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“Are you, Abbie? Are you hiding something?”
“Yes. Now we’re over.”
Voices sound, growing closer and I recognize them. They can’t be ignored. “We’re not over,” I promise her, but I lift off of her, my hands settling on my hips, my attention holding hers, as I call out, “Over here, Grayson!”
Abbie inhales and breathes out. “We can’t,” she whispers.
“We are,” I promise, and it doesn’t matter exactly what she means. We can. We are. We will. To everything, including beating her ex.
Grayson and Mia round the corner, both dark-haired, a gorgeous couple worth billions, who now present themselves in sweats and rain boots ready to work. Both greet Abbie and promise her help. She gushes her appreciation. “Where do we start?” Mia asks.
“I’ll walk you to the back,” Abbie offers when Grayson’s phone rings.
He answers it and listens. “We’ll have someone meet you in the parking lot.” He disconnects. “The trucks to transport the animals are here. They need to know where to park.”
“I’ll go show them,” I say, meeting Abbie’s eyes. “Just tell me what you need and you get Grayson and Mia started.”
“We’ll wing it inside,” Grayson says. “You two deal with the trucks.” He grabs Mia’s hand and they head inside, leaving me alone with Abbie again.
She cuts her gaze again but not before I see the fear in her eyes. She’s afraid. I’m not sure of what. Maybe it’s me. Maybe she’s trouble and feels like I busted her, but that’s the cynical Gabe talking and thinking. This Gabe, the one standing with her, says she’s afraid of her ex, and I’m not allowing her to live that way any more than I’m allowing her to push me away.
I drag her to me. “There are too many ways you want to fuck me for us to be over,” I say softly.
She blushes and then laughs. “That I want to fuck you?”
“Yes, Abbie. And I’m going to let you.”
Her eyes narrow. “I’m not sure how to take that.”
I kiss her, long and deep, before saying, “We aren’t over and you aren’t getting out of telling me what just made you try to run, but do it later, when we’re alone and naked.”
“When you have the advantage?”
Exactly.
Chapter twenty-three
Gabe
With Abbie still standing outside the shelter with me, and that vow to make her tell me why she tried to run again between us, time is not on my side; not with the trucks pulling into the shelter lot, and my need to go direct them where to park. “Tonight,” I add. “You’re going to tell me tonight.”
“Gabe, you—”
I kiss her. “Yes, me. You’re going to tell me.”
Abbie’s mother shouts out something from the door not far from us and Abbie’s fingers curl on my shirt. “I have to tell her that she might be in legal trouble.”
I close my hands over hers. “Not yet. I’ll call back the company I have digging into your ex, and ask them to find out if there’s really an action coming down on her.”
“They can find out?”
“Anything about anyone.”
“Anything?”
Does she pale at that word? Or is my past causing me to question her, to doubt her when I shouldn’t? “Anything,” I say, watching her closely and she doesn’t pull back this time.
“Please call them. I need to know. I need to know badly.”
