Page 220 of Beyond the Blue Horizon

Discomfort rippled across the bare flesh of his chest. I could feel it like a reluctant caress. Like he wasn’t sure he should give that part of himself to me, but his heart had already made that choice for him.

“What happened to you, Theo? Why do I feel so much sadness in you?”

It felt so strange that I was the one pushing him to open up to me when I’d lived my life in seclusion for so long. Hiding behind every temporary façade before I was moving again.

But I wanted to stay right here forever.

Hesitation brimmed in him, though he kept running his fingers through the length of my hair as if it soothed him. Calmed the storm that raged inside him.

His gaze found the lapping fire, and his voice was rough when he spoke. “My mother told me my whole life that I wasn’t capable of love. That I wasn’t worthy of it. That I was a waste of space and had ruined her life.”

Pain pierced my spirit. How could any mother ever say that? I snuggled closer, my arm looping around his neck, trying to hold some of the grief I could feel spilling out of him.

“Maybe she was the one who wasn’t capable of loving me. Maybe she was the one who wasn’t worthy. I don’t know. But I lived my entire life believing it. Believing that I was built of greed and selfishness. That I would forever go it alone because the only thing that ultimately mattered was myself.”

A frown curved my brow, and Theo paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts before he sighed. “When I met the guys when I was a teenager living on the streets, we basically made a pact. Pledging our loyalty to each other. It was a strength in numbers sort of thing. A way to make it easier to survive on the streets. Would have died for any of them since it was the oath I made.”

I could feel his heart drumming beneath my ear. A heavy pulse of confusion and regret.

“I realized somewhere along the way that I was capable of love.” A wistful smile wobbled at his mouth. “Raven was fourteen, and she came running home from school with herreport card that had straight As. She was smiling this smile…and fuck…I thought I was going to explode with pride. It took me all that time to realize that feeling was love. To realize that loyalty I had to my crew was love.”

A tremor rolled through him, and his hand twitched where he had it clasped on my hip. “And I thought maybe that thing was in me. The capacity to shed the selfishness. That I might be willing to sacrifice enough of whatIwanted so I could love someone in a different way. Give myself completely to another.”

Disquiet stirred in my belly. Sickness at him suffering this sorrow, yet knowing I wanted to stand with him in the middle of it.

“But then I met this girl. Scarlett.” Theo’s eyes squeezed closed with his grief, and his words turned jagged. “She tried to act tough, but she was sweet and innocent. Came to LA to find her dream and she found me instead. I dragged her into my world, and I left her there.”

It sounded of judgement.

His greatest sin.

Uncertainty whipped through my insides, and I curled my fingers into his shoulder as I urged quietly, “What happened?”

His head shook, and I could almost feel his throat close off. His shame snapping down around him. “I found her after she’d been beaten and left for dead. I knew she was my responsibility. That she’d been placed in my path for a reason.”

He inhaled a shaky breath. “She fell in love with me, and I…I couldn’t feel it back. It just wasn’t there. I wasn’t capable of feeling what I was supposed to feel. Fuck, I tried, Piper. I tried.”

His chest shuddered. “I tried to send her home. Tried to get her to go back to where it was safe, but it was too late. I’d already exposed her to my world, and she got wrapped up in this asshole who was a part of the MC. I knew he was going to destroy her,and he did. And there was nothing I could do because she knew I didn’t love her. Not the way she wanted me to.”

His arms suddenly cinched tight around me. Bands of severity that could never be broken. “I won’t do that to you, Piper. Promise, I won’t do that to you. I’m going to be enough for you.”

Fear burned on his flesh, like maybe he was terrified that he wasn’t.

That he couldn’t be everything that I needed.

That he couldn’t…

My mind raced back to earlier when he confessed how he felt. The professions that bled from his mouth.

He gave me all of him, yet he’d left out that single word.

Love.

Didn’t he know everything he confessed was the culmination of those things?

But I understood trauma. How the neglect of his mother would have scarred him, and whatever had happened with this girl had made him believe his mother’s disgusting accusations could be true.

“You are enough for me. More than enough. More than I ever knew I needed.”