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I need to put that shackle of gold back on my finger and I need to—oh, Lord, I hope my attacker wasn’t serious when he told me to crawl to Antonio. To beg him to take me back.
How has my life turned into this? How is this the way my cookie crumbles? I’ve always considered myself a strong woman. A kind woman. I aim to be genuine and morally correct in all the things I do.
How could I have chosen so poorly for myself in a life partner that I’m now unable to escape him?
That sob I’ve been fighting has talons and they’re digging in as it rises, determined to break free. I fight harder to keep it down.
Footsteps sound on the other side of the curtain a moment before I hear, “Coming in, Sunshine.”
The curtain rustles. The snared sob thrashes free to belch into the space. It’s so violent, I fought it so hard, my entire body jolts with the unwilling release.
Big hands land gently on my shoulders, and he turns me carefully to face him. His voice is deep and rough and fringed in violence not intended for me as he commands, “Come here.”
I don’t fight him as he pulls me into his chest. His embrace is gentle as it wraps around me. A feeling of safety I shouldn’t entertain surrounds me, enveloping me in that ever-false hope. When will I learn the trickery of this fickle hope? The way she draws me close only to feedme to despair?
I cry harder, as though the safety of his arms draws out the sorrow of my reality as painful and unwilling as one might pull the marrow from my bones.
I can’t say how long he holds me, how long I cry. I’m weak when the tears run dry, so weak I stumble when I try to pull away.
His arms tighten, a pulse of strength that holds me up and has my head tipping back to peek up at him. I’m alarmed to find him already looking down at me with a kind of snowy soft in those ice blue eyes. But that’s the only part of him that’s even remotely soft. His jaw is hard. The set to his face, the way he holds back his rage, is hard. His body is, well, hard.
I sense deep inside the man isn’t one to be taken lightly. That there’s something dark and dangerous lurking beneath his inked flesh. But whatever monster he houses deep inside can’t be as powerful as the monster within my ex-fiancé. That monster has political power at his back, and we all know how corrupt that can be.
How could I have thought he was one of the good ones?
How could I have been so foolish? So hopeful?
“Sorry.” Heat stings the bruises on my face.
“For what?”
“Breaking.”
“You’re allowed to break.”
God, now I want to cry again. I turn away fromhim, knowing that if I don’t, I will. “I’m allowed to go home.”
“I know.”
My eyes lift to his. I don’t think he’s ever looked away from me. “You do?”
He dips his chin once. “Candace told me.”
“Nurse Candy?”
“That’s the one.” His lips quirk just enough to make my heart flop. I don’t like that. I don’t like how he looks when he talks about her. I have no reason to be jealous—and yet…
“Are you and her…?”
Not a thing about the hard in his face changes. “No.”
“Ah.” I nod, hugging my cardigan to my chest because getting it on isn’t an option. Not with the way my ribs feel. “I should probably get out of here. They’ll need the room.”
He makes no move to let me out even though he nods. “Where are you going?”
I draw a shallow breath. “Home, I guess.”
“The home where you were assaulted?”
