Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
“That is a good question, but one you should turn around. Should she accept who you are?”
“Of course.”
“Why should she expect less from you? Accept who she is. Accept that she is not a safe woman. Accept that she will run into the burning building, that she will place herself in danger to save others. Be grateful that you found someone who is so fucking worthy of being loved by you. This isn’t a game, Drake. You don’t get to weigh the pros and cons and treat her like a piece on the board that you can move around. If you want a real relationship, she’s your partner. You make decisions together. Sometimes that means you sit down and decide only one of you is going to risk. Sometimes that person who is risking won’t be you, and that is far more frightening than putting yourself out there. It’s always easier to be the one who goes than the one who’s left behind, the one who has to wait. Don’t be a selfish prick when it comes to your partner’s life. She gets to have one, too.”
But he’d always looked at the people around him exactly the way Tag said. The man was right about everything, and now that Drake considered his life clearly he could see he was going the same way his father had gone. With a half life, with lies instead of a truth shared with the person he loved.
Did he want that? Did he want to keep a huge part of himself closed off?
“So what do I do to convince her I care about her? We got close so fast. It felt right, like nothing I ever experienced before, and I know she felt it, too.”
“You have to make her feel it again,” Tag said with a shrug. “You’re not going to do that if you’re irritating her by saying the shit you said today. You want to prove to her you care? Care about all of her. Care about the part of her that needs this mission. Care about the part of her that wants to prove herself, that wants to prove her father didn’t die in vain. You want to take out your sister to assuage the guilt you have for not seeing who she was. She wants to make her father’s death meaningful. You can achieve both, but you have to respect what she’s trying to do.”
He wasn’t sure he could manage what Tag was advising, but he had to try. “All right. If I want her back, I need to be respectful and professional. We do this job and hopefully somewhere along the way she starts to trust me.”
Tag grimaced. “You are so bad at this. Like epic bad, man. No. I mean do that, but you also have to get her in bed and give her a mega shit ton of orgasms.”
“I’m confused.” Drake wasn’t sure where he’d gone wrong.
“Yeah, I get that. You have to do both, and that means you might have to convince her to compartmentalize a bit.”
“I thought that was a bad thing.”
“She’s the one doing it, not you,” Tag explained. “You are going to be the sneaky bastard who convinces her that the two of you can enjoy each other, get each other out of your systems. Maybe even say it couldn’t possibly have been as good as you thought it was. Challenge her a little. She then thinks she can get some revenge on you. She can do to you what you did to her. She might even think she can get some information out of you.”
“Information?” He wasn’t sure he liked where this was going.
“If I were Taylor and I realized your sister killed my father, I would have some questions.”
“You think she thinks I was involved?”
“It’s not a terrible question, nor is it one a person who doesn’t know you would be foolish to ask.”
His gut tightened. “She thinks I’m as bad as my sister.”
Tag’s head shook. “I didn’t say that, and I don’t think that. But if I were her, I would have questions, especially since she thinks you were there to get information about her father, information that could have led your sister to him. You can’t think it’s not suspicious to the outsider. I might know who you are, but all she knows at this point is that you charmed her and got her in bed and she was arrested and you didn’t show up again until yesterday when she discovered your sister is the very person who had her father killed, and you tried to take over her op. You should be happy she hasn’t shoved your balls so far back into your body you can taste them yourself.”
When he put it that way, it suddenly seemed overwhelming. “I do see that. I can understand it, too. What I don’t see is how I can prove it to her. I was there with her when her father died. I was there because an op went wrong and it was the closest place to safely transfer the intel I had, but she can’t be certain of that. If I look at it from her point of view, I’m the bad guy.”