“Don’t say that,” he countered in a gravelly voice, adding a touch of pressure to my arms as he held me. “You don’t owe me an apology.”

“I do. I made you talk about this after you clearly asked me not to.”

“It was going to come out at some point.” He let go of me and backed up, cupping his mouth, eyes on the floor.

I leaned my hip against the counter for support and put my hand down. There was still so much to process.

“And I, uh, did my best to keep people alive last night. I wasn’t trying to kill anyone.” He closed his eyes. “I used one of the guys trying to kill me as a shield to catch a bullet meant for me.” He frowned, opening his eyes. “Maybe he survived?”

Catch a bullet? Now I was going to collapse. “I need to sit.”

At my side in a heartbeat, he set his hands on my hips and lifted me onto the counter. He remained in front of me as if worried I’d fall, and I set my hands on his shoulders, searching for my sanity.

But it was lost somewhere at a rave because my son had been around guns and death and bad guys. And a hero. I looked at the man in front of me. “If you weren’t there . . .” was all I could get out, knowing he’d understand me.

He nodded. “I don’t want to think about that. I can’t. Because the idea of losing him is unimaginable.”

A shiver flowed down my body and chills covered my skin at the catch in his voice, his glossy eyes refusing to yield tears.

“Who needs a guardian angel when there’s you?” I whispered, letting go of a few tears on his behalf.

“Angel? No.” His Adam’s apple rolled as he stared at me unblinking. “That’d be you. The love of a mother is unmatched.”

“Now our son will know the love of a father, too.” I needed him to hear the finality in my voice. To believe I wouldn’t take his son from him. “No power over you. No chance of me taking him from you,” I voiced my thoughts, not wanting to leave any of this up to interpretation. “Just partners in raising our son.”

He leaned forward and rested his forehead against mine. “I wish that was all I had to share, but there’s more.”

“More skeletons?”

He straightened and nodded.

“All bad guys?”

“All bad,” he responded without hesitation.

I let my shoulders fall, the only burden still weighing them down coming from the stress of what could’ve happened to our son, along with the sympathy I had for the man before me and everything he’d so clearly endured over the years.