Page 171 of Always: A Legacy Novel

“You’re safe to me. You’ve always been safe to me.”

Safe.

Right.

He killed a man, got his dick sucked in a car, took his girl to prom, and fucked her on a hotel balcony all in the same day. The night was still goddamn young, so he had ample time to find more trouble, yet.

He screamed safe.

It was almost like Catherine could read his mind when she said, “You are safe to me. You’re mine, Cross.”

Yeah … maybe.

Her lips ghosted along his jaw and up to the shell of his ear. “Please, please, please don’t ever get tired of me. Give me you and us, and make me happy. I’m so sick of being on and off, and running. Be safe, and hide me when I’m tired of everyone else, and just … please, Cross.”

“Always,” he promised.

Catherine rested back into his embrace, set her chin on his shoulder, and settled … for now.

How long would that last? How long before the next upset, the next run because she was restless? How long before he was picking up pieces again, or pulling her from something else she couldn’t handle to keep her from getting hurt?

Why the hell couldn’t he stop it from happening to begin with?

Cross was starting to think there were certain things he couldn’t save Catherine from. Like herself. She was running from shit in her head, and he wasn’t loud enough in there to stop it from making her bolt again.

She was her own worst enemy. She just didn’t know it. He couldn’t make her be happy, when she wasn’t happy with herself, but fuck him if he wasn’t going to at least try.

Because he would try.

He would keep trying.

Until she put one of them in a grave.

Catrina’s voice carried down the hall, albeit quietly, making Catherine slow in her walk. She was late as it was for her first day of school, but the conversation happening in the kitchen was apparently about her, and so she wanted to hear it.

“She’s calmed down, Dante, especially this past summer,” Catrina said, “and I’m not sure about you, but I would give him a hell of a lot of credit for that.”

“You don’t know that it’s because of Cross. It could have been a lot of things that did it, Cat.”

“I know that nothing we did worked, bello. I know that the more you took from her, or punished her, or caged her in, the worse she became. I know she wouldn’t talk, and when she did, she raged. I know that she could look me in the face, and not look at me at the same time. I know she was … she was not her.”

“Sure, but—”

“She is a lot more like the old her when she is with him than when she is not,” Catrina said softly. “So, perhaps you should take another step back here where he and she are concerned. Give it some more time.”

“How much more can I step back?” Her father scoffed. “Jesus Christ, Catrina, I can’t step back more than I already have, honestly. She runs the roads with him. She’s out all damn day and night with him, and she’s only seventeen.”

“Eighteen in a few months.”

Dante grumbled at that. “Listen, I can’t do more, amore.”

“You could,” her mother insisted, “like being pleasant when he’s here with her, or trying. You could keep your opinions quiet because sure we’re not real pleased with the freedom she has. Still, we’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, but here’s the thing, Dante. Either we continue like we have been with her, and we still get the phone calls about where she is. We get to see her in the morning either because he brings her home, or she sleeps in her own bed, and we know what is going on. Or … we go through what we did with her last year again, and once she turns eighteen, she’s going to bolt. She will run, and you will not be fast enough to catch her. Mark my words.”

“I’m trying. Cat, I tried, and I am still trying.”

“Yeah, I know, but give her a bit more legroom to move and give him the credit that he’s kept her a little closer to the ground this summer.”

“Yes, but the summer is over,” Dante murmured, “so what now?”