Page 60 of Tripped By Love

“It is. If I’d reported the captain to the major… If I’d stopped them or followed them… Petty Officer Warren wouldn’t have been hurt. It was my duty to not only protect people but heal them, and I didn’t. I turned a blind eye, and she was hurt…physically, mentally. In every way possible.”

Before I’d really registered it, I’d pulled away and was sitting in his lap so that I could hug him to me with his face embedded in my neck and my hair. I squeezed tight like I’d done with Chevelle earlier.

“You wanted to believe they were good people. That they lived by the same code you did,” I said softly.

He didn’t push me away. His hands actually found their way around my middle and spread across my back, gripping as if I was something he could hold onto in the middle of a storm.

“I stayed silent, and she got hurt because of it. As much as the military normally rewards silence, Petty Officer Warren was the daughter of a major general. Not many people knew it because she’d enlisted under her mother’s maiden name to prove herself on her terms and not her dad’s. But when he found out, he went ballistic. Not only did he want heads to roll because of what had happened to his child, but our politicians were desperate to continue fixing the image of our military. Because I hadn’t spoken up, I was as guilty as the ones who’d actually laid their hands on her. I agreed. I pled no contest to the court-martial charges and was dishonorably discharged.”

I turned to press my lips against his temple and continued to run my hands up and down his back.

“Maliyah was distraught when she found out I’d been court-martialed.” His voice was deep and pained. “And even more so when I was discharged. That was when she had her first cardiomyopathy episode. I literally broke her heart.”

My heart felt like it was broken as well, bleeding for him. This man who wanted so much to be everyone’s defender only to have two females end up in the hospital because of things he felt responsible for. All I could do was hold on stronger. To show him affection so he realized this didn’t change my opinion of him. He was still everything I’d ever thought him to be, but also somehow more because he’d shouldered this guilt and grief on his own for so long. He was still the knight swinging his sword, but he’d also laid himself bare, and it did nothing but make the feelings I had for him grow.