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I didn't get the chance to see the sun. Because I lived in the fucking gutters.
There were times that I wanted to leave it behind. Nights when I would lay in bed, staring at my wall, feeling tears stinging my eyes. Wanting nothing more than to pack my stuff and take off. Go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Get a real job. Find a good man. And maybe he would ignore me during football season and I'd have to bitch at him to bring out the trash. But he would call me pretty and kiss me like he meant it.
I could wash the filth of my twenty-six years away. I could be clean.
But that wasn't an option for me.
Some people needed to wade in the muck so that others could live untouched by it.
My life was a sacrifice to a greater good.
I had no right to be sad about that.
“Cold?” Breaker's voice said behind me, making me jump, my heart flying upward. God, he was good at that. I guessed that was what made him good at his job.
“Yeah,” I said, turning toward him.
To find him standing there with clothes. Clothes. And blankets.
“Here,” he said, holding out a pair of men's socks to me and I practically lunged at them, slipping my feet in and pulling them up my calves. Next he handed me a pair of sweatpants. Men's. Blue. Way too big. But warm. I slipped into those as well, reaching for the dark blue sweatshirt and pulling it over my head. “Better?” he asked once I was swallowed up in the new material.
“Yes. Thank you,” I said, meaning it.
“Don't thank me, doll,” he said, shaking his head.
“Why not? You did something nice.”
He exhaled his breath, running a hand down the side of his head. “After kidnapping and holding you against your will. You can't say this was nice.”
“How many other hostages have you brought clothes and blankets to?” I asked, watching him. His head shook and I had my answer. “Exactly. So thank you for caring about me not dying of pneumonia. You know... before I OD on heroin.” I meant it to me kinda funny. In a morbid way. I even smiled as I said it.
All I was met with was a tightening around his eyes, a ticking in his jaw. He looked almost... angry.
“You really ain't got shit to live for?” he asked, his voice low.
I felt my shoulder shrug. “I really don't have shit to live for,” I affirmed. “I mean... I'm not exactly happy about dying before I even reach my thirtieth birthday. But I get to choose how to go. Better at my own hands than being scraped off the pavement after a drunk driver hits me while I was crossing the street. Or choking on the horse pill sized vitamins I take alone in my apartment, not to be found for days until my landlord comes looking for rent.”
“Jesus Christ you're dark.”
At this, I felt my lips quirk up. “You kidnap and hold people hostage and probably kill them. And I'm dark?”
“Yeah, doll. You're dark. I work in darkness. I don't live it. I don't wrap it around myself like a blanket, hiding from the fuckin' world.”
“I don't hide from the world!” I objected, though I knew it was true.
“I sat on your apartment for three days and you didn't come out once. Not even to get food. Not to talk to another person. Not to get laid. Nothing.”
“I was working,” I objected.
“On what? Ratting out porn-addicted men to their suspicious spouses?”
Okay. I was getting a little bit angry.
Unfortunately for me, there was no such thing as a little bit angry. One kind of angry was just as bad as the next. And when I was pissed, there seemed to be a disconnect between my lips and my sensor.
“Trying to bring down a friggen criminal empire you asshole!”
Oops.
That was the wrong thing to say.
His brow quirked, his eyes got curious.
And I knew there was no way he was going to let that one go.
“Come again?” he asked, his voice deceptively mild.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“That ain't gonna cut it.”
“Well, too bad. Because I'm not telling you.”
“Doll...”
“No. And you can't make me.”
That probably was another wrong thing to say.
I knew that because of the smile that seemed to touch his eyes, but not his lips.
“Wanna bet?”
“Are you going to hit me?”
To this, he flinched. And I knew he wouldn't. He wasn't one of those men.
“No. I'm not going to hit you.”
“Then I don't see how you can make me tell you anything.”
“No?” he asked, the smile finally catching the side of his lips as he ever so slowly started moving toward me.
Better sense told me to stand my ground. But my body wasn't listening. I was just as slowly moving backward, away from him. But then my back hit the wall. And he was still coming.
My heart was hammering hard, my chest feeling oddly constricted. And part of it was fear- fear of the unknown. But part of it was something else. Something I didn't quite recognize or understand.
There was only a foot between us, his ice blue eyes focused on mine, his face giving nothing of his intentions away.
Of their own volition, my hands went up, palms out, pressing into his abs as he started to close the small gap between us.
His eyes slid down to my hands, then back up to my face.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice a little shaky. Weak.
What the hell was going on?
He pushed closer, making my hands press harder into his abdominal muscles. And I realized I was right back in my apartment when I thought he was strong under his clothes. He was like a brick wall beneath my palms.
My eyes slid back up to his, a strange fluid sensation swirling around in my belly when they landed, finding him watching me.
One of his hands went up, caging me in from the side. The other rose more slowly, hovering in the air for a second, before skimming his fingertips lightly across my jaw.
