Therewasmore color in her face. Seeing her before had scared the hell out of me.
“How many spoons?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I can run through graveyards today…” She gave me a teasing smile at the look on my face. “I’m probably at, like, a four. Which is much higher than the negative billion I was at earlier.”
A soft smile. “Good.”
She laughed, and then as quickly as her joy came, it faded.
“I don’t… You don’t need to be here. I don’t need to burden you with this.”
“Did your family call you a burden?”
“No! Never.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t them.”
Then it washim.
I dragged a hand across my lips, forcing calm to replace the fiery venom in my lungs. The last thing Shay needed was another man going off the handle.
I lived by a code—no death, consent from the victim.
It was getting really hard not to break my fucking rules.
“You are not a burden, Shay,” I said. “It’s a privilege to spend time with you. In any capacity.”
“I won’t be much fun tonight,” she said, voice soft.
I had that instinct again—that predatory, caveman feeling that made me want to destroy whoever or whatever had stolen her joy.
I stifled it and squeezed her shoulder. “Lorelai just ran away from her wedding with Max. I’m invested.”
She gave me a look that reminded me alotof the one her sister had given me—suspicious because I was doing something nice. Her brow furrowed, her mouth scrunched, she settled back against the couch, and I pressed play.
“Why are you still here?” she asked, her eyes on the screen. “You said you didn’t want a relationship with me.”
“I didn’t say that?—”
“You take care of me, you wash my hair, you protect me, you give me the best sex of my fucking life, but you won’t commit?”
I tried to ignore that she’d saidbest sex of her fucking lifebecause she was currently giving me the same eyes her sister had when she’d threatened to shove uncooked pasta up my ass.
I wanted to commit. To have a life with her. To be her boyfriend, husband—whatevershe wanted. For her to brand me with that label so everyone knew I belonged toher.
But I couldn’t want that.
The truth was, I never should have seen her past the first night, because the best-case scenario I could hope for was an easy breakup.
“There are things I can’t tell you,” I said. “But if you knew, you would understand.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
I paused. “Won’t.”
She rolled her eyes. “You knoweverythingabout me. Why won’t you let me know about you?”
“You do know me, Shay. You know me best of everyone.”
“I don’t know where you work. I haven’t met your family. All I know is you grew up in Utah and have some kind of mask fetish.”
