It broke me from the trance, and I tiptoed in, winding around Cash so I could get to Colin’s bed. I leaned over and brushed a kiss to his temple before I whispered, “Good night, my sweet boy.”
I moved to do the same to Addy and Eva.
My heart pressing full and running wild.
Questions came at me from every direction.
Cash hovered near the doorway.
A tower of darkness.
A cover of steel.
Forcing myself upright, I slowly turned and shuffled across the room.
That tension ballooned.
Energy crackling.
Lashes that struck like lightning through the dense, suffocating air.
Cash only watched me as I tiptoed out, his presence a squall that swarmed as I stepped out into the hall.
He pulled the children’s door closed, leaving it open an inch.
His big body vibrated as he lingered there, his head downturned and his hand tremoring on the knob.
Finally, he shifted in my direction, and he slowly edged my way.
A shockwave of severity slammed me.
My breaths turned shallow.
Ragged pants that curled between us like a call.
His palm slipped to my cheek.
So at odds with the brutality that emanated from him.
“You should leave, Daisy. You should pack up your children and get as far away from me as you can.”
Hurt stabbed into my heart, and I could barely speak. “Is that what you want? You want me to leave?”
A hot stream of incredulity puffed out of him. Anger ridging every bulging muscle of his body. His words were gruff and hard. “You think I want you to leave? You think I want you to be anywhere else than right here with me? At my side?”
My stomach tumbled, and my mouth grew dry. “I…”
“My life has been nothing, Daisy. Fucking empty until you and those kids came into it. But I don’t deserve to have you here. Shouldn’t have you here. Not with who I am, and tonight was proof of that.”
“You walked right into a gunfight to protect us.”
Misery twisted into his expression. “That gunfight was because of me. I could have gotten you all killed.”
The last word hitched. Like it was almost impossible for him to expel it.
I knew in it was the old grief that had come back to haunt him.
I touched his face. “You protected us.”
