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Her chin comes up another fraction. Bristol keeps her hands at her sides.
She doesn’t understand what she’s asking for, with that body, with that fire in her eyes. It could hurt us both. Kill us both. Ruin everything.
I want to stop caring, but I can’t.
One last try. “You should leave. You should wake the twins up and leave. I’ll pay for everything. Wherever you want to go. Anywhere.”
Her lips part, and I hearI’ll make you wish you were dead,the closet door flies open and light blinds me, a fist meets my face. A lifetime of knockout hits. The wait hurts, but not as much as the certainty that she’ll agree. I’ve shown her too much already.
“No,” Bristol says. “I’m staying.”
I want to blame it on stress. The negotiations. The merger. Hiring her in the first place. Discovering she’d embezzled from the company. Packing up and moving offices overnight. Dealing with the assholes at Hughes Financial Services. Being without her. Beingwithher. Watching her body slump toward the floor. The fever. Mia’s worried questions and Ben’s stoic silence and the terror that she wouldn’t be okay.
All those things are partially responsible, but in the end, they’re not what punches through the taped-up fists in front of my heart.
The oldest part of me, the one buried deepest, hears those words out of her mouth and howls.
It was one thing for her to insist on staying before. Now?Now?When I’ve promised to hurt her, when I’ve followed through, when I’m a hairline fracture from showing her the ugliest truths of my life? When she trusts me with her family in the morning?
It hurts. There’s no counter. I can’t go to the warehouse and let some other prick turn it into something physical, something coming from outside myself.
Bristol’s going to have to feel it for me.
With me.
I tear my eyes from her face and go into the walk-in closet. I’d belt her, if it wasn’t so loud. If I wasn’t sure she’d scream. I’d turn her ass red with the palm of my hand for an hour if it wouldn’t make so much noise. I open drawers, thinking of the dark fall of her hair and her soft pink nipples and all the other delicate parts of her. A few things go into my pocket. A couple others into the palm of my hand. It’ll have to be a quiet pain.
Fine by me.
The last thing I do is strip off my T-shirt. I leave my pants on.
Bristol’s eyes follow me when I step back into the bedroom and make a stop at the bedside table. There’s no fear in her eyes.
No. She’seager.
That old, raw voice howls again. It’s getting harder to resist the lure. If I do this, and if she doesn’t run, then maybe I could have this. Maybe I wasn’t broken beyond repair before I was old enough to know what had happened to my mother. Before I was old enough to understand that I’d been abandoned.
I meet her at the foot of the bed. She’s just off to the side of the ottoman. Bristol’s eyes drop from my face to my torso. She looks over the faded bruises. A couple of scars from fights that got vicious. The tip of her tongue peeks out to wet her lips.
Her eyes come back to mine. “I want you to tell me.”
I put my hand to her throat, and her head falls back. “Tell you what?”
“Why you’re—” I trace my thumb up and down the side of her neck, and she shivers. “Why you’re worried about your brother. What you mean when you say yougrew up in the same house.Why you think you’re so dangerous.”
No. No. No.“What else?”
“What happened to your mom.”
My grip tightens, but Bristol doesn’t flinch. She leans into the hold instead. My nerves are a mess. I haven’t been this hard ever in my life. I’m the one with her breath in my hand, but I feel completely exposed. “I already told you. Did you forget?”
She swallows against my palm. “You said that she died, but you didn’t say how. Or when.”
I smile at her, despite the sensation that my jaw’s about to crack. “No.”
“No?”
“You haven’t proven anything yet.”
