Page 125 of Threaded Lies

No good ever came from someone knocking on your door at—I glance toward the clock and yawn—four in the fucking morning.

Christ.

There is another insistent knock.

“What?” I snap, but then startle when I see Rowan standing on the other side of my door. I open it and before I can say a thing, she falls against me, arms going around me as she collapses.

“Rowan?” I wrap my arms around her, my lips finding the top of her head immediately and pressing a kiss there.

“I needed somewhere to go. I needed … you.”

“What’s wrong?” She doesn’t budge but her shoulders hitch a sob and she just holds on tighter. I walk back a few steps, our bodies moving as one, so that I can shut the front door. A million thoughts race through my mind, the most important one being, she came to me, to my house.

She needed me.

“You’re scaring me, Sunshine,” I say as I lean down to pick her up and move her with me to the couch. I expect resistance. Her to tell me she’s not helpless. That’s who she is.

She doesn’t do either.

So I carry her to the couch and sit down with her cradled there, her face in the crook of my neck, and need emanating off of her.

“I’ve got you,” I murmur as I hold her there, against me, uncertain why she’s here, but willing to give her whatever it is she needs. “I’ve got you.”

Selfishly I breathe her in. I memorize the feel and smell of her, the weight of her body on mine, because nothing I love stays. Nothing I care for matters more than the endgame.

“Talk to me, baby.” I run a hand over the back of her hair and love the way my fingers get caught in its tangles. “Tell me who hurt you.”

Tell me who I’m going to have to fucking kill.

“There was an accident,” she mumbles and my heart drops.

Mason.

There was an accident.

“My dad. He was hurt but they think he’ll be okay.” She rambles on for a few seconds about the ICU and internal injuries and donating blood. All things I hear but don’t process because she’s okay. She. Is. Okay. “I couldn’t stay there for another second. I couldn’t breathe. I just … you’re the only place I wanted to be.”

She looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes, a sadness that guts me, and a clarity that has my chest constricting in a way I finally understand.

I finally acknowledge.

I reach up and cup the side of her face, my thumb resting on her lip. My smile is soft and my heart is pounding. “I’m here. Anything you need me to be for you, I’m here.”

She parts her lips and kisses my thumb. “I’m numb, Holden. I can’t feel anything and I need to feel.” She leans forward and brushes her lips against mine. “Make me feel.” Another kiss. “Make me forget.” And then another where her tongue slips between my lips and the salt of her tears hits my tongue. “Make me yours.”

I hesitate for the briefest moment as a fear like I’ve never felt courses through me.

The kind that tells you this is the point of no return.

This is a moment that will make or break you.

This is what I’ve never allowed myself to have.

“Holden,” she whispers and takes matters into her own hands by she shifting to straddle me, the heat of her pussy on my cock through the thin fabric of her panties. “I need this.” Her slip of a dress comes off over her head, treating me with an unhindered view of her beautiful tits. “I need you.” Another kiss.

Need grows into greed but uncertainty remains.

I frame the side of her head to tear our mouths apart and to look into her eyes.