Let’s get back to it, then. Hear the man out.”
“Roger that.” He resisted promising to behave, though.
There was only so much a man could take.
27
Hawk held Kate’s gaze,his eyes filled with a mixture of regret and determination. “I had to do it. If I was going to protect you, it had to go down the way it did.”
“The Consortium was after me,” he continued. “Even back then. Before I met you, I agreed to do some undercover black ops work that earned me their attention. Once I met you, though, I told my team leader I wanted out. Figured I could walk away. But the Consortium kept coming after me. The only way to protect you was to let you think I was dead.”
Inside, Kate felt like she was dying, but at the same time, she was curiously numb. Having spent her career in black ops, she understood the price they sometimes had to pay. Still, he could have trusted her.
Instead, he’d decided for both of them, taking the most destructive path imaginable.
She stared down at his hands, the new scars and the old ones. “We could have disappeared together.”
He was shaking his head before she finished. “No way. This isn’t a life I would have wished on you.”
“That should have been my decision.”
Kate fixed Hawk with a piercing stare, trying to ignore how tired, how very worn, he looked. “You could have reached out. Sent a message, a sign, anything to let me know you were alive.”
Hawk ran a hand through his hair, his eyes flickering away from hers. “I had to stay off the grid, completely invisible. Any contact with you would have put you in danger.”
“So you just let me believe you were dead? For twelve years?” Her voice rose, her hands clenching into fists at her sides.
Hawk’s shoulders slumped. “I didn’t have a choice. The Consortium was watching me, tracking my every move. If they’d found out about you…”
“What? What would they have done?”
Hawk sighed heavily, his gaze meeting hers once more. “I don’t know. But I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk you.”
“So you just kept running. While I was left to pick up the pieces of my life. You know I thought I left you to die, right?”
Hawk reached out, his hand hovering inches from her arm before falling back to his side. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
She turned away, wrapping her arms tightly around her middle. “The right thing for who? Because it sure wasn’t the right thing for me.”
Fenn had been still and silent through the long exchange, but the longer she and Hawk talked, the more physically agitated he grew, his jaw clenching and his fists curling at his sides. Finally, he said what she couldn’t seem to say herself. “You broke her, dude. Walking away would have been one thing. Faking your death might have been necessary, but letting Kate believe it was her fault? No bueno. Not ever, for any reason.”