“And they’re afteryourfamily?” I swallow. “Skip… are we safe here?”
That finally breaks him.
He puts down his tools, walks over, and sits on the coffee table directly in front of me. He takes my hands like they’re something fragile…something priceless.
And his voice is laced with guilt.
“I’m pissed at myself for bringing you into this,” he says. “You don’t deserve this shitstorm, Eli.”
I open my mouth, but he squeezes my hands tighter.
“I have a friend who offered to get you a new identity and a place to stay. Ohio. Far away. Safe. Clean slate. No cartels, no mafia, no fucking bullets flying past your head.”
My chest aches in a way I don’t know how to name.
Skip takes a shaky breath.
“God, I hate even saying this,” he admits. “I don’t want you out of my sight. I don’t want you anywhere I can’t reach you or hold you or…fuck, protect you. But it’d make me a selfish bastard not to offer it.”
He lifts my hands and presses them to his chest, right over his heart.
“You’re new here. You don’t owe us anything. You don’t owemeanything. Let my friend take you away, pretty boy. Let me know you’re somewhere stress-free… safe… and happy.”
He forces a breath through his nose.
“Even if that place isn’t with me.”
The words hit harder than any punch that’s ever been thrown.
Even if it’s not with him?
My heart caves in on itself.
“You’re wrong,” I whisper. “I wouldn’t be stress-free. I’d spend every single day worrying aboutyou. Wondering if you’re alive. Wondering if someone hurt you. Wondering if you needed me and I wasn’t there…wondering if you fell in love with someone.”
Skip’s jaw twitches, but he stays silent.
“And I wouldn’t be safe or happy,” I continue, my voice shaking. “Because, crazy as it sounds, I’ve found my happy with you.”
His breath stutters.
“I have onlyeverfelt safe around you,” I tell him. “And I know we’ve just met. I know I’m basically holding a shovel and digging my own grave with how insane this must sound, but I don’t want to go anywhere you’re not.”
Skip looks like someone just cracked his ribs open and handed him his own heart.
“Please don’t send me away, Skip,” I whisper. “If you don’t want me here… if you’ve changed your mind about wanting there to be an ‘us,’ I’ll go. I swear I will.”
He flinches like the idea physically wounds him.
“But if what you’ve been telling me is even remotely the truth,” I say, “then right here…with you…is where I want to be.”
The silence stretches, thick enough to choke on.
I swallow hard and finish in a trembling whisper:
“If you send me away… I’ll only make my way back. Because the thought of leaving you…of you falling in love with someone else…tears my heart to pieces.”
The tears spill before I even feel them, warm tracks down my cheeks, but I don’t wipe them. Iwanthim to see. I want him to see exactly how much that thought rips me apart.
