The leather cord on my wrist catches my attention and I’m thrown back into the way her smile looked on the day she was transferred. How she tied it on my wrist like it was a lifeline to her.
Fuck, Asher’s right. She tied a life commitment on my wrist and I’ve never looked back.
I’ve never wanted to.
Sighing deeply, I have to figure out what to do. I want her. I want her so fucking badly. Being her freind was hard, being her secret fuck buddy was torture. And I thought it was just me feeling this way.
But now I know it’s her too.
Can I keep hurting us both just because I can’t let her go?
“I’m done with this back and forth, Ty. It’s been years and… It’s either you want me or you don’t. But if you don’t...then let me go,”she’d said. Her voice is still ringing in my head as it drops to the desk with athud.
I don’t know what to do.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
Intense knocking hits my front door, nearly knocking it off the hinges.
“Ty! Terecino! Let me in!”
Roxie.
I slowly sit up, confusion lighting up my brain.Did I die? Am I having a stroke?
“Ty, please,” she sobs. “Let me in.”
My feet move before I fully understand what’s happening and I nearly rip the door open. She’s here.
She’s here.
“Roxie?” I ask numbly, dumbly.
“Ty,” she sobs, launching herself into my arms, wrapping both arms and legs around me. Stumbling back, my arms latch around her and hold her tighter than I think is healthy.
She’shere.
Her face curls into my neck and the warm tears wet the skin there. Her cries are soft, but I can feel her breath catching under my hand at her back.
“I love you,” she says, it’s muffled and quiet, but it’s there.
My heart fucking soars. I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier than right now, but my brain can’t be happy for the moment.
“I can’t put you in danger.”
She laughs, it’s broken and humorless, but it’s full of that Roxie-ness that tells me she’s there.
“Do you really think I’d let you get that far? Besides, Ty, you’ve never,ever, hurt me for no reason.”
“But–”
“No.” Roxie sits back in my hold, eyes intent on mine. Eyes burning into mine, like she’s not taking no for an answer. “You did what you had to do. Youdid what you had to do. I understand now. I would’ve understood then too. You didn’t knock me out because you wanted to hurt me, you knocked me out because you wanted to save me. Do you see the difference?”
“But then I killed people, aren’t you scared?”
She starts to laugh, a small bubble of laughter, but then visibility swallows it down.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
