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“Which doesn’t mean shit when your circumstances have so drastically changed,” Orion replied, stalking toward me again. “You have abillion-dollar-legacybehind your name now, and whether or not you like it, shit is a little different now. Theopticsare different now.”
“So is that what this is really about?” I huffed. “EJ running around acting an ass makes you look bad, and that’s the real problem?”
His face pulled into an immediate frown. “Hell yeahit’s a problem.Nobodygets to run around this city big and bold fucking withanythingthat belongs to me,especially not my goddamn wife,” he growled right in my face, crouching to get at eye level with me. “Yes, it makes me look bad, and I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a factor. But more importantly,” he added, grabbing me under the chin. “Soren said you werescared.Andmywife doesn’t have to be scared ofanybody.”
I swallowed.
Hard.
Wished I had something clever or disrespectful to say, but I couldn’t find it.
Because he wasn’t wrong.
Iwasscared.
Something I hadn’t been able to recognize in the adrenaline of the moment, in the midst of so much shit swirling around me from all directions.
But clearly, it had been on my face.
Even with me immediately brushing past it in favor of focusing on the meeting, Soren had noticed and been stricken enough by it that he felt a need to reach out to Orion.
Faced with it now… I couldn’t exactly deny it.
And I loathed that reality.
Before I could catch myself, I was blinking back tears, a shift Orion noticed immediately and his expression softened.
“Hey,” he murmured, urging my face toward his. “Never again.Neveragain,” he repeated, against my lips this time, but he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he pulled me into his arms.
“What did I tell you?” he asked, as all the emotions I’d suppressed from the day hit me at once—the frustration of the car issues, the fear of what EJ might do, the confusion and anger from the situation with my father.
I sucked in a breath as I accepted him embrace and gave up on trying to hold back my tears. “You were just a call away.”
“Exactly. So what are you going to do next time anything happens?”
I closed my eyes, burying my face into his shoulder. “I’m going to call.”
NINETEEN
ORION
Vulnerable.
Not a position I took to kindly.
I was not remotely a fan of anybody having one up on me in general, butespeciallynot someone who wasn't well versed in the idea of boundaries. Or rather—someone who had no qualms about crossing them, despite being warned.
Reckless, volatile people.
Like EJ.
The nigga of my dreams to be honest.
I had every intention of falling and sleeping good as hell tonight to visions of knocking his motherfucking head in for putting his hands on Nalani. An opportunity henevershould’ve had in the first place and most certainly was not going to get again.
Even more than that security footage had set me ablaze, Nalani’s tough ass basically admitting that he'd had her afraid really shifted something in me. Her implication that my ego was the main reason for me to not put up with EJ's bullshit wasn’t remotely the truth.
Not thewholetruth, at least.
