The touches stopped. And the biting.
“I’m here, Cora. Here for you,” Valentine reassured me. His hands swept over my body as I flinched, unable to control the motion, and the blindfold came off.
I stared into dark, rage filled eyes, his control carefully tethered as his arms folded around me. A second later, the metal bracelet at my wrist fell away. I cried out and launched into his chest, burrowing deep.
“It’s okay, Cora. It's okay. He can’t hurt you again. Not anymore.”
“How do you know?” I sniffled at his shirt and tried not to be disgusting, though my tears were anything but the pretty sort.
“Because he had an accident with your stairwell. Apparently he thought he could fly.”
I pulled back to stare into Valentine's face and found no evidence of a lie there. Not a truth either.
I clung to him, shivering and trembling. “You know, the last goalie the Chimeras had used to defend the team from everything as well,” I said as flashing lights illuminated my apartment from the street level through the open door and the stairwell.
I didn’t need to look to know the trust that Valentine didn’t say. Maybe I should be scared but… I wasn’t. Not anymore.
Bootsteps invaded my home as I clung to Valentine, ignoring the chatter around us. He fielded the questions, thick arms strong and protective around me, a barrier against the world.
“I called the police earlier. Figured out too late where he would be, that you were his next obsession. I hope it mattered.” His kiss on my lips was tender and sweet and left me aching and needy for more.
“Iloveyou,” I mumbled the mangled words into his shirt as a disgruntled, unknown someone told Valentine that they’d have to come back and talk to me later.
We both ignored them.
“Me too,” he echoed my garbled words with a clarity I couldn’t muster. “I’m in love with you, Cora. There is no one else, not for me,” he murmured.
I rested my head on his shoulder, letting him tug a quilt around me.No one else.That was a sentiment I could get behind right now. I sighed into the family rhythm of his heartbeat and stole a few more seconds before our peace was blasted to pieces again.
But that’s how Valentine and I had always been, it seemed, even in the few days that we’d know each other. Rushing about, trying to make our strange, frantic relationship to work even as we orbited around the other all day. And when we spent time together it was what time allowed, rather than what we planned out.
“Thank you for coming for me. He— Peatie,” I forced his name through my lips. “He said you wouldn’t,” I whispered.
Valentine's arms tightened around me. “And you believed him?” he murmured, his voice soft though his arms remained stiff. Tension rolled off my protector Chimera as I pressed my body to his.
“I thought maybe you were sick of me.” The confession stung, even though it was true.
He pressed a kiss to my temple, then a more tender version to my lips that shattered my heart on the spot. “Never going to happen, Cora. I’m in too deep for that to happen.”
I smiled at that last. Because funnily enough, so was I.
Despite all the promises I made to myself when I took on the Chimeras this time around, the promises that said I wouldn't get involved with a player, that I wouldn’t care and that I wouldn’t let a single one of them get under my skin…
I was in too deep, just like him.
EPILOGUE
CORA
We crowded into Coach’s office with his present, the three of us, and a chair.
It sounded like the first line of a bad joke, and the space felt like the entire team was jammed into the small area while in reality it was just my tame Chimera who consumed every inch of breathable air and space.
“For you,” I presented the new leather office chair officially to the chimeras coach in the wake of the mess that started with Heath Valentine and ended with both of us.
Ward Bishop looked at both of us across his desk and posed his ass over his worn, used chair. “And if I like this one?” he said, both eyebrows raised as he made to sit.
I opened my mouth to object, horror building in my throat. I knew what I’d done on that chair, and I couldnotbe in this room if he sat on it.
