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Oakley looks at me expectantly, and I straighten up. “Okay, so there’s a way out of this for you.”
“I don’t want it,” she snaps.
I’m taken aback by the quickness of her response. “What? You haven’t even heard my offer.”
She sighs, shaking her head. “You don’t get it, Savva. This is all I have. Angus wanted me to be here, running his bar. Why else would he have left it to me?”
“To… sell?”
“I’m not fucking selling it,” she says, her expression souring. “That’s not what my father wanted, and I have nothing to go back to if I did sell it. You said yourself that my mom might disown me, and she hasn’t called or texted at all since the last time we argued. It’s just not worth it.”
I hate that I’m trying to convince the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met to leave me and never look back, but her safety is more important than my growing need to keep her.
I was already a broken man before she came into my life. What’s a few more cracks in my heart going to do?
But as I search her eyes for a reason to push her away again, I find nothing but my own desire in them, the lust that I’ve felt since the first time I undressed her, when my passion spilled over into the real world and our flesh became one.
“You can always leave. I want you to know that,” I say, praying she’ll reject the option just as strongly as she did the first time, because I’m not just talking about the bar. I’m talking about us.
“Never,” she replies, her voice unwavering.
18
Oakley
There’s a certain kind of power in reckless certainty, the kind that allows people to overcome obstacles that, at first, appear impossible. Savva feels it to, but reacts differently than I expect him to. I was anticipating an angry outburst at the possibility of his own power and authority falling into question, but instead, I see relief on his face.
He never wanted me to leave.
The realization hits me harder than the clench of my stomach muscles as I was hurling my lunch into the toilet minutes earlier.
Savva wants me to stay.
I lean toward him, studying his expression – his sharp eyes, his furrowed brow, the stubble on his jaw, the loose sweep of hair on his forehead. I’ve always thought he was handsome, but now, he looks like the only man I could ever desire.
That alone gives me power that I shouldn’t have. Nothing he could do to me now would break me. It’s what he could deny me of that would shatter my soul into fragments too small to ever hope to piece back together.
“I’m sorry, but I really need a fucking cigarette,” Savva says, looking around the room as though one might come floating toward him from the bar.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” I reply. “Even Angus didn’t smoke.”
“That motherfucker smoked like a chimney,” Savva growls. “You have no idea.”
I frown. “I never found any evidence of that.”
“He was just as embarrassed as I am, but there comes a point when you have to swallow your pride and light one up to stay sane. I bet he even has a pack hidden somewhere in his office. We should go look.”
“Seriously?” I ask, not believing that he could be so addicted to something so foul that he couldn’t go the night without it. “You would quit if you knew what was good for you.”
He stands up, scraping his chair across the floor loudly. “If I knew what was good for me, I would burn this miserable place to the ground and send you home where you can’t try to tell a grown man what to do,” he grumbles.
I watch him walk toward the bar, then duck down into the back, moving toward the office. I thought he was just going to ask someone here for a cigarette, but it seems he actually believes that Angus had a pack hidden somewhere in his office.
Unbelievable.
I get up, hurrying after him and trying to quell the nausea that’s come over me again. I hope it’s just the anxiety, because I can’t stand to fall sick when I have so much to do. Kimberly can handle drinks on the weekdays by herself, but she needs me on the weekend.
Arriving in the office, I find Savva standing on a chair, his head tucked into the small closet that Angus used for his jackets and shoes.
