I’d been planning on being somewhat childish and cowardly by squeezing my eyes shut when he forced my gaze up, but then I got pissed off. So, I looked at him right in his stupidly hypnotizing eyes.

“Oh, yes, I do,” I snapped. “I know that you think, despite my quirks, I’m something desirable. Something to make yours.” I wrenched myself out of his grip. “Something, someone easy.” I paced, rage flooding my system, propelling my feet. “Because although men certainly like a challenge.” I paused, putting my hand on my hip. “We’re taught to play hard to get, not to give the milk away for free or whatever.” I waved my hand in dismissal. “I was only interesting to you because I was a challenge. But once the challenge was done, once I was won, you don’t want me to be difficult anymore. Well, guess what, Rowan? I’m difficult. Actually, I’m a mess. Especially now.” I inhaled sharply, and it hurt. But I sank into the pain.

“I’ve killed people,” Rowan stated flatly.

That jerked me out of my rant.

His face was expressionless. His eyes weren’t twinkling. They weren’t dark and raging. His features weren’t soft or hard. He was just… blank. Like he’d left behind the man I knew in order to convey this information.

“When I was deployed,” he continued in that horribly blank, vacant voice. “I saw shit. Bloated corpses that had baked out in the sun. I saw people get their limbs blown off. My friends. Watched a woman carry her dead child along the street. And I killed someone’s child. Someone’s brother. Someone’s father.”

Rowan was looking at me, but he wasn’t. He was looking above my head. Like he couldn’t look me in the eyes when he told me this. Like he was afraid of what he might see on my face.

“Fucked me up for a long time. Fucked me up for life,” he continued, still looking above my head. “I’ve dealt with it as much as a human being can deal with that shit. But it changed me for life, Nora. I’ll never be whole. Never be right. Not completely. Which is why I stayed away from you for so fuckin’ long. Not because of the ring on your finger. Knew that you didn’t belong to that fuck, that you belonged to me before you even knew it.”

Despite the horrific subject matter, my heart leaped at that little gem of information. That Rowan had considered me his before I thought he knew I existed.

“I stayed away ’cause I thought I’d ruin you,” he peered down at his scarlet knuckles. “Thought that my filth would rub off on you. And you’re so fuckin’ clean. You smell like fuckin’ sugar, for fuck’s sake. You’re sweet, you’re good, and a man like me has absolutely no business bein’ near a woman like you.”

I struggled to hold back the tears filling my eyes.

“Want to lie to myself and you and say I might’ve held out, been content in just looking at you, talking to you for a minute a day about fuckin’ Yellowstone or whatever the fuck.” He rubbed his jaw. “But I won’t do that. As much as I want to be one, I’m not a good man. Got a code, to be sure. One I live by because it keeps me sane mostly, and because without that code, I’m afraid of who I might be.”