His hands settle on my upper arms, warm and strong.Grounding.
“First thing,” he says, “we change your number.”
I blink.“That simple?”
“It’s a start.”
“What if he still finds me?”I ask unable to hide my worries.
“He won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“No,” he says.“But I can know he doesn’t get easy access.”
I look down at his hands on my arms.At the steadiness in them.At the care.
“You sounded like you wanted to kill him.”
“I do.”
The honesty of it should probably disturb me.Instead, it makes something in my chest unclench.
“But I’m not going to do anything stupid tonight,” he adds.
“Tonight?”
One corner of his mouth almost moves.“Don’t push it.”
A laugh escapes me.
Tiny.
Fragile.
But real.And that seems to ease something in him too.He slides one hand down my arm and takes my hand, turning it palm-up.My fingers are marked with half-moons from my own nails.
His thumb traces them lightly.“You tense up every time I go hard like that,” he says quietly.
I don’t deny it.Because it’s true.Not because I think he’ll turn that anger on me.But because my body still remembers men who did.He looks at me, and I can tell he understands that too.
“Then I need to keep showing you the difference,” he says.
My eyes lift to his.“The difference?”
“Between a man who’s dangerous to you and a man who’s dangerous for you.”
The words hit somewhere deep.Somewhere tender.And because I am apparently too emotional and too tired and too full of him already, my eyes burn unexpectedly.
I blink fast.He notices.Of course he does.
“Hey,” he murmurs.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”The gentleness of that nearly undoes me.He pulls me in then.
Not crushing.
