Page 6 of Trick Of Light

Normally, I wouldn’t have gone outside without it in the winter, and would have thanked him for being thoughtful, but since my plan was never to speak to him again for as long as I lived, I remained silent.

“Or just come back inside.”

I stared at the roiling ocean instead of saying a word.

“Please, Jackson.”

I shivered in the wind because yes, it was February in Northern California, so I was, in fact, on my way to being cold. Not like it had been growing up in Tennessee, but still, biting.

“You’re gonna freeze out here.”

“Hardly,” I growled, annoyed that I’d responded.

“I want you inside where it’s warm.”

I turned to look at him, taking in his dark bronze skin, his perfectly shaped glossy brows, burnished topaz eyes, and the full lips curving into a wicked smile. His thick, wavy brown hair was being tousled in the frigid breeze, and I noticed how tight the Henley he was wearing was stretched across his wide shoulders and broad, muscular chest. Sometimes it hurt to look at him. And he was beautiful, yes, but more than that, he was mine.

“You love me, right?”

I squinted at him.

“Answer,” he prodded, brows furrowing as he stared at me.

“You know I do,” I snapped back, hoping my anger wasn’t lost on him.

“Don’t sound so happy about it,” he groused, scowling for good measure.

“I’m not happy!” I railed, frustrated and hurt and generally pissed off. “Because now I know that if I get hit by a truck tomorrow, somewhere across town you’ll fall to your knees and what? Like, three days later, you’ll just be fuckin’ dead?” I couldn’t think of anything worse than losing him. But then I wouldn’t actually be losing him because I’d already be gone. And of course, given a choice, I would die before him in a heartbeat. The idea of outliving him was something I couldn’t even fathom at this point. But by the same token, knowing he was right behind me, my last thought before I checked out, was not comforting in any way.

“Jackson?”

“I would rather you live, Raph,” I rasped, my throat tightening as I imagined him gone.

“Yeah, but I don’t want that,” he told me, closing the distance between us, not stopping until he had his hands on my face, his eyes locked on mine. “We’re together, you and me. Wherever you go, I follow, and that’s how it is. I will never be parted from you, and you knew that from the jump.”

“No, I—”

“Before you, like I said before, I had nothing. I’m not going back to that. I won’t. You claimed me, I’m yours, end of discussion, so…what the fuck, Jackson?”

What? My hackles went up instantly. “Oh no. No, no, no. You don’t get to turn this around on me and be mad. I’m the one who’s fuckin’ mad!”

“What’re you pissed about? The fact that we’re tied together even tighter, even more permanently than you thought?”

“How dare you assume I’d be upset about that, and how dare you be outraged? I’m the one who’s fuckin’ pissed off and—”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Oh, for crissakes, I— I just— I can’t even imagine anything happening to you or—”

“And I feel the same,” he stressed, his voice harsh, urgent, vibrating with need for me to hear him and understand. And just below that, there was dread, so thick that I could feel it like a damp blanket of fog wrapping around us. “So please don’t— You can’t use this as a reason to—”

“Shut up,” I growled at him, and the surprise of me being annoyed cut through his distress, his second-guessing of himself, of us, of what had been, and brought him back to the present. “I married you. If I was gonna have second thoughts, I would’ve had them already.”

He didn’t look convinced in the least.

“Do you doubt me or the vow I made?”

His gaze remained locked with mine.