When he raised his gaze to Darci, she gasped with the intensity of the agony he transmitted to her. It was almost more than she could bear to hold his look, to try to offer some form of comfort.

“I destroy everyone I touch. I can’t do that to you, Darci. I care about you too much.”

The air left her lungs in a rush. The battle was over before it had even begun. Just when she was beginning to think she had something to fight for, that there might be a family in this world for her to love, it was snatched away from her eager fingers.

She didn’t have the strength to battle Cole’s ghosts. At least not now, not yet. First she had to find her own life, get her feet on the ground; then she could take a chance at salvaging Cole’s.

“So it’s over, then. This must be the shortest marriage in history.” She didn’t laugh, but grabbed the garbage and went into the kitchen before the tears hovering in her eyes could slip down her cheeks.

Cole watched her walk away from him, watched her leave with dreams he hadn’t even had time to form yet. In his first marriage, they’d both been too young, too immature to truly understand what made a marriage work. And he’d never been able to love Sharon the way a man should love his wife. He now knew he hadn’t truly understood what love could be until he’d spent time with Darci.

Deep down, he knew Darci had something special to offer him, that he needed her in ways he’d never needed another human being before. Darci offered him a salvation he wasn’t certain he deserved—but at what price? What price would she be forced to pay for caring about him? He had nothing to offer her except a growing stack of medical bills.

When she came back to the table, he had resigned himself to what he needed to do. “We’ll leave in the morning. I want Mandy to get a good night’s sleep before we start out.”

Darci fidgeted with the edge of the tablecloth. “Do you need any money?”

He almost laughed, the bitterness over his financial state overwhelming his already-tattered emotions. “I’ve got enough to get us where we’re going and to keep us fed until I find another job.”

“Where are you going?”