Absolution (The Protectors 1)

From the moment I’d started talking about Carrie, every detail of that terrible night had come back to me. I could still hear Carrie’s soft gasps as she struggled to breathe, Mateo’s knife plunging into her body over and over. The stench of blood had flooded my senses and I could still feel the hot stickiness of it as it coated my skin and dripped down the back of my throat. But I’d left all those details out as I told Cole what he wanted to hear. When I’d gotten to the part about Casey saving my life but that we’d been too late to help Carrie, I’d heard the words Cole hadn’t said out loud.

Why you and not her?

It was a question I had asked myself in the years that followed, especially as the stain of my former life began to recede. It was that question that had tormented me as I’d watched Cole walk out of that coffee shop. I’d listened to its echoing taunts as I’d hurried back to the studio and ducked past Mace so I could hide out in my apartment. I’d barely managed to get the door locked before I’d let go. And then it all came back to me with a vengeance. Time ceased to exist, there was no need for food or water, and every time I’d managed to take a painful breath between the sobs that had ripped me open, I’d remembered the words Carrie said to me just before I’d walked into the bathroom to get her things.

We’re going home, Jonas.

We.

In all the years that I’d mourned Carrie, I’d been mourning my loss as well because she’d given me something I hadn’t had since I myself had stepped off the bus at the busy Chicago bus station. Only there’d been no one there to warn me about the danger that was waiting for me.

“How about these?” I said as I tried to shake myself from the past.

Mace’s fingers reached past mine to check the label on the lighting fixture. “I can make that work,” he said.

My gaze caught on his fingers and when I glanced up at him, I knew he was thinking the same thing as me. Even now the idea of Mace’s lips finding mine both thrilled and terrified me. And that only confused me even more because sex wasn’t something that I’d wanted or needed in my life again. I couldn’t deny my attraction to Mace but I couldn’t understand my need to act on it, considering how fucked up things had gotten with the only man I’d dated after my life on the streets. And my attraction to Victor hadn’t been anything like what it was with Mace.

My eyes got stuck on Mace’s fingers as he began working the fixture loose from the display it was hanging on.

“I think six of these should do it,” he said. His words finally knocked me loose from my trance and I nodded.

We didn’t speak again until we reached the gallery and unlike the other days, I had no desire to linger and see if Mace needed any help. The studio was coming along nicely and I expected it would be done in a week at the most. Seven days. I just needed to get through seven more days of wanting Mace but not wanting to want him.

I helped Mace dump everything on the wooden table in the middle of the room and then headed for the stairs leading to my apartment.

“Jonas.”

I flinched at the sound of my name on his lips. I’d like to say I tensed up but I couldn’t because that was the way my body always was around this man. I forced myself to turn and watched as Mace strode towards me.

“Your receipt,” he said once he reached me.

I stared at the piece of paper in his hand and then looked up at him. “I…”

I what? What the hell did I want to say?

I wish your phone hadn’t rung yesterday.

I wish I hadn’t pulled away.

I wish you’d try again.

“I hope your hand’s better,” I murmured before I grabbed the receipt. But as I turned to go, he gently grabbed my wrist to hold me in place.

“It would complicate things, Jonas,” he said softly.

Even as Mace spoke, he was pulling me closer and I was happy to go because the heat coming off his body was drawing me in. I didn’t bother to ask what he meant because in that moment, I wasn’t interested in playing games with him. “For you or for me?”

But Mace didn’t answer me. Our bodies were just inches apart and he was still holding onto my wrist. I felt his thumb brush over the skin there and I felt the exact moment he realized what he was feeling because his thumb stilled. I dropped my eyes to my hand as he turned it over and then his finger started moving again as it explored the raised scar on my wrist. We could have been standing there like that for minutes or hours before he finally spoke.