“Jael. A woman from the neighborhood. I’d worked so hard to get her to trust me. She wasn’t a fan of doctors. But her son had a limp. I could tell it would hurt him more and more as he grew up. I finally convinced her to come in to let me have a look at him. He needed some basic physical therapy. That was all. In a few months, he’d be completely fine.”
Beckett closed his eyes as if it were all playing out in front of him. “The man wanted drugs. I told him I’d get him whatever he wanted but that we were between medical shipments and didn’t have much. The man was angry and told me I was lying. He pointed his gun at Adrian, Jael’s son. She screamed so loud.
“I dove for the boy. The gun went off. It missed us, but barely. Jael tried to fight him off, and I pulled the gun I’d taken to carrying. I told him to drop his. He didn’t hesitate. He put a bullet in Jael’s brain. Then he shot at everyone he could find in the waiting room. I killed him. But it was too late.”
I didn’t know how I’d heard any of the words Beckett had said with the blood pounding so loudly in my ears. “Beckett.” I felt his name in my mouth more than I heard it on my lips.
His gaze met mine. “I hesitated, and so many people died. I tried to save as many as I could, but
I only had one nurse. The medics came, but it wasn’t enough. Adrian will never be the same.”
I moved without thinking, climbing into Beckett’s lap and wrapping my arms around him. “It isn’t your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” I said the word over and over as I felt him tremble. It wasn’t until I felt the wetness hit my neck that I knew he was crying. My hands fisted in his t-shirt. “I’m so sorry.”
I couldn’t imagine the horrors of what he’d seen. How helpless he must’ve felt. I would’ve given anything to take it all away.
“It was too much. It was just weeks later that I got the call about Hadley being hurt. I’d let my patients down. My family. I had to try to do what I could to make things right. I knew I had a better shot of doing that here.”
I straightened so I could see into his beautiful eyes. “What about what you want for yourself?”
He blinked a few times. “I’ve spent most of my life chasing what I wanted. It’s time for me to be here for my family if they need me.”
I brushed the hair away from his face. “Don’t you think that just maybe you were going to all these places ripped apart by disaster and war, running yourself ragged, as some sort of atonement? I’m not saying that you didn’t get something out of the work you were doing, but from what I’ve heard, from you and your family, you were pushing yourself to the breaking point. Don’t you think you might’ve been punishing yourself for leaving Shiloh with Hayes? For going away to school instead of staying home?”
A muscle fluttered in his cheek. “I—” He cut himself off and stared out the dark window. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t deserve to be punished. You don’t deserve what happened to you in Venezuela. You deserve to be happy. Not because you’re especially good but because you’re a human being. We all deserve that.”
Beckett’s gaze came back to me. “I’m not sure I can believe that Walter and your father deserve it.”
I brushed a hand over his face, my fingertips prickling with the feel of his scruff. “Maybe if they were happy, they wouldn’t be such miserable assholes.”
Beckett barked out a laugh. As it died away, his eyes searched mine. “How can you make me laugh, even after everything I just walked through with you?”
“We need the laughter, Beckett. It’s what keeps us human. I lost it for too long. Now that I have it back, I’m not letting it go. I won’t let you lose it either.”
He dropped his forehead to mine, our lips the barest distance away. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”
“I feel the same way.”
His fingers trailed up and down my spine, sending an array of sparks over my skin. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
“I don’t want to, either.” I couldn’t imagine leaving Beckett alone to his nightmares tonight or any night.
“My bed is huge. Could fit like four people. Want to sleep in there?”
My heart hammered against my ribs. Another first. It was another kind of intimacy. Not a romantic one, necessarily, but one of this soul connection we were building. There was only one answer. “Yes.”
27
BECKETT
I woke curved around something warm. The scent of something floral filled my senses. I only wanted to burrow deeper into it. Get lost and never emerge.
My arms tightened, pulling the body back against me. Body. That one word had my eyes popping open.