Those hazel eyes jumped all over my face, no question unable to accept what I was telling him.
That I trusted him.
That I didn’t want to be anywhere else, either.
“Do you want me to walk out the door right now, Cash? Do you want me to pack my children’s things and load them in my car and drive away? Where would I go? Do you think we’d be safer out on our own?”
A growl rolled up his throat, and his other hand curled around my elbow and rode up my forearm to my wrist as I continued to let my fingertips trace the stubble on his cheek. This mercilessly callous man who had come to mean everything.
But he always had, hadn’t he? He was the capstone of that secret place I’d kept shored away for him. Hidden in a locked box that was bent and broken inside me.
His hand cinched down around my wrist.
“No. Because I’m a selfish prick who wants to keep you. You should know better than to let me.”
“You don’t think I’ve always been yours? Through time and space and distance, you think this ever stopped beating for you?”I grabbed his hand and forced it over the thunder that ravaged my chest.
“You should hate me,” he ground out.
“Hate you? I l?—”
He had my back pressed to the wall across the hall so fast that I hadn’t processed the movement.
His big hand splayed across my chest and pinning me to the unforgiving surface.
I almost had it out that time before he gritted, “Don’t say it.”
Desire spiraled and coiled with the lingering fear.
With the confusion and the doubt.
Visions of what I’d made out through the haze of fog and smoke and gunfire clogging my mind.
The way the gentle boy I once knew had become a beast.
A battle-torn warrior with his tee ripped and blood smeared across the side of his face.
I should be terrified.
Packing my bags exactly the way he suggested I do.
But I was hooked.
Impaled.
Staked to the spot as he glowered down at me as if I were the source of every pain he’d suffered.
As if I were the picture of his regret and the culmination of his sorrow.
“Don’t fuckin’ say it,” he repeated, his voice going haggard.
I tilted my face up at him. “That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
His eyes sparked—flared with greed—and his hand trembled where he had it pressed against my chest.
Every harsh muscle in his body flexed and bowed.
Our breaths hemorrhaged from our lungs and our hearts pounded in the murky darkness of the hall.
