AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The hell it is. ” The tears were running down her face again; sobs were tearing at her chest. “You won’t love me. You can’t love me. You can’t even let anyone know you’re fucking me!”
Janey swung away from him as those words tore from her lips. She capped her hand over her mouth, fought back a sob. Fought back the pain.
“What did you just say to me, Janey?” His voice was dangerously soft.
Turning back to him, she realized the bitter smile that shaped her lips was rife with mockery.
“You hide through the day. ” Her breathing hitched. “When I have to go out, my brother or cousins follow me; you can’t. You pace my fucking apartment. Wouldn’t do for the future chief of police to be caught screwing a traitor’s daughter, would it?” She had to fight to breathe past the tears now. The hurt. “Look at you. ” She yelled back at him. “You nearly bled to death in front of me, and now you’re stating ownership like you bought me on an auction block. You don’t own me. ”
She was shaking. Shaking so hard she felt as though she was going to come apart. She could feel her heart shattering, all the pain, all the years that she had been alone, too afraid to care, too afraid to love, slicing through her.
“I didn’t let anyone know we were lovers because I didn’t want your stalker to know someone was plotting to catch him,” he said softly.
His expression was frightening. It was hard, flat. His eyes were brutal, spearing into her.
“Good excuse. ” She wiped the tears from her face. “Really worked, too. You almost died!” Her voice rose again.
His finger stabbed at her. “We’re going to fight this out later,” he promised her, his voice furious. “When your brother isn’t standing in the kitchen listening to us argue like idiots. ”
“There’s no fight. ” She caught her breath on another sob. “There’s no fight, Alex, because in the end, it’s not going to matter either way. You won’t love me. That leaves us at a dead fucking end. ”
“Janey, dammit, do you think I don’t care for you?” His voice rose now, his eyes dilated, the color darkened. “Do you think you don’t mean more to me than any woman in the world outside my sister?”
“That’s not love!”
“I wouldn’t fucking breathe if anything happened to you,” he yelled back furiously, crossing to her and jerking her against him. “What the fuck more can I give you, Janey? Damn you, I couldn’t live in a world without you in it. ”
She buried her head against his chest, sobbing. Breaking down. Feeling the anguish of so many years rising inside her. All the aching loneliness, the nights she stared into the darkness and wouldn’t let herself cry.
“It’s not love,” she cried desperately, holding on to him, wanting to sink into the floor and curl into herself as the rage and the pain raked through her with angry talons. “Oh God, Alex. I can’t walk away from you. I can’t tear myself away from you. And you’re going to destroy what’s left of my soul. ”
Because she needed to be loved. Just once. To hear the words I love you. Words she hadn’t even heard from her brother since he was a boy. Words she had never heard since then from anyone, male or female. She needed, no, she hungered to be loved, and unfortunately, Janey knew, no other man’s love but Alex’s would do now. And Alex didn’t believe in love.
“Janey. ” His arms were around her, both arms. He held her against his chest, one hand covering the back of her head to press her against him. “Baby. You have everything I am,” he whispered against her hair.
“Everything, Janey. I’d never cheat on you. I’ll never hurt you. Nothing matters past you. If I could give you more, I’d give you more. ”
Janey shook her head, pulling back from him. “Let me go. ”
“I can’t let you go. ” He cupped the side of her face and lifted it, touched his lips to hers. “Janey, you might walk away from me, but I’ll never let you go. ” His eyes stared into hers, and inside, she felt that secret, hungry part of herself open again, gasping, grasping for any part of him she could get.
“And I have no choice but to accept that,” she said hollowly. “Because you’re right, Alex. I do love you.
I love you so much I can’t bear what I’m doing to both of us now. If I could walk away and take all the danger with me, I’d do that. Because I hate myself for this. I hate myself for being here. And I hate knowing you’re in danger because of me. ” She jerked away from him, forcing him to release her. “But you’d follow. ”
“I’d follow,” he said quietly. “To the ends of the earth, Janey, I’d follow you. ”
She glanced over at him, drying her face. She hated crying. She hated the sense of helplessness, of hopelessness, that it filled her with.
“Do you know how to love babies, Alex?” she whispered then. “Am I supposed to accept that you can’t love at all? Or just that you can’t love me?”
She touched her stomach, wondering. Hating herself because she loved him too much, and she knew it.
She loved him with everything inside her soul. And he didn’t know how to love.
“Watch you touch your stomach, Janey,” he said gently, “as though already imagining our child there. Do you thi
nk for a moment that you and that baby won’t fill my world?”
