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I’d never really realized that I’d spent these last few years making it all about me and what I’d needed. I’d wanted to lean on him after the loss of Trace but I’d never considered that he might need someone too. I’d wanted to draw from his strength but I’d never offered mine. I’d wanted to be the man he desired instead of considering the fact that he might need something else…a friend. And in that moment I knew I wouldn’t be demanding answers. I wouldn’t be demanding anything anymore. If Ronan needed to protect me from an evil I wasn’t so sure existed, so be it. If he needed to slake his physical need on me, I’d offer myself willingly and find a way to live with the ramifications. If it meant I would never be able to touch him the way I wanted to, I’d find other ways to show him I was there.
I glanced at Ronan and saw that at some point, he’d sat down in the chair his shoulder holster was draped over. As usual, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking and his continued silence meant whatever happened next would fall on me. I dropped my eyes to my clenched fingers and realized I had the same strange, anxious ticks that Ronan did.
“I want you to come home,” I finally said.
Ronan took a long time to respond so I just sat there and waited. He finally said, “You said-”
“You were right. We’ll never really be done,” I interrupted. “I don’t want us to be. I want us to be what we should have been after we lost Trace.” I looked up at him. “Friends,” I whispered. “I want us to be friends.”
I held Ronan’s gaze until the tightness in my belly became too much and then I lowered my eyes again. “If you think there might be a threat against me then keep me safe. Do it for Trace, for me…I don’t care. Just come home.”
“Why?” Ronan asked, his voice sounding uneven.
I swallowed hard. “Because I don’t want the only one who cares whether I come home each night to be my dog,” I whispered. The admission sucked at my insides but I managed to keep the tears at bay. But when I heard Ronan shift in his chair and a moment later heavy fingers sifted through my hair, I feared I wouldn’t be able to keep it together.
I expected Ronan to tell me he cared about me but he surprised me when he leaned down and pressed his lips against the top of my head. “Me too...except I don’t even have a dog.”
I let out a chuckle and then felt my whole body relax as Ronan pulled me to my feet and wrapped his arms around me. My hands were pressed against his chest but as badly as I wanted to slide them up to wrap around his neck, I managed to keep them where they were.
Friends with Ronan…just friends. Fuck, how the hell was I going to pull this off?
Chapter Fifteen
Ronan
“Wow, you are a really terrible driver,” I said as I studied the tight grip Seth had on the steering wheel he was hunched over.
“What? No I’m not,” Seth responded in irritation as he checked his rearview mirror for what had to be the twentieth time in the last minute.
“You’re going five miles under the speed limit and I’m waiting for the hunchback to appear on your back any second now. And if you hold on to that steering wheel any tighter, they may need the jaws of life to pry it from your fingers.”
Seth snorted but he did straighten somewhat and eased up on his stranglehold on the wheel. I’d been surprised when Seth agreed to let me go with him to work and to my amazement, he hadn’t asked me why. He’d done a lot of things that had surprised me since he’d shown up at the motel the day before. That in itself had been a shock I still couldn’t get over.
I’d finally forced myself to walk away from Seth after I’d made love to him in his kitchen a week earlier but I hadn’t been able to walk away completely. It would have been easier to bring out another guy to work with Hawke to provide round the clock security for Seth without him knowing it, but just the idea of actually leaving Seth all together had made my chest hurt in a way that I couldn’t explain. So I’d resorted to my old habit of watching him from afar and I’d spent my days following him using the tracker I’d planted on his car. And I’d spent my nights tossing and turning as I remembered the feel of Seth beneath me, surrounding me in a way that I was coming to fear that only he could. On the few occasions I’d actually managed to fall asleep, I kept hearing Seth’s broken voice telling me not to come back.
