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I had the feeling there was something more to this crazy idea, something he wasn’t telling me yet. The question was, did I trust him enough to believe in him? To follow him anyway?
There had been guys before McMurphy. I’d stayed a virgin, but I’d played around. And I definitely had a type: the bad boy. The guy who was a little bit wild, who broke the rules. My mother had raised me to stay away from boys like that, probably from her own experience, so I’d taken pleasure in rebelling. Bad boys were my weakness.
The fact that those same boys always treated me like dirt was lost on me—I didn’t take the warning. I thought the right woman could change them, make them different. Until I learned my lesson in the hardest possible way with McMurphy, who took everything from me, made me hate myself, put his boot heel in my thigh, and called me a slut while he did it.
I understood it now. Bad boys were a bad idea. Bad boys were pain and nothing else.
Yet here I was, with Cavan Wilder.
He should be the type. He had no family; he lived with a motorcycle club. He didn’t date. He didn’t break rules, because he barely even acknowledged that rules existed. He’d run off with me after a single conversation, and he’d defied a man who was hell bent on killing him without a second thought. He only owned jeans and worn t-shirts and boots, and he didn’t shave. After what I’d been through, I should be running away screaming.
But I wasn’t. I didn’t want him to leave me, and I didn’t want him to die, and it wasn’t because I was desperate or because he was my type. It was because he was him.
He was still holding my hand, watching me think it over. Waiting.
He was a bad boy maybe, but he’d showed up in that parking lot and saved my life. He hadn’t judged me. He listened to me; he paid attention to me. He’d dropped everything, risked his life, been attacked. He was offering me
money and protection and asking nothing in return. Even the sex had been about my pleasure. He was my white knight.
I found my voice. “You told me,” I said, “when we first left, that you were doing this for yourself, and not for me. Was that true?”
“Don’t ask me that,” he said.
“Why not?”
He frowned. “Because I don’t know the answer.”
“And what do you get out of all of this?” I asked him. “It looks like I get money and protection. What do you get?”
“I know that if McMurphy or one of his goons kills me, it wasn’t for nothing. My money goes somewhere useful. I know that I did at least one good thing.”
That was a good answer, but it wasn’t enough. “And you get sex. Right? Is that the deal?”
He laughed, and I knew he was remembering last night, just like I was. “Sweetheart,” he said, “what’s going to happen between us is going to happen whether we’re married or not.”
“So would this marriage be in name only?” I asked.
His gaze darkened, and I felt my heart speed up. “I don’t think we should lie to ourselves. Do you?”
I still wanted him so badly. Last night hadn’t even been close to enough, and he hadn’t been inside me yet. No, we would probably fuck, and I would enjoy it. But we didn’t have to be married for that.
“If we do this,” Cavan said, “and everything works out, we can get a divorce if you want. You won’t get a contest from me. This isn’t about owning you, Dani. It’s a piece of paper that protects you for as long as we need it to. And if you want out, you get out. What do you say?”
I stared at him. I’d come in this man’s arms while he whispered in my ear. I had his ink on my skin. I’d been awake with him. I didn’t want to let another man touch me like that, put his hands or his mouth on me. I didn’t want to let another man do the things I wanted Cavan to do. That I’d practically begged him to do.
And I’d be fucked if I was going to watch him drive off into the sunset with divorce papers, ready to find someone else.
I wanted Cavan Wilder, my white knight, for as long as we had. And it was my lucky day, because that was exactly what he was offering me. I didn’t care if there was more he wasn’t saying. Maybe I should please myself for once.
I nodded, and I watched him smile. “Okay,” I said. “You have a deal. Let’s get married.”
Seventeen
Cavan
It hadn’t been much of a proposal. I’d done that on purpose, made it businesslike and unromantic, because I didn’t want her to have any illusions. If Dani secretly wanted a pretty wedding with lace and flowers, that was not what this was. I wanted her to agree to it—needed her to agree to it—but she had to understand what marriage to me would be.
Protection, pure and simple.
