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Squeezing mine shut, I tried to distract myself, tried to stop thinking and justfeelthe warmth of him instead, but it was useless. Because I knew exactly why the wolf had broken through, even though Dominic was on Crackdown.
It was becauseof me.
The beast in him could smell me, knew that I was right here. And how much longer until he broke free? How much longer until that fur covered all of Dominic, and all his fingernails became claws?
So hard to breathe. So little air. The sun shone outside the windows, but to my eyes everything was dark still. He told me earlier that he kept hurting me—and he was.
But…I was hurting him, too. Maybe not intentionally, but I was. We were hurting each other. And that’s not how this was supposed to be at all.
Tears had pooled in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall for fear he’d feel them. I didn’t want him to know what was going on inside my head. What if it hurt him as much as it was hurting me?
My God, this had been a mistake. A stupid, stupid mistake we both knew better than to make. He couldn’t escape his wolf—it was part of him. Even with Crackdown, if he was close to me, he was going to be in pain, just like he was in San Francisco.
I wish I hated you, Teddybear. All of this would be easier for the both of us.That’s what he’d said to me, and as much as it sucked to admit it, he was right. He didn’t want a mate—he wanted freedom to live the life he needed to live right now.
And I was standing in the way.
I stayed there in his arms for a long time, my mind in chaos, my thoughts at war with one another. But eventually, I had to face reality and gather up the courage to do what I knew was right. Pulling myself away from his arms was torture when every inch of my body wanted me to stay right there forever. But one look at his face, eyes closed, now perfectly peaceful, and I was more determined than ever. I walked on my tiptoes all the way to the bathroom, and he didn’t move an inch. He must have been more tired than he even knew. How much sleep had he wasted these past few weeks I hadn’t seen him? Had he gone through that tortureeverynight? Was that how he’d gotten all those bruises I’d seen on him that day at the office?
In the shower, it was easy to let go of the tears, easy to pretend it was just water. I kept my eyes closed through it all and talked to myself in my head every second. It was the right thing to do. He didn’t deserve to go through all this pain. Being with someone shouldn’t be hard—it should be easy. And this was everything but. It had been since the day he came to my apartment to pick me up, and we left for San Francisco together. Hard, hard, hard.
When I walked out of the bathroom, feeling a bit more like myself, wrapped in my blue robe and my hair still wet, it only lasted for a second—until I saw that Dominic had his eyes open.
He lay on my bed, an arm under his head, looking at me through those green eyes that called to a primal part of me that almost didn’t feel real. It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my whole life. I didn’t even breathe for as long as the moment lasted, and my mind already committed every detail of that image to my memories a few times over.
“Morning,” he said lazily, dragging an arm over his head. My hands itched so bad to go over there and touch him, but I stuck them in the pockets of my robe instead. “Come here.” He touched the bed gently, and my instincts filled my head instantly—go, go, go!
But I resisted.
“Actually, Hunter and the girls are on the way over,” I said, the only pathetic lie I’d been able to come up with in the shower. “Since the incident, they keep coming every morning to make sure I’m okay and drive me to work.”
Dominic blinked. The silence had my knees shaking.
“You could stay if you want. I mean, if you’re comfortable. I don’t mind. They should be here in—”
“Teddy.”
His voice was heavy, thick, like it was coming from a different man altogether. Slowly, he sat up on the bed and turned his back to me, searching for his clothes on the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed my heart to stop racing so damn hard, and by the time I opened them again, he was already wearing his jeans and coming closer to me. Those wide shoulders, the look in his eyes, his naked chest, they almost wiped my mind clean of everything.
Until he stopped in front of me, barely two feet away.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” he finally said, and my heart broke to pieces. His eyes were green, completely green now, no sign of his wolf anywhere, and that was how it should remain.Wouldremain.
“No, no, I just know that you don’t like people, and I—”
“Stop,” he said, and came even closer to me, until he filled up all my vision. Could he see what was going on inside my head through my eyes? I couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away from him, even though I should have, just to make this a bit easier on myself. On both of us.
“You don’t have to explain. But I do need you to tell me to leave,” he said.
Those damn tears again. Why did it have to hurt so much? I swallowed hard, the words refusing to leave my mouth. Why would he make me say them? He knew—I could tell by the way he looked at me, the way he spoke. He knew exactly what I was doing, so why make me say it?
“Tell me, Teddybear. I need you to say it,” he urged me, touching my cheek with his fingertips. Did he even know that those had been claws just an hour ago? Did he know that he’d almost shifted—whilehe was asleep?
It didn’t look like it, but it didn’t really matter. In fact, it was better that he didn’t know. I didn’t want him tounderstandme. I just wanted him to think that I wanted him gone.
“Leave, Dominic.”
The hardest words I had ever said in my entire life. My heart stood perfectly still when he smiled—-the saddest, most genuine smile I’d ever seen on his beautiful face. He leaned down and pressed those warm lips to my forehead with so much longing, I had to grip the robe tightly just to make sure I wouldn’t wrap my arms around his neck and demand he never let go of me.
