“Just go to sleep.”
She doesn’t. She rubs her cheek against my neck, making her geranium and sugar scent explode over my senses. “I’m going to miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Spinning on my toes.”
Not yet, I tell myself, I can’t fall on my ass while I have her in my arms.
I squeeze her featherlight body again – I can’t seem to stop – almost plaster her to me, and somehow she likes that.
She likes my brutal grip and sighs happily, her eyes closed. But she won’t stop talking. She won’t stop making my body hurt with her words. “But it’s okay. I don’t care about ballet anymore. I don’t even care about Juilliard. I care about other things now. Her…”
“Go. To sleep,” I growl.
And she does.
Fucking finally.
When I deposit her in the car and buckle her in, my eyes drop down to her flat stomach. I stare at it for a few beats, feeling my heart thunder in my chest.
Before lifting my eyes up to her peacefully sleeping face.
I promised her the other day at the bar that I’ll never make a promise to her that I won’t keep. And so I repeat the promise I’d made a week ago — as soon as I saw her touch her stomach — now.
I promise that I’m done hurting her.
I’m done ruining her.
From now on, along with protecting her from the rest of the world, from my fucking father and his evil clutches, I’ll protect her from me.
I’ll protect themboth.
Part II
Chapter Sixteen
The Lonely Boy & The Girl in Love
This isn’t my home.
I know this as soon as I open my eyes and take in the space around me.
Grayish-white walls, hardwood floors. A giant window taking up the entire wall to my left.
Even the height of the bed, when I climb out of it, is wrong. It’s too high, the mattress too thick and fluffy.
But the thing that gets my heart going the most is the scent.
It’s a scent I know.
It’s a scent that’s deeply and achingly familiar to me, but there’s also something different about it. Something so soothing that my stomach that roils in the morning is strangely calm.
I’m not sure what this soothing aroma is but I’m thankful for it.
I’m thankfulandI’m frantic as I leave the room, dash out of it really, my bare feet slapping on the hardwood floor.
I have no idea what this place is or where I’m going as I almost run down the hallway that’s flanked with white doors, but I know who it might belong to.
