Cara
My conversation with Mum had lit a fuse under me. I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want the pain of Alec leaving to scab over before we started making plans. I knew what I wanted, and I was not going to sit around and wait for him—them—to get away.
If only Monroe would answer his phone.
I knocked on his hotel room door. It was a stretch, but I figured checking there was the best place to start. If I didn’t see him today, I’d find him when we got home.
There was no answer. “Monroe,” I called, but the room beyond the door was silent. Nothing stirred.
My shoulders fell, and I tucked my hands in my cardigan pockets. Then I stopped. I pulled my shoulders back. I lifted my gaze. It wasn’t over. We weren’t done. Monroe was running. I understood it. If he needed space, I’d give it to him. But I wouldn’t just let him walk away. We’d promised each other that we were all in. That might have had an expiry date on it, but I couldn’t just turn off my heart.
Monroe had been hurt before on a level that I just couldn’t comprehend. His heart had been shattered, and a decade later, those wounds had been opened up again. The truth had almost destroyed him.
But I wasn’t going to hurt him. I’d rather cut off my own arm than do that.
Alec had been hurt too. He’d been cast aside by the people who were supposed to love him—his parents and even Minns and his wife. I loved that the Seals had stuck with him. They’d given him so much more than a job. They’d given him family and friends. They’d given him a sense of belonging.
Now Monroe and I needed to show him he belonged with us too.
I rode the lift to my floor, got off, and rounded the corner.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Monroe was there, his forehead resting against my door. He knocked. He closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. “Fuck,” he muttered.
Alec paced. He carded his fingers through his hair and tugged on the ends. He growled, and I squeaked.
Alec spun around and looked up. He stopped. He blinked. Alec opened his mouth, but no words came out. He reached for Monroe and tapped him with the back of his hand.
“Cara?” Alec asked.
“What? How? Oh my… Jiminy Cricket,” I babbled, racing for him.
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I choked out a half laugh half sob as I collided with him. He wrapped me up and I breathed him in. His spicy scent I’d grown to love so much hit me, and I tightened my grip on him. I reached blindly for Monroe and snagged his shirt, squeezing it tight.
“I’m not going anywhere, beautiful girl,” Monroe promised and moved closer.
He brushed the loose pieces of my hair behind my ear and kissed my temple. I sucked in a breath and held it, wanting them, needing them as close to me as I could get them.
I let go of Monroe, and he shifted, slipping his arms around me. He held me as tightly as I held Alec.
“Your flight was leaving. How are you here?” I asked. “I said goodbye to you.” I pulled back and tweaked his nipple through his dress shirt. “And it was a shitty goodbye too. Sure, you were upset because Monroe had left, but saying, ‘Thanks and I’ll catch you later’ is not on. Not with me.”
Alec smirked, his eyes dancing with wicked delight. “What would you rather I’d done?”
I narrowed my eyes and poked him. “I’d rather you’d said, ‘I love you, Cara, and I’m never going to leave you. We’ll find Monroe and make him believe it too.’”
Alec tilted my chin up. He ran his thumb over my bottom lip, and his eyes darkened, his inhale short and sharp as he stared at my lips. Then he lifted his gaze to meet mine, and the naked adoration in his eyes stole my breath.
“I love you, Cara,” he whispered. “I don’t want us to ever be apart. I’ll make Monroe believe I love him too.” Alec leaned down and brushed his lips over mine, kissing the corner of my mouth, my cheek, my nose, then my lips. His heated breath washed over me, and I moaned, needing to taste him. But he held back, tantalizingly out of reach.
“I love you both too,” I confessed, my lips hovering a hair’s breadth away from his.
Alec deepened our kiss, touching his tongue to mine. I was dizzy with want, crazy with a need to get closer to him. This wasn’t about sex. I needed to reconnect with them. I needed to know they were here and weren’t leaving.
Monroe kissed a line up my throat to my ear and nipped my lobe. “Should we take this inside?” he murmured.
Alec broke our kiss and nodded. “Yeah, let’s figure out how we’re going to make this work, because we have to make it work.”
