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She stayed that way for the longest moment, soft cries still getting loose, before she finally allowed me to pry her hands away.
The sight of her this way punched me in the gut. Gorgeous face stained with tears, cheeks red and chapped, cinnamon-flecked eyes swollen with desperation.
Another wave of protectiveness slammed me, limbs shaking with the violence I wanted to enact.
But I tucked it down, saving it for the motherfucker who I was going to hunt. The one I was going to end. And when I found him? I was going to do it slow. “Look at me, Charleigh. Look at me and know.”
She tipped her face fully toward me, those eyes doing wild, wild things, crashing between old fears and the trust she’d given me.
“Tell me what you saw.”
Her jaw trembled, and I brushed away the tear that streamed down her cheek with the pad of my thumb. “I…I thought someone was following me after I left work.”
Aggression churned, but I forced myself to keep it cool. To show her I could be her rock. That she’d come to the right place.
“Who?”
Her head barely shook. “I never got a good look at him. I just…felt it. This…” Her eyes squeezed closed for a beat, and I knew exactly what she’d felt.
The same evil I’d scented in the air out on the sidewalk.
“I thought I was only being paranoid because that’s something I do. I get paranoid and I run, even though I don’t have any proof that anyone is even after me. But I just get this sense…”
Charleigh pressed the tips of all the fingers of her right hand to the center of her chest. “I get this sense right here that someoneis watching me. And today when I did, I swore I saw someone duck behind one of the medical plaza buildings. I kept going, and when I looked behind me again, the same person was following me in the distance.”
My teeth ground, and I itched to race back out the door. Track the bastard. But I didn’t know who the fuck I was looking for.
“Would you be able to describe them?”
Sniffling, she shook her head. “No. It was a man, I’m pretty sure, and he was wearing a khaki jacket and brown pants, but other than that, he was too far away to make anything out.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
She blew a heavy strain of air through her nose. “I’m not sure.”
“It wasn’t your ex?” She’d already told me she didn’t recognize the person, but my gut told me that’s who it had to be.
Despair shook her head. “No. I think I would have known if it was him.”
I wanted to demand his name. Didn’t matter if it wasn’t him. I knew he was responsible for her fear. Wanted to fuckin’ gut him for whatever he’d done to her in the past.
She laughed a demoralized sound and turned her gaze away. “Maybe it was nothing and I was imagining it. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
I tugged her forward a fraction, leaving an inch of space separating us. My voice was a hushed roar as I muttered, “You and I both know it wasn’tnothing, Charleigh. If you’ve been runnin’ all this time, then you’ve been runnin’ for a reason. You can trust me with that, too.”
I dragged the pad of my thumb up over her cheek and gathered the glittering moisture. “There is no shame in fear, Charleigh. There’s no shame in trying to protect yourself. You’ve been carrying this on your own for a long, long time, but you need to know that you don’t have to do that any longer.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to be scared any longer.” She whispered it before she reached out and curled her fingers in my shirt, nails scraping through the thin fabric like the lick of flames.
This girl with the power to burn me to ash.
“I don’t want to be this way any longer. I want to live, River. I just want to live.”
In grief we must live.
“You are, Charleigh, you are. And I’m going to see to it that you continue to. That you don’t have to live this life afraid. Promise you, I won’t let you go until you’re flying free. Until you’re no longer looking over your shoulder. Until we’re sure you’re safe.”
Issue was, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to want to let her go. This thing she’d lit in me was something bigger—something more powerful—than I’d ever felt before.
