He frowned. “You seem awful brave to me.”
My head shook. “No. I’m not brave. Or maybe I just wasn’t brave soon enough.”
The lyrics lifted in the atmosphere, words about life and death and the impermanency of our bodies. I swore I saw Rex’s spine go rigid.
I touched his arm, unable to stop myself. My skin lit up at the contact. He stared at it before he jerked away and pushed from the bar.
Shocked, I spun around.
His chest heaved and he looked...panicked.
“Rex—”
He roughed a hand over his face, cutting off whatever connection we’d shared. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
Then he turned, stalked through the crowd, shoved open the door, and disappeared into the night.
Leaving me sitting there staring at the vacancy he’d left behind, wondering exactly what I’d done wrong.
8
Rex
Iwas agitated.
Pissed and confused.
A disorder trembling me to the bone.
As hard as I tried, there was no corralling it. No shaking the bristling anger that had followed me through all of last night and into this morning.
It was a blinding fury that had taken to my veins when I’d found her backed into a corner by that piece of shit.
Hell. It’d been ignited the second I’d looked up from the table and saw him talking to her.
I didn’t even know her, and she sure as hell wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of her leaving with him. Of her going back to his place or maybe him going to hers.
The vision of him following her up her stairs had made me want to claw my eyes out. Two of them falling into her bed.
It was no surprise he turned out to be a pussy-bitch pretty boy who had the misconception he had the right to reach out and take whatever he wanted whether someone wanted to give it or not.
Would have relished in teaching him the lesson.
Enlightening the fucker on what it meant to show a little respect.
But that was the problem when someone affected you. The problem when someone got under your skin. When someone made you start entertaining all kinds of foolish ideas. Ideas of stepping up and getting involved in matters that were none of your concern.
Treading a line you had no business walking.
That fact had never been as striking as when she’d reached out and touched me at the bar. She was making me want things I couldn’t want.
Things I had no fucking right to take.
But it didn’t matter.
They’d been there, and I knew I had to get the fuck away before I did something I couldn’t take back.
Before I crossed a line I couldn’t cross.
