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His eyes drop back to the air mattress I’m now folding into a tight little square. “You sleep on an air mattress?”
Why do I sense danger in his voice?
A gentle trill rolls though my body as though it somehow senses the need to be aware. I harden my resolve, because I don’t think there’s any backing out of this now. Well, maybe there is. I can always unpack my things. It wasn’t like I’d ever really lived unpacked anyway.
“Yep.” I stand and meet his eyes. “I’m still not sure I’m comfortable with this arrangement.”
He doesn’t grin or frown. Zero emotion touches the man’s face. He’s a closed book.
“This arrangement will help us both. But it’ll save you,” he says coolly. “Or have you forgotten what happened last night?”
Last night. Right. The near loss of my bread winning job.
I drop my eyes, hating that they burn. Again.
This life isn’t the life I’m used to. I’m not accustomed to living on the constant verge of tears. I’m not used to desperation existing rent-free in my chest, clawing at every organ until they feel raw and exposed to the world, vulnerable.
I suck in air and lift the folded air mattress away from the wall where I’d lay my head each night, and the clink of the blade falling to the chipped and swollen laminate floor beneath sounds shockingly loud in the small space.
I tense, and Cash steps into the space. “You sleep with a knife?”
I shrug. I’m not going there with him. I don’t know him well enough to go there. Besides, it’s bad enough he knows where I stash my back-up safety plan.
“Wrenlee?” The way he says my name like that, all smoke and hot sex with undertones of dominance—why do I keep thinking of this man and sex?
Yeah, the guy is hot, but a frigging grip would be nice.
Pulling back my shoulders, I half explain, “Cara has a lot of boyfriends. When she falls asleep, she’s a heavy sleeper. Sometimes they get ideas. If they don’t listen to no, I know I have a way to protect myself.
He narrows his eyes on me. “You ever need to use it?”
“Not yet, but I’ve come close.”
His jaw tightens and he moves like a predator into the room. Bending, he lifts the knife into a big hand that engulfs it. Giving it a small toss, and a quick flip that sends my heart into a tailspin, he closes his hand around it again. His eyes never leave me. “Anyone ever tell you if you pull a weapon, you best be prepared for it to be used against you?”
“N—no.”
“I just did.”
I glare at him. “I’d prefer to be gutted by that very blade than feel the hands of a man I don’t want to touch my body, touching me.”
He watches me for a long, solid beat. Then hepockets my knife, dips low, grabs my two boxes and walks out. Air wheezes from my lungs as I balance the mattress on the milk crate, lift it, and follow a man I don’t know from the apartment I’ve had since I came to this cut-throat city in the summer, all bright-eyed and hopeful.
How quickly I lost the shine. How fast reality pummelled all that hope into dust.
four
Wrenlee
I kind of hate how easy Marley watched me go, assuring me that I shouldn’t feel guilty because Cara would have another girl renting my corner of the room by the end of the night. Still, I do feel guilty. I feel guilty for leaving Marley there, alone.
Cash pulls the SUV to the curb, commanding, “Stay,” before he exits, slamming the door behind him.
I take that moment to really take in my surroundings. I officially don’t know where home is, I’m with a man I don’t know at all, and I’m sitting in the passenger seat of his Land Rover Defender. Dad owns a small mechanics shop in the small town where I was bornand raised, so I know my cars. And I know this one is very, very expensive. Hell, this car costs more than the average person makesin a year. It’s so expensive, that not a single person in my small hometown owned one.
I never thought I’d have the chance to sit in the passenger seat of one of these, much less know anyone who could afford this kind of luxury.
Pushing my palms into my eyes, I feel the steady thud, thud, thud of my pounding head against the irregular beat of the pulse that thunders so hard in my wrist, I feel it in my palm. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t think right. I’m exhausted, sleep deprived, and afraid for my future.
