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I guessed maybe he had the power to break me after all because I allowed him to guide me to climb on behind him, and I wrapped my arms around his powerful frame.
I pressed my nose to the fabric on the back of his shirt.
Leather and ink and wickedness.
I inhaled it deep.
He kicked the motorcycle over, and the engine grumbled, roaring as he took to the street.
He headed down 9th, and it was less than a couple minutes later when he was pulling his bike into the parking lot beside my building.
He killed the bike, and he took my hand and helped me off, and I somehow couldn’t look back at him as we began to climb the stairs.
But I could feel him. His presence rolling over me from behind.
His power. His strength. His ferocity.
I shuddered beneath it, wanting to turn and sink into it, allow myself the fall.
I could barely squeeze air into my lungs by the time I turned the key in the lock and let us into my apartment.
It felt even smaller than normal with him in it.
Everything about him was overpowering.
As if he were gravity.
Everything drawn into his orbit.
Inhaling a staggered breath, I slowly turned around to face him where he stood just inside the door.
His hands were in fists, the tattooed Ss on the back of his hand clenched, the skull on the other thrashing.
“What I saw last night…” His voice was gravel. Shards of the aggression and splinters of care.
My chest tightened. “I can’t give you that part of myself.”
His expression raged, and his jaw ticked as he clenched his teeth. “Just need the confirmation that’s who you’ve been running from.”
I stalled, blinking at him as I toiled with what he was asking.God, was I really giving him this? Apparently so because I couldn’t stop the feeble, “Yes.”
His head nodded a million times as if he already knew but still had to come to terms with the truth of it. He itched in uncertainty before he spoke.
“Is it wrong that I want to protect you?”
“I can’t go back to that time, River.”
“Yet you’re still looking over your shoulder.”
I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, my words trembling. “I can’t just erase it, but I am trying to move on. Iamtrying to find a new life. Can’t you understand that?”
“But you’re hiding things, Charleigh.”
I blinked at him. “And you need to allow me that.”
His thick throat bobbed, like what I was asking him was hard to swallow.
It felt like an hour passed before he nodded. “I get you don’t want to give me details, but that doesn’t mean I am not going to do everything I can to make sure you’re safe. Because that’s all I want for you. Want you to find this new life. For you to fuckin’ live and live right.”
