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He shook his head, anger hardening the sharp planes of his face as he rose to his feet. “You thinkthatwill make things easy for me? Nothing about my life has been fucking easy, Roan. Not even you. You’re the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever met.Thisis why I should have never told you anything.” He spun away from me, marching back toward the stairwell.
“Oh, so nowI’mthe bad guy? Why? Because I’m trying to understand you and your fucked-up life?” I strode after him, keeping just enough distance between us so he couldn’t turn around and punch me quite so easily. “Or because I remind you that you’re fucking human?”
Not surprisingly, he ignored me and kept going, jogging down the stairs. He bypassed the floor for the elevator, probably hoping I wouldn’t want to follow him down twenty flights of stairs. Frankly, I was still surprised he kept underestimating me after all this time. I’d follow him to Hell and back if that’s what it took to get something through his thick-ass head.
“I asked because I’ve never seen you like this,” I said, keeping pace with him. “You come home covered in blood all the time and don’t even bat an eye. You are a fucking master at keeping everything inside, but it’s killing you, Sasha!
“Do I like what you do for a living? Fuck no I don’t, but I’m not stupid. I know you’re doing what you have to because you don’t have a fucking choice. You never did. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry they pigeonholed you into being the Wolf. I’m sorry you have to hide who you are. I’m sorry for being a pain in your ass. But I’mnotfucking sorry for caring about you!”
He stopped on one of the landings and stepped toward me. I stayed on the bottom stair, taking advantage of the fact I was slightly taller than him for the time being.
“How can you care,” he asked, grudgingly looking up at me, “knowing what you know?”
“Because I love you. I loveallof you. The good, the bad, and the fucking ugly. Just like you love me.”
He muttered something under his breath, shaking his head and glaring at the corner of the stairwell.
“What was that, grumpy?” I asked, raising my brows.
“I’m not grumpy,” he huffed, his gaze flicking back to me. “And I said I don’t deserve you.”
I rested my hands on his shoulders and pressed my forehead to his with a sigh. “Don’t be stupid.” There was no point in arguing with him, let alone trying to explain that love was one of those things in life that was supposed to be given freely, unconditionally. And for reasons I couldn’t answer, I loved him with all of my heart.
He slipped his hands beneath my shirt, running up my sides slowly. “Don’t be a dick.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
Grunting some sort of acknowledgment, he hugged my waist, pressing his cheek against my chest. I wrapped my arms around him, fully content to stand there for as long as it took for him to feel better. Even just a smidge.
“Let’s go home,” I murmured as he pulled away a few minutes later. “Watch a movie. Relax. Try not to think about any of this.”
“Only ifIget to pick the movie.”
“I think the first one back gets to pick. I mean, those are the rules…”
He quirked a brow at me right as I shoved past him and took off down the stairs.
“No more dwarves!” he yelled, chasing after me.
“Just listen to the music!”
“If you want to listen to the music, put on the soundtrack!”
I was almost to our floor, about a flight and a half ahead of him, when Sasha appeared out of nowhere. He sailed in from the opposite side of the stairs and landed in a crouch in front of me, blocking the door. Breathing hard, he looked up at me with a wolfish smirk.
“What the fuck kind of Jason Bourne shit was that?” I gaped at him before looking up the center of the stairwell to try and figure out his moves. We were on the tenth fucking floor. If he miscalculated that, he would have easily killed himself.
Getting to his feet slowly, something in his body popped and a wince flashed across his face. “No more dwarves.”
“Fuck the dwarves. Are you ok? How did you do that?” I slipped my arm around his waist while pulling his arm over my shoulder, a not so subtle hint to lean on me instead of toughing out whatever the hell he’d just injured.
“Practice.” Despite favoring his right leg, he still moved out of the stairwell and down the hall pretty quickly.
As much as I didn’t want to remember my time as his captive, this at least put one thing to rest for me — I never stood a chance escaping from him in that motel. Yeah, I would have gotten to the door first, and down the stairs first. But leaping vast distances wasn’t a deterrent to the Wolf. He would have crushed me, either on those stairs or the second I hit the ground. Maybe my subconscious hadn’t been a coward after all. It recognized a fucking predator and knew better than to mess with it.
“What other moves you got?” I waggled my brows at him, pushing the memories aside as we stopped in front of our apartment door.
“Come here and I’ll show you.”
