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“Yeah,” she snorted, grabbing the dishes from the coffee table—my glass was on the floor where I’d tossed it when I threw myself at her—and taking them all to the kitchen, where she dropped them aggressively into the sink. “So they can, what? Tell me to lock my doors and stay vigilant? Anyway, they have no proof that it was him doing any of this shit.”
“No proof?” I asked incredulously. “Ricki, I was there the day he physically attacked you! I saw him with his hands on you. How is that for proof?” The scene played through my mind again—Ricki, her face bloodied from where he’d smashed it against the window—and I ground my teeth together. “At least file some kind of report. Get something on record that this guy has been harassing you.”
“Maybe,” she conceded, but I could still see the doubt in her eyes.
Sighing, I put the last of the large chunks of glass into the bag and stood, looking at the gaping hole in the window where the cold autumn air was blowing inside, rapidly chilling the apartment.
“Where’s your vacuum, babe? I’ll get this cleaned up, then I’ll tape something over that hole until I can get a call in to a repair company. Hopefully, they can rush it for us. Until then, you can stay at my place.”
“No.”
“What?” I asked, turning to frown at her. Ricki stood in her baggy sweats and a Metallica t-shirt, glaring at me with her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, no? No, what?”
“No to all of it, Asher.”
“Ricki,” I started, but she cut me off.
“No to you looking for my vacuum. No to you calling a repair guy formyapartment. No to you just deciding that I’m going to stay with you for the foreseeable future. No to you making all these unilateral decisions like I’m incapable of taking care of myself.”
“I’m not—”
“You are, though. Just coming in here, telling me I need to do this and I need to do that. I have been looking after myself for a long time, Asher Dunn,” she shouted, pointing her finger against her chest with each word. “I am more than capable of making the calls and cleaning up the mess and sorting out my own damn accommodations. And I certainly don’t need to have some guy I just met coming in and telling me how to live my fucking life.”
Her words sliced like a razor blade to my fuckin’ heart.
“Some guy, hey?” I asked, scowling at her. “That’s all I am to you? That’s all this is, right? Just some guy?” Moving around the island, I stalked toward her. “You look me in the eye and tell me that’s really how you feel, Ricki. Tell me after everything we’ve been through together that I’m justsome guyand I’ll leave right now.”
She swallowed, and I could see the indecision in her eyes as she battled her fears and her feelings.
And as her gaze shuttered, all the emotion dying as she came to a decision, I could also see that I had lost.
Ricki was not going to fight for us the way I wanted to fight for her.
And that killed me.
“You’re just some guy, Asher,” she shrugged, and I blew out a breath. “Don’t get so worked up about it.”
Shaking my head, I let my gaze roam over her beautiful, sad face, wanting to commit this moment to memory.
“I’m disappointed in you, Ricki,” I said, and she looked away again. Stomping down the hall, I grabbed my shirt from the bedroom, the one we’d just had the most incredible night together in, and shrugged it on. Making my way back to the kitchen, I could see she hadn’t moved, still hugging herself protectively, her fingers clenching her own arms so hard the skin blanched. “You can tell yourself whatever you want,” I said, stepping close, but not close enough that we actually touched. “But I’m not giving up on us.”
I waited, but she didn’t speak, one hand tugging at that damned necklace the way she did when she was worked up; but other than that, Ricki gave me nothing. So, I took that as my cue and left, taking the stairs two at a time until I was back on the street, the cold night air slapping at my heated face.
“Fuck!” Fisting my hands in my hair, I pulled hard, trying to stave off the crushing feeling in my chest.
She was scared; I knew that. Scared of Javier, sure. But I believed that Ricki was more scared of me, of this intense thing developing between us. I knew it would be difficult to get under her skin, to crack through that tough shell she hid behind, but I felt that I was making progress. I thought Ricki and I were getting somewhere together.
Her pushing me away tonight was a step in the wrong direction, but it wasn’t a complete decimation of everything we had built. I knew she just needed time. All things considered, her life had taken some pretty massive turns in the last month, and that wasn’t even including the shit with Javier.
I needed to be patient, but that didn’t mean I was going to leave her alone tonight. Not with that psycho still on the loose.
Turning to check that the door to the apartment had locked securely behind me, I pulled out my keys as I made my way to my truck, planning to settle inside for the rest of the night. Ricki may have wanted me out of her space, but I was gonna sit my ass in this truck all night, watching over her any way I could.
The only way she’d let me.
I expected a night of freezing, cramped conditions.
I even expected someone to give me shit for sleeping in the truck.
