“You’re not sleeping,” Eleanor said sleepily, pulling him from his thoughts.
He shushed her, not wanting to disturb her sleep. “It’s all right. I was just thinking.”
“Can’t sleep?” She asked, shifting again so the sheet shifted, revealing one long lean leg to the thigh.
Hell, she was going to kill him. She needed her sleep. He should get up and leave and take his insomnia somewhere else.
“Heath, I want to say something and I want you to listen to me and not try to stop me, okay?”
He fought not to freeze at her words. “Okay.”
She didn’t look at him when she spoke, keeping her eyes focused somewhere over his shoulder.
“I want to say I’m sorry, Heath. For so much, but mostly for hiding that night, for getting you into trouble with your dad.”
Now Heath did freeze. What the hell was she talking about?
“Sorry?” He tried not to let the words come out as a growl, but it wasn’t easy. “What the hell do you think you have to apologize for?”
Her eyes found his but then dropped just as quickly as she looked away from him.
“If I hadn’t hidden after …” he saw her swallow, “after it happened, you wouldn’t have been picked up by the cops. And if I’d just talked to you after that, maybe you wouldn’t have gone after Jason. Your dad wouldn’t have forced you out. You wouldn’t have had to join the Army. All of it. I’m just… I’m just really sorry it all happened.”
Heath’s head swam. He couldn’t say he wasn’t sorry it had all happened. The night his football teammate—a guy he thought was his friend and a good person—attacked Eleanor, coming pretty damned close to raping her, had been a nightmare he would never wish on her or any other woman.
He hated that he wasn’t there to stop it. Hated it had been because of him that it happened. But he’d never once blamed her for any of it.
He moved to the bed and sat, then cupped her face, bringing his eyes to hers. “I know you’re smart enough to know what Jason did wasn’t your fault.”
Her eyes flashed. “I know that.”
“Then why would you think my dad kicking me out was your fault? Eleanor, my dad and I were fighting all the time and me being in trouble was nothing new.”
She shook her head. “That’s not true. When we were dating, you had stayed out of trouble. You guys were getting along better.”
He snorted. “I was staying out of trouble, but he and I weren’t getting along. And yeah, that last week there before graduation was bad, but I’d long ago pushed him to the brink of patience with me.”
He and his dad had never gotten along. His dad had been ready to kick him out for a long time. When Jason assaulted Eleanor, Heath had been outside with friends doing keg stands. The only thing that saved her from rape was the police raiding the party at that moment.
Heath’s friends had all run when the cops arrived, but Heath knew Eleanor had gone upstairs to fix her hair. He wasn’t going to run off and leave her just to avoid getting into trouble with his dad. So he’d gone looking for her and the police had caught him, but that was on him, not on her. None of it had been on her.
“Nori, I don’t blame you at all for hiding that night. Hell—” it was his turn to look away now— “I should have been there with you instead of partying downstairs. I should have gone with you that night. I should have seen that Jason was a piece of shit so pissed off you were taking my attention away from the team and the guys. That he was the kind of guy that would stoop to rape to break us apart.”
She was shaking her head. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He leaned closer, touching his forehead to hers and bringing his hand to her cheek. He wanted to be closer, but this was as good as it was going to get right now. “None of that was your fault either. It was Jason’s fault. He was the one who was wrong here. And as for my dad kicking me out of the house, it wasn’t a bad thing.”
Eleanor hadn’t answered his calls or come to the door when he went to her house after that night and he’d had no idea why. She wouldn’t see him. But a few days later, he’d finally gotten it out of one of the other guys what Jason had done. And he’d lost it. He’d never been in such a blind rage before.
When he put Jason in the hospital, the school suspended Heath. Only his dad’s money had kept it a suspension instead of expulsion. He was allowed to graduate from high school, but not allowed to walk with the class and his dad had told him he wasn’t paying another penny for Heath.
That had included college. So he’d joined the Army. And that was the best thing to happen to him.
Well, the best thing if he didn’t count Eleanor. She’d been, hands down, the best part of his life. It had all gone to hell and ended in the worst way possible, but for those months they’d been together, it was perfection.
He couldn’t believe she’d been thinking there was anything she needed to apologize for. “Joining the Army was the right thing for me. Much better than college would have been.”
She was watching him intently. “You’ve made it really far. I’m proud of you, Heath.”
Jesus Christ, if that didn’t do all kinds of things in his chest. He knew he was heading into the very dangerous territory of wanting more with Nori than just a shared past. A whole lot more.
Chapter 12
“No.” Eleanor didn’t even hesitate in her response.
Heath pushed the Abaya and Hijab at Eleanor again, this time adding a growl. She needed to wear the loose-fitting dress and head covering so he could disguise her more easily as they left the hotel.
He’d let her have her early morning meeting with her team but now he needed to separate her from the group so anyone intending to harm her wouldn’t realize she wasn’t in the main caravan heading to the compound.
“Yes, Eleanor. I need you covered while I get you to the negotiations.”
She crossed her arms and leveled him with a look. “Absolutely not. Demir and his people are Arab Christians, not Muslims. If I show up to the negotiations dressed in that, I look like I don’t know who I’m dealing with and what I’m doing. I’ll look like an amateur who assumes because I’m in a Middle Eastern country, I’m expected to wear that by default. I won’t weaken myself at the start of this by going in there like that.”
He growled again. Damn, he was really making a habit of that. “I don’t care if you take it off when we make it to the compound, but you need to put it on now.”
“Not happening.”
He looked at her. She had her hair pulled back in a tight knot at the nape of her neck and wore trim khaki pants and a white buttoned-down shirt with a leather belt. She had on ankle boots that, thankfully, weren’t for fashion. They were laced up and functional, ready for her to run if she needed to. He loved her for all of that.
But what he didn’t love was that she wouldn’t let him do his job.
He moved in close, towering over her and not caring one damned bit that he was using his size to intimidate her. If it meant keeping her safe, he’d do it. “When we step foot onto that compound, you can be in charge—” at least so far as the negotiations were concerned, he added to himself, “but my job is to get you there safely. If I tell you to put this on, you’ll put it on. If I tell you to get down, you’ll get down. If I tell you to run, you’ll run. Got it? That’s the way this works, Eleanor.”