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Shit.
Chapter Twenty-four
“What do you mean, you’re leaving?”
Mercy tried to keep her tone calm, even, despite the panic that clawed its way up her throat and squeezed her heart like a vise.
Gray stared at her for a second and then straightened his back.Oh. She sucked in a breath. He was about to spew some nonsense and she wasn’t going to have any of it. She barely noticed the other people in the room, looking at each other and then hightailing it out the door as fast as they could. Her attention was all on the man who was about to destroy the fragile world they’d built.
“Mercy,” he said, his tone soft like he was talking to a skittish horse.
“Don’t Mercy me. I know what’s going through your head, Gray Woodson.”
He sighed. “I’m not going to stay here and let you die because of me.”
Her arm throbbed with the force of the blood pounding through her body, but she ignored it. “Well, aren’t you the arrogant one.”
His eyes narrowed. “Arrogant?”
“You think everything is about you. I have news for you, since you seem to have forgotten. I was in danger before you ever came here. It’s the reason why you stayed, remember?”
“Yes, I remember. And instead of helping the situation, getting Josiah out of your life, he’s now sending people to shoot at me. Only you’re the one getting hit.”
“And what makes you so sure that was an accident?”
Gray frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I am the one Josiah wants out of the way. I’m sure you’re a complication he’d like to disappear, but he doesn’t get what he wants with me alive and fighting him still. For all we know, there’s a bounty on my head, too, and me being shot has nothing to do with you. So, your leaving won’t do a damn bit of good.”
His lips pulled into a faint smile at her cursing, and her heart clenched again. What other man would ever find that endearing? What other man would be okay with her wanting to run her farm and business her way? Would let her handle her own affairs? Would be okay with her domestic shortcomings? Not that it mattered. Even if there were men lining up along the Rockies, they wouldn’t be him.
“If he was purposely aiming for you—though I don’t think he was—then my leaving still keeps you safer, because you won’t have the assassins who are gunning for me to contend with on top of everything else. Jason and Doc and Preacher are here if you truly need help. They are good men who won’t accidentally get you killed.”
“You are nine kinds of stubborn, you know that, Gray Woodson!”
He snorted. “I’m well aware of that, yeah. Doesn’t make me wrong. Josiah was a nuisance before I came. He proposed to you a lot. Tried to buy your property. He didn’t try to kill you. The assassins didn’t show up until I shot him. That’s on me. The bounty is on me. I can’t stay here and continue to risk the lives of everyone in this town.”
He came toward her, cupped her face. “I can’t…won’t…continue to risk you.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrists, clung to him. “You’re a lazy, opinionated, grumpy, washed-up criminal. By your own admission. You got no business getting all noble and self-sacrificing on me now, damn you.”
He shrugged and gave her that half grin that never failed to stop her heart. “People change.”
“Not you,” she whispered.
He dipped down and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips, then rested his forehead against hers, gripping the back of her neck. “You are the strongest woman I know. You were doing just fine before I got here, and you’ll be fine after I leave.”
“Gray,” she whispered.
He crushed his mouth to hers, kissing her with a desperate urgency that didn’t just break her heart but shattered her soul. She’d always sworn she never needed anyone. She’d been left behind too many times to ever rely on anyone else. To ever expect or even hope they’d stay. And she learned a long time ago to just let them go. Because begging them to stay only made it hurt more when they walked away. So, when Gray had wandered into her life, she’d vowed that when he wanted to walk away, as she knew he would someday, she’d let him go. She wouldn’t beg.
But as he wrenched his lips from hers and stalked toward the door, the words she’d forbidden herself to ever use tore from her lips.
“Please.” The word ended on a choked sob and she drew in a shuddering breath. “Don’t go.”
Gray’s hand clenched on the doorknob until his knuckles turned white, and for half a heartbeat she thought he might reconsider. Then his gaze met hers and she knew it was over.
“Take care of yourself, Mercy,” he said, his words gruff. Final.
