I stared at Belle across the wreckage of her bookstore—books scattered, shelves broken, her sanctuary violated—and understood with perfect clarity that I would never let her out of my sight again.
Chapter 27
Belle
My teeth ached from trembling. Every muscle locked tight, holding me upright through sheer stubbornness.
The loan sharks were gone. The bookstore was a disaster—books scattered like fallen leaves, shelves cracked and leaning, that romance display I'd spent hours perfecting knocked sideways across the floor.
Gideon stood five feet away, chest heaving, blood dripping from his mangled hand in steady, dark drops.
I couldn't speak. Could barely force air past the knot in my throat.
He'd broken bones for me. Snapped his own fingers protecting me from men I should've told him about days ago. Men whose threats I'd swallowed down because admitting weakness felt worse than facing them alone.
The world refused to tilt back into place. Everything felt sideways. Wrong. Too sharp and too soft all at once.
My voice came out thin. Trembling. "We... we need to get you out of here."
Gideon didn't argue. Didn't protest. Didn't try to convince me he was fine when blood pooled in his palm and his fingers jutted at angles that made my stomach turn.
He just nodded once.
That single gesture somehow steadied me more than words could've.
I grabbed my keys from behind the counter with shaking hands, locked the register without looking at the numbers, and moved toward the door on legs that felt disconnected from my body.
My arm brushed his as I passed.
I startled. Not because it scared me—though every nerve still screamed danger, run, hide—but because the contact felt necessary. Essential. Like touching him proved he was real and whole and standing beside me instead of bleeding out on my floor.
He didn't pull away.
We walked through the wreckage together. Past overturned chairs. Past the table where we'd?—
I shoved that memory down hard.
The night air hit my face like a slap. Cold. Sharp. Real.
He reached into his jacket pocket with his left hand—slow, deliberate—and pulled out his car keys.
For a moment, he just stared at them. Weighed them in his palm like they represented something far heavier than metal and plastic.
Then he held them out to me.
I froze.
"You're... letting me drive?"
The words came out wrong. Too high. Disbelieving.
"I can't." His voice emerged quiet, strained, still vibrating with leftover violence and adrenaline.
His right hand hung at his side, fingers swollen and bent at angles that made bile rise in my throat. Purple bloomed across his knuckles, spreading toward his wrist in ugly, mottled patterns.
My chest tightened. This was the first time he'd willingly given me control over anything. Not demanded. Not ordered. Not forced me into compliance disguised as choice. Just... handed me something that mattered because he needed me to take it.
I closed my fingers around the keys. They were warm from his body heat. Heavy in a way that had nothing to do with their actual weight.
