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I shake my head once.
“Let me enlighten you then. This is what I look like when I’m holding back. When I’m not acting on what I’m thinking and dragging you to a corner where no one will see you flinch or hear you release those small noises you do when you’re out of your element. So you should be the one who’s scared, not me.”
I don’t think I’m breathing anymore.
Otherwise, why am I wheezing and why is the back of my throat so dry that it feels like I’m stuck in the desert?
I swallow.
I inhale deeply.
But it still doesn’t give me my sanity back. The sanity he confiscated with his hot, strong words.
“Why should I be scared?” I can’t help it, okay? I want to know why, because maybe that will give me back the air I lost as collateral damage from being near him.
There’s a bang when he hits the top of the car next to my head, and I jump, my heart doing a strange jolt that freezes me in place.
That and the way he hardens his jaw and darkens his eyes, then directs them at me like daggers.
Holy shit.Why does he get to be so damn hot when he’s angry? Doesn’t that defy the whole purpose behind it?
“Were you listening to a word I said?”
“Yeah, and that’s why I asked. Why should I be scared?”
His hand reaches for me—well, not for me, but for my hair, for a stubborn rusty strand that’s been flying in my face for the past twenty years. I can’t tame it into submission, no matter what I try.
Nate has a hold of that strand now, and my throat pulses, then something between my thighs pulses, too, because they’re jealous of that strand. But they’ll never admit it.
I’mjealous of that strand, of the way it has the sole attention of his dark eyes. But I don’t have to be jealous for long, because he tucks it behind my ear, slowly but not sensually. That cold edge is still covering his face, still tightening his jaw and turning the veins in his neck rigid.
“You should be scared, because…” his thumb slides from behind my ear to the hollow of my throat, to the insane pulse that’s currently self-destructing me. “If you don’t stop flaunting yourself around, if you keep provoking me and don’t stay in your lane, I’ll be inclined to take action. I’ll swallow you down so fast, there’ll be nothing left of you, let alone your sarcasm and naïveté. You’ll stare in the mirror and not recognize yourself anymore. This is my last warning and the only courtesy I will give you.Stop,Gwyneth. You don’t know what the fuck you’re dealing with. So go back to college, to your safe boys and vanilla milkshakes and boring little life.”
Is it possible for a heart to leave the ribcage and still beat? Because it feels like it’s spilling out of my chest with each word from his mouth.
I should probably listen. He does look terrifying, and I don’t know if I can really handle it when he takes action while in this mode.
But what’s the point if I don’t find out for myself? If I don’t take the step and see it personally. All of it.
So even though I’m having some sort of a heart attack and I still can’t breathe properly, I say, “But I don’t want safe and boring.”
I want you.
I almost say that. Almost, but I don’t get to, because his next words knock the living breath out of my lungs.
“You’re well and truly fucked, baby girl.”
11
Nathaniel
When my father said that I have a train brain, it had absolutely nothing to do with how much I actually love trains.
My train brain doesn’t reverse. Ever. Once it’s moving forward, it just keeps going. There are no regrets. No going back and definitely no retracting what I fucking said or did.
So now, I have a train life, one that’s only focused on getting shit done and moving on to the next thing, then the one after that, and so on. That’s how my train brain works.
Forward.
