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“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything,” he went on, raw agony slicing through his gaze. “I’d give up my badge for you. I’d go to the mines for you. I’d turn myself into a worse criminal than any of my men for you.”

“Tenn…”

“I want to keep you.” His voice went ragged at that. Like he was ripping the words right out of his body. “And I’d never ask it of you, Tasha, because I know how hard you’ve worked for what you have. I know how hard you’ve worked to find your place. Toearnthat place. And I am happy for you, truly. Even if it absolutely shatters me to know that your place, that perfect life you’ve built, is not with me.”

My perfect life.

My perfect, empty life.

The one I’d already been dreading going back to. The one that felt completely foreign to me now.

Tenn loved me.

And, in a desperate moment of self-preservation, as the rain fell and the wind screamed and the wood of the old shed creaked, I didn’t want to believe him. I wanted to pretend that this was just another lie. Some horrible rouse that would do nothing but humiliate me in the end.

But then, I thought of all words he’d spoken over our past days together, some of them innocuous on their own…

But devastating all stacked up.

I’d make time for you.

I’d give it all to you.

I was dying to touch you.

How does it feel to be the only one who can make me beg?

He loved me. He said he felt shattered, but I was the one who could literally hear the splintering of my heart.

“Tasha,” Tenn hissed urgently.

I felt that urgency quickening in my blood. I had to tell him that I felt the same. I hadn’t forgiven him, but I wouldn’t run away from this. Not now.

That shattering sound increased. A horrible cracking so loud it seemed to emanate from outside my body.

“Tasha!”

Tenn’s hands seized upon my shoulders.

He shoved.

I went stumbling backwards, right out the doorless entry of the shed. I almost righted myself, but once I was outside, my boots didn’t stand a hope in hell against the slick grass. I slid, then fell heavily backwards. My ass took the brunt of the impact before I slammed onto my back.

I gasped and gagged, the wind completely knocked from my lungs. My tailbone felt like someone had just taken a sledgehammer to it.

I finally did it, I thought weakly as my head spun.I finally broke my fucking butt.

Fighting nausea, I forced myself to sit up.

And then, through the unrelenting blur of the rain, I watched the rest of the shed’s roof collapse.

24

TASHA

It’s amazing, really, what pure terror can make your body do.

Thirty seconds ago, I’d barely been capable of sitting up.