Page 110 of Cross + Catherine: The Companion

Juan was hers.

He was six feet, five inches of two-hundred and forty pounds of Latino muscle coming through the crowd. And the man could part a crowd just by fucking looking at it. How he managed to blend in as well as he did with that God-like face of his, and those dark eyes, she didn’t know.

Cece always found him.

He could never hide from her.

Cece met Juan’s gaze a second before his arm slipped around her waist. And then his fist crashed into Mack’s face.

The football player had nothing on Juan.

For a second, Cece relaxed.

Juan said nothing, simply pointed at Mack bleeding on the ground like that was his one and only warning. Or maybe like he was daring the guy to stand up. If she actually cared about Mack, she would tell him the smart move was to stay on the ground and play dead like the stupid fuck he was.

He would die if he stood up.

Simple as that.

The party wasn’t fun anymore.

The guests looked like frozen statues.

Someone even turned the music off.

“Come on,” Cece murmured in Juan’s ear. “Let’s get out of here.”

His arm on her waist tightened.

He’d been holding onto her since she was thirteen, and he was fifteen. Her backbone, really. He held her heart, too, and was always oh, so careful with it.

“Come on,” she said again.

Juan heard her that time. “Yeah, babe, let’s go.”

Soon, the two were outside, and Juan was holding open the door for her to get inside his still-running Rolls-Royce. He never really failed to amaze Cece in more ways than she sometimes understood.

He wouldn’t say a word about this.

Not about what happened, or how much it scared him. And she knew it did scare him.

He would never ask her to stop.

Never hold her back.

How could he?

How could he do that when he only ever had her back?

“Juan?” Cece whispered.

Her dark-eyed love looked back at her. “Yeah, babe?”

“I love you.”

He smiled.

It’d probably been too long since she told him that. It’d been a couple months since they were official on being together again.