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I hold up my hands. “I swear to God he doesn’t have a key or an invitation in this lifetime, Jax. He must have threatened security or bribed them. I swear to you, swear to you. I am not with him. I don’t want to be with him. Please believe me.” Anger surges through me, not at Jax, but at York. “And he’s leaving. Now.”
I charge for the door and Jax doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t believe me. God, why would he? I wouldn’t believe me. I step onto the stairs and find York at the bottom about to start the climb up. “Get out of my apartment, York! How did you even get in here?”
He moves to the center of the bottom step, standing there in his pretty blue sweater and matching dress pants, hands at his sides, gloating with pride. “I’m resourceful. You know that. And you didn’t answer your phone.”
“Get out, York.” I start walking down the stairs. “I got your point last night. Don’t tell the world Marion’s a bitch or you’ll embarrass my family.” I stop midway between the top and bottom steps, not about to get close to him. “I can’t even believe you did this.”
I know the moment Jax appears behind me, the crackle of energy sharp and hard, as is the shift in York’s gaze from me to over my shoulder. I watch his face harden in a familiar way, a way that wipes away his good looks and leaves nothing but a brutal monster.
“You move fast, Jax,” he says, giving him and his shirtless state of dress a once over, before flicking me a look. “But then, you’re pretty fast, too, aren’t you, Emma?”
Those words slap like a hit I don’t deserve, but then I never deserved anything I got in the end with this man. They also hint at all the things he would say about me if I crossed him and suddenly I don’t care. “Do you really want to piss me off, York?” I ask softly. “Because I know things you don’t want the world to know. Give me a reason to spew it all, and I will.”
“He doesn’t want to piss me off,” Jax replies. He heads toward York and he doesn’t stop until he’s standing right in front of him. “Leave now, because a call to the police would be merited, but it’s not my preference. My preference would be to knock the shit out of you.”
York snorts. “She doesn’t want that kind of trouble with me.”
“But I do because I know you abused her. I know you hurt her. I know you touched her in ways no woman should be touched.”
That statement takes me off guard, punches me in the chest and I take a step backward, hugging myself, starting to tremble. Damn it, why am I trembling?
“So back the fuck up and leave,” Jax adds, “before I start my day out right. Fucking you up before I take her for a champagne breakfast to celebrate.”
“You think because you were some semi-pro boxing champ that I’m afraid of you?”
“I don’t care what scares you, man,” Jax says, dismissal in his tone. “I just want to punch you. You have ten seconds, and if you think I’m bluffing, you’re wrong. Don’t come back or there will be a price to pay. Do your homework. I’m not an enemy you want.”
York’s gaze burns into Jax’s and then jerks to me. “We aren’t done. We’re never done and you better remember that.” He turns and walks for the door.
I snap. I don’t know how it happens, but I snap. I run down the stairs with a single vision: punching York myself. I want to hit him. I want him gone. I want to have never known him. I launch myself past Jax, or I try.
“Emma.” He catches my arm and pulls me around to face him even as the door slams shut with York’s departure. “What are you doing?”
“Let me go. Let me go, Jax.”
“I’m not going to do that. Not when you’re about to run into trouble. Not now. Maybe not ever.”
“Never? You don’t own me. You barely know me. Move.” But he doesn’t move. He’s holding his ground, holding mine, more stone than man.
“I don’t own you,” he agrees. “No one owns you, Emma. And as for knowing you, I want to know you. Beyond reason, beyond anything I would expect, I want to know you.”
“You mean because I’m my father’s daughter.”
“Despite the fact that you’re your father’s daughter.”
A knot balls in my chest with the words that confirm how he feels about me. I’m still my father’s daughter to him, not my own person. My father just won’t stop being judge and jury over me, even through Jax. “Jax, move. I need to make sure he knows I sent him away, not you.”
