Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Jade wasn't surprised to see a very irritated Max standing on her doorstep in DC two days later. They'd flown back to Texas together, but as soon as Atticus had debriefed the team, she'd snuck away like a thief in the night and flown back home with Atticus. She'd been trying to make it a clean break. End of mission. End of their affair.

They didn't have a future together. Max needed someone who could pass on the Devlin name, someone who could give him more than she ever could. And she needed—no, it was best not to think about what she needed. Those answers hurt too badly. She was doing what was best in the long run. Now she just had to make Max understand it.

But him standing right in front of her, looking rumpled and sexy, was more than she could resist.

"You couldn't possibly think I'd just let you go," he said, pushing past her into the apartment.

She let out a little sigh and wondered what to say. What to do. "No, but I had hoped maybe you would. For both our sakes. You're making this too hard, Max. Why do you have to be so stubborn?"

His smile was a vicious slash of white, and she swallowed at the determination she saw there. No, he wasn't going to make this easy.

"I'm a fool in love, and I guess you're just lucky that way."

She didn't try to move away from him as he came closer, his body heat enveloping her like a caress. He touched the side of her face and lowered his head so their foreheads touched. "I thought I'd lost you. Nothing in my life has ever been that terrifying."

She closed her eyes and soaked up the comfort he was offering, touching her hands to his chest to offer her own. "It scared me too," she admitted. "I thought of you. It's what made me fight to get there in time. I wanted to be able to touch you again. To taste you just one more time."

"And yet you ran away," he whispered against her cheek.

"Yes," she said. "Because I had to see if I was strong enough."

"And what did you discover?"

"That when it comes to resisting you I'm very, very weak. Kiss me, Max. Make me feel alive."

His mouth devoured hers in a kiss meant to show them both that they were still living—still breathing. Her hands clasped around his neck and he encircled her in his arms.

"God, I love you," she said almost desperately and then tried to pull away as panic engulfed her.

He froze and then captured her before she could escape his grasp. "Hold on a second. Say it again."

"I can't," she said, shaking her head. "It hurts too much."

"I'll go first," he insisted. "I love you. I heard you say the words, and you can't take them back. I need to hear them again."

"It's just something people say in the heat of the moment." Her voice caught on a sob, and she wondered if she'd ever be able to forgive herself for lying to him.

"God, Jade. Give me something. Anything. Why are you being so stubborn?" Frustration edged his voice and he ran his fingers through his hair.

"You don't understand!" she cried out.

"Then explain it to me! You've given me your body. You trust me with your life, but not your heart. And you say you love me like it's torture, but you can't look me in the eye and say it now. So yes, explain what the problem is. Explain why I can't get down on my knees and ask you to spend the rest of your life with me. To grow old with me and have children with me."

"I can't have children!" she screamed and then clamped a hand over her mouth as a sob escaped.

Every last bit of air deflated from his lungs as the words penetrated. It felt as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Sound ceased to exist—just an empty void as the blood rushed to his ears.

Reality came crashing back as her gut-wrenching cries broke through the fog surrounding his brain. She crumpled to the floor and curled up in a ball, and her body shook with tremors. To see a woman so strong break down was almost more than he could bear, and he went to her, gathering her in his arms and rocking her back and forth like a child.

"I'm so sorry, baby," he whispered through her sobs. "I'm sorry." He waited until she was quiet in his arms. Until only the occasional tremor shook her body. "I won't ask you if you're sure, even though I didn't see any reports on it after your miscarriage."

She tried to move away from him, but he just shifted their positions so she sat cradled in his lap.

She turned her head away from him when she answered. "I had the doctor leave it out of the written report so I could go back on duty. The damage was too severe, they said. The bleeding too bad. So they had no choice but to give me a hysterectomy or I would have bled to death."

Max let out a slow breath and held her tighter. "I wish you would have told me. You didn't have to go through that alone."

"Maybe I just wanted to delay the inevitable," she said. "I couldn't tell you. At first because I was ashamed of the way I broke down when you told me about Donovan. I'd never lost control like that before." She sucked in a shuddering breath. "And then I lost—I lost the baby, and it was my fault because I lost control."

"No—" His heart ached for her, but she had to know she was wrong. "You can't blame yourself for what happened. It's just as easy to blame myself for the way I told you. But it wasn't anyone's fault, my love."

"Then time started passing and every day it seemed like that day faded a little bit more in my memories, but I still hurt so bad. The grief was overwhelming, suffocating my soul. I kept thinking I could have gotten past the grief if the baby had survived. But I was all alone and there was nothing left of my family."

"Oh, baby," he whispered, and she could feel his tears on her face.

She couldn't seem to stop talking now that she'd started. "And then you were there and I started seeing you as something I never had before. I wanted you too bad to tell you the truth, and at the same time I felt guilty for having feelings like that at all."

Her voice seemed to steady as she explained. "You were right. I think I thought you'd be safe. That you could satisfy my body but not touch my heart because I didn't believe I'd ever be able to love again. And I didn't think that you could ever love me. I've watched the women go in and out of your life over the years, and I thought I could be one of them, and that you'd make me feel something again. I was devastated and embarrassed when you rejected me. But I'd had a taste of you, and it was all I could think about—dream about.

"We'd already had years of friendship and connection. And that first time we made love—" She hesitated, her breath hitching. "I realized that I was lying to myself and I loved you more than I thought I would ever be capable of loving again."

"Jade—" He kissed her brow and pulled her closer. "I loved you when you belonged to someone else, and I love you even more now that you're mine. And there will be no more women in and out of my life. In fact, there hasn't been any woman but you in my bed since you walked out of my kitchen. I knew after one taste that you were it for me."

"That's what I was afraid of," she said. "You deserve so much more than what I can give you, Max. You deserve to have a woman who's whole, so you can get down on your knees and ask her to spend her life with you. To have children with you."

"You're going to piss me off, love," he said, rubbing his thumb along her bottom lip. "Do you think you telling me you can't have children is going to make me stop loving you? Let me ask you something," he said before she could answer. "When you were stuck inside that orphanage, did you dream of a couple like us coming in to take you home? Do you think there's not someone exactly like you waiting for us right now? Or that there won't be two or five or ten years from now? You make me whole, Jade. Just you. Not anything else. As long as I have you then everything else will happen as it should."

"You make it sound so simple." She scrubbed her hands over her face, wiping away the tears.

"Because it is simple," he said. "Marry me. Love me. And let me love you back. Nothing else matters."

"Your family might have something to say about that," she said with a bitter laugh. "You can trace the Devlin name practically to the dawn of time. You have a legacy, Max. Something you can only pass down to a biological child. Why would you deny yourself that?"

"I can just as easily pass it to a child who needs a good home," he said with a shrug. "They're just things, Jade. It's just a name. It pales in comparison to spending the rest of my life without you."

Her arms wrapped around him and she buried her face against his chest. "I love you so much," she whispered.

"That's a step in the right direction for sure. I'm not on my knees, but I'm pretty close," he said, lifting her face once more and seeing the hope in her eyes. "Marry me, Jade. Spend your life with me. Love me."

"I love you more than you know," she said. "Always."