Murray’s mouth pressed into an unforgiving line, and she couldn’t help but hold her breath for the next words out of his mouth as dread crawled up her spine. “I don’t want this. Not with you.”
The words slammed into her like a cannonball to the chest, would’ve rocked her off balance if she hadn’t already been sitting. He waited, as if expecting her to answer, but there was nothing Aslen could say. Of course, she was the last person he would want any romantic entanglement with, but that didn’t change how she felt. How far she’d fallen for him over and over. Every time he went out of his way to check in to make sure she’d done her homework in high school. Every time he brought her food when she got sick in college and after she’d graduated. When he’d shown up the night a date had ghosted her with chocolate, flowers and a movie. Even the Diet Coke he’d brought to the hospital. He knew her better than anyone else—anyone she’d let close—and she loved him. More than anyone else. Why couldn’t he see it?
Or maybe he did. Maybe the distance he’d been trying to add between them these past few years had been a clue to his true feelings. Maybe the women he’d dated and the rangers he’d never bothered to hide and taken back to his house were meant to be a point. For her. So she would realize that there wasn’t ever going to be anything between them. That she wasn’t ever going to be more than the obligation he’d taken on in a brash decision as a teen.
The blood drained from her face, and too soon, that dread turned into something far more acidic and hopeless. In an instant, she was right back at the bottom of that reservoir. Drowning. Unable to set herself free. Lungs screaming for air. Her heart splintered right there in her chest, ready to shut down altogether, and it just felt wrong. So wrong compared to that kiss, but the stupid thing kept thudding in her chest. As if her world wasn’t crashing down around her.
Aslen had always known him to be loyal, committed to those he cared about, but what if those characteristics were keeping him tied to her when all he wanted was his own sense offreedom? What if his promise was actually doing more harm than the good he’d intended? Her throat ached all over again, like she’d swallowed a gallon of salt water. “Is it the scars?”
He looked at her then. His expression more closed off than he’d ever shown her. Not a hint of the man who’d stood by her side and even ahead of her to take the brunt of what life had to throw her way. This man? She didn’t know this man. “Go to bed, Aslen.”
Not an answer. Most likely to save her from the truth, and she was never more aware of the differences between them as she was right then. That he would always see her as someone needing to be saved. That she wasn’t strong enough or capable enough to take care of herself in his eyes. “You really are a bastard, you know that?”
Her legs moved without conscious decision. Every cell in her body screamed for her to run the short distance between the living room and her bedroom, to lock the door and never resurface, but she had a job. She had a life. Friends. Responsibilities. Things that didn’t rely on the brooding a-hole standing in her front room. The tightness in her chest didn’t release as she closed her bedroom door behind her. It didn’t lighten as she changed into her favorite pair of pajamas or got ready for bed, and it only seemed to get stronger as she slipped into bed.
Minutes—hours, she wasn’t sure—stretched as she stared up at the ceiling. Movement registered from the other side of that thin piece of wood between her and the man in the living room. Whether he intended to sleep on her uncomfortable couch or stand vigilant all night, she didn’t care. She didn’t care. At last, that was what she kept telling herself.
Had he even slept since pulling her from that reservoir? Had he eaten? Nope. She wasn’t going there. She wasn’t going to give him an ounce of consideration after he’d brought her bodyto arousing heights she’d never known with another man in no time flat then ripped her heart straight from her chest and stomped it into nothing. But that ache wouldn’t go away. Aslen turned onto her side, forced her eyes closed.
She could still taste him. Feel his hands pressed into her back. Remember the rhythm of his pulse and the way he’d claimed her mouth as though he’d been conquering a nation. She flipped on to her other side. Restless and more than ready for another round of arguing to distract her from this need she couldn’t relieve.
A knock sounded at the door. So light, she wasn’t sure she’d heard it until he spoke. “Aslen.”
“Go away.” Her sheets were too hot. Then too cold. Then came the memories that had given her a reprieve as Murray had plundered her mouth and soul. Of her abductor. Of the fire closing in on Murray and the resignation in his expression through the flames. Of the pressure in her chest when she couldn’t get enough air.
Seconds turned into a full minute. Was he still out there?
Aslen threw off the covers and bounded for the door, not bothering with the robe at the end of her bed. She nearly ripped the door off its hinges, her blood boiling in her veins, coming face-to-face with her childhood protector. Well, face-to-chest. He was so much bigger than her. “What?”
He stared down at her, every emotion he’d tried to hide behind that defensive wall on display, and her heart almost stopped.
She didn’t know what had changed. Didn’t know how long it would last, but he’d given her this: a raw look at his fears, the pressures he faced and the desperation to keep her as much as she wanted to keep him. She would have to be out of her mind to forgive him, but Aslen found herself extending her hand in offering. “Come on.”
He intertwined his fingers with hers.
And she pulled him over the threshold.
Chapter Twenty
The bed was empty.
Murray smoothed his hands over where she should’ve been, the sheets cold but slightly rumpled. Morning light blurred around the edges of her blackout curtains. His watch said it was still early—earlier than when she normally woke up on days she didn’t have to work—but no signs of movement reached his ears from the rest of the house.
She’d pulled him into her bedroom last night, but that was where her offer had ended. Leaving him standing at the end of her bed, Aslen had taken one side of the mattress and left him to decide what to do next. Exhaustion biting every muscle, Murray had chosen the other side of the queen-size bed, keeping as much space between them as possible.
It hadn’t lasted long. Sometime during the night, he’d sought her out after hours of tossing and turning. He’d pulled her back against his chest, letting go of the tension in his upper body as her heart echoed the rhythm of his own. Only then had he been able to really fall asleep. And, hell, the zombie apocalypse wouldn’t have been able to wake him, he’d slept so deep. Deeper than he had in years.
She hadn’t even woken, her breathing smooth and even, as he’d held her. To make up for crossing that line. For hurting her with his implication of using her scars against her. He didn’t give a damn about the whorls of scar tissues along herneck and shoulder, and had spent a good majority of last night visually tracing what he could see of them over and over. She was beautiful, in every way. But he couldn’t give Aslen what she needed, what she deserved. No matter how many times he’d replayed that kiss. The way she’d melted under his touch, the small whimper that’d escaped when he penetrated the seam of her lips, how she’d gripped his shirt harder.
He’d never had such a visceral reaction to a woman in his life. Like that invisible thread that’d formed between them all those years ago had somehow guided him on how to touch her, where she needed him the most, how to make her feel what he was feeling. In return, he hadn’t been able to breathe from the force of Aslen Woods. Her taste lingered in his mouth and triggered a craving he’d never had before, even now urging him to find her and soothe the itch to find out if a second kiss would be as good as the first. She’d always been the center of his universe, even more so than his parents and brother, but now? It was as though his entire being had honed itself on her. Breathed for her. Lived for her.
Murray swiped one hand down his face and shoved himself upright. She was right. He really was a bastard for taking advantage of her after what she’d been through, and he hated himself for allowing it to get that far. He’d broken his promise to always protect her. Turned out, he couldn’t even protect her from himself.
He swung free of the bed, sweet hints of lemon verbena clinging to his skin and clothes, and crossed into the hallway outside her bedroom. Danny’s room off to the left remained empty, the roommate keeping her word to give Aslen space after coming home from the hospital. The rangers’ lease agreements didn’t allow for painting, but Aslen’s friend sure as hell had made her room her own. Danny hadn’t bothered making the bed—another queen-size—and obviously didn’t believe in a laundryhamper with how many clothes she’d tossed across the floor and over the dresser. Photos in silver and crystalized picture frames faced the bed from the single nightstand, but he caught a blurry sight of a group of four people. Most likely her parents and siblings.
Aslen didn’t have that. While she kept a partially burned photo recovered from the scene of the house fire, the faces behind the frame had worn and aged. He doubted she could even picture their faces clearly anymore. She’d lost everything the night her parents had died, and he’d somehow convinced himself he could be enough to make up for that by giving her a new family. Him.
But all he’d done was give her a false sense of hope.
