Give Me a Reason (Redemption Hills 1)

“And now…after the shit back at the bar?” I could tell he was trying to suppress the fury when he pushed out the question. To bring us back to the moment that had brought us together this way, though I had a feeling that we would have ended up here, anyway.

We were bound, fated to this moment.

“And now, none of it matters. None of it matters except we’re both here. Right now. Together.”

Trent released a low growl, and his hand was fisting in my hair.

Possession.

Power.

A shiver raced down my spine, that dark aura taking me whole.

Wicked possession.

“Oh, Kitten, it fuckin’ matters. Matters that someone would be so foolish to send me a warning through you. Pussy is gonna pay.”

Pain leached into his rage. Worry and dread. I wanted to wipe it away. Tell him it was fine. That we were safe. Clearly, that wasn’t a promise I could make.

“It means they’re watching, Eden. Pinned you as a vulnerability. As a weakness.” His voice only got harder with each phrase he spat.

Part of me wanted to look away, to find reprieve, to fight the flash of terror without him witnessing it played out in my eyes. But I couldn’t move. I was held by his intensity.

The man a hook and a snare.

“Will they try to hurt me? Try to hurt Gage?” I could barely force out the questions.

His lips thinned. “They might try, but I won’t let them get close to either of you. Promise you that.”

“I’m not weak, Trent. I just need to know what we’re up against.”

We.

The proclamation rang through the air.

I was in this with him.

Trent swallowed hard. “No, Eden, you’re not weak. I see your goodness for what it really is. Strength. Resilience. But you also don’t understand where I come from, how ugly it gets, and it’s the last thing I want to involve you in. Don’t want to taint who you are, and that world has a bad way of doing just that.”

He glanced away, unable to look at me as he gritted the words. “If something were to happen to you…”

My head shook. “I won’t say I’m not afraid, Trent, but everything…it’s led me here to you.”

Shame blanketed his expression. “Last place you should be.”

“Don’t say that.” It was a plea. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

His fingers threaded deeper into my hair, as if he felt the need to hang on. “You sure about that?”

“Don’t ask me to regret you.”

“I’m bound to mess this up, Eden.” He repeated the same thing he’d told me in my bedroom last week—a night that felt a million years away from right then. As if all that time had passed and we’d been caught up in it.

Becoming one.

Not knowing the details but understanding each other in a way few ever did.

“Not if you choose not to, Trent.” I hesitated, then pressed. “Ghost?”

The word was a question. Different than when he’d been undressing. It was acceptance, then. Now, I was asking him to let me farther inside. I wanted a view into who he really was. The part he kept shrouded in the shadows.

“Who I used to be,” he reiterated. He took my hand in his and pressed my knuckles to his lips. “So much shit I don’t know how to leave behind. I’ve done bad things, Eden. Really fuckin’ bad things.”

Dread slicked down my spine. I could feel my spirit being crushed by the malignant, haunted desperation that churned in his eyes.

My mind raced, lighting with blips of images of the things he might have done. The blood that stained his hands. My thoughts skipped from one to the next because I realized I really didn’t want to envision them.

Because in the end, I only had one truth that mattered. “We all have history, Trent. All of us. It’s how we live on the other side of it that counts.”

He grunted. “How’s it you handle yours so well?”

A huff of saddened laughter left me, my past so different than his, but I wondered if they’d somehow affected us the same. My voice was coarse with sorrow when I whispered, “I’ve been lost for a long time. Looking for my way. Just fumbling through life, day-to-day, wondering if I would ever feel again. If the numbness would ever go away.”

A crash of guilt and anger flashed through his expression, and his teeth ground as he forced out the words. “Are you okay with it? Me touching you…?”

He left off the last.

After him.

After Aaron.

Torment twisted through me. Loss. My own guilt. My head slowly shook as I burrowed close to Trent, to the steady, hard pounding of his heart. “I miss him, Trent…I’ll miss him every day. I know I told you he was my best friend, but I did love him. But it was a peaceful kind of love…the kind that grew out of that friendship…out of comfort.”