AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You okay?”
I looked up at the stairs where Valen stood at the top, a towel wrapped around her body while another pulled her wet hair up on top of her head and she still looked just as fucking beautiful as she had when she’d walked out of here earlier.
Nodding, I quickly locked the door and took two stairs at a time, meeting her at the top. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I told her, my hands settling at her waist and skimming over the soft green towel as I walked around her.
It wasn’t pretty, and I had to grit my teeth as I assessed the damage Chad had done when he’d pushed her back against the fencing at the construction site. The sharp pieces of fencing wire had torn five or six long scrapes between her shoulder blades. Thankfully, they weren’t deep. They appeared more like an angry cat had gotten hold of her—enough to draw blood and leave some really fucked-up scratches.
It had infuriated me the moment I saw him hurting her.
His hands on her.
That crazed look in his eyes told me he might not be able to stop himself.
Instincts took over after that.
Valen’s body tightened, and she sucked in a sharp breath as I looked a little closer, my breath tickling at her skin. “Bastard is lucky I didn’t see these earlier,” I murmured, trying to focus on Valen and convince myself I had done enough and shouldn’t go out looking for him again.
It was actually harder than I thought it would be because it had been a long time since I’d had someone this close. Someone who I felt a connection with far past what I was sure either of us anticipated when we started this charade.
Valen inhaled, her shoulders rising dramatically. “I’m really s—”
“Stop.”
“No,” she argued, spinning on her heel to face me with a heavy frown and tears sparkling in her eyes. “Fuck that! I caused this, and I’m sorry. All I’ve done is cause problem after problem for you. None of this is okay, and I think it’s time we—”
“No. No fucking way,” I snapped, taking her hand and gently tugging her toward the living room. She didn’t fight me, not even as I fell onto the couch and guided her into my lap. She came willingly, curling into my chest and laying her head on my shoulder. “I think it’s time we admit to ourselves that this fake relationship has become very fucking real.”
It was a hard admission to make for me. The events of tonight proved to me that I was in deeper than I ever thought, and that meant all those emotions I thought at the start of this I might be able to avoid were making a rush back.
When she didn’t answer right away, I figured I was going to have to go all in and hope that I haven’t been the only one imagining what’s been growing between us.
“I can admit pretty honestly that seeing Chad with his hands on you tonight scared the shit out of me for a moment.”
Valen sat up so I could see her face, my hand on her thigh, thumb stroking softly over her skin. “Scared? Why?”
“Because in the past, the universe has had a habit of taking the people I care about and tearing them from my life.”
I hated being vulnerable. Hated showing that I had a weakness when I’d spent so many years proving I was stronger than it.
“Honestly, I thought I might have been going a little crazy,” she admitted, her voice soft, almost a whisper. “I figured I was falling into some knight-in-shining-armor syndrome. You know… girl gets saved and becomes obsessed with the hot, tattooed,richguy who saved her. Girl gets slapped with a restraining order.”
I huffed out a laugh. “You really think knights in shining armor look like this?” I asked, holding up my tattooed arms and twisting them around. Not a clean speck of skin to be seen from the top of my hands to my chest.
“In my story they do,” she said as she reached for one, pulling it into her lap and tracing the lines with her finger. “Why all the tattoos anyway?”
I followed her finger with my eyes, feeling my body relax a little as the two of us fell into some kind of comfortable trance. “A couple of reasons… mostly so I wouldn’t forget.” I pointed out my brother’s signature, next to it the beginning of a daisy chain that wound up and around my arm. “A single flower for each chemotherapy appointment Gabe went to. When I was old enough to go with him, I never missed a chance to sit by his side as they pumped him with poison.”
Her eyes stayed on my tattoos for a minute, continuing to follow the lines and examine the pictures within. They told a story, one that maybe someday she would be a part of.
“They’re beautiful.”
“The bonus part is they’re a bigfuck youto my parents.”
She finally looked up again. “They don’t like them?”
“They don’t think I deserve to have the skin the ink is tattooed on.” She swallowed hard, and I could tell she was forcing down words she was unsure of. Words she thought might upset me. “You can say anything you know.”
“I’m worried,” she instantly admitted.
