A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m sorry I…I’m sorry I let them touch you. I should have been there. Should have known you’d try to run.”
A cry hitched in my throat. He’d caught onto the same perverse responsibility that I had, the implication that he should protect me even while we both knew he could hurt me.
Incredulity had a calming effect. “Don’t you see how messed up this is?”
No, I didn’t need to be afraid anymore. The worst had already happened—almost happened. And the truth had become clear when those men were on top of me.
I trusted him.
So I rephrased the question. “Don’t you see how fucked up this is? That you beat up those guys for…for…” Here my courage deserted me. “For what you did,” I finish lamely.
I saw the ripple in his throat as he swallowed. He looked less menacing in a side profile. Or maybe that was just the grief in his eyes. It didn’t look new. It looked ancient, as if it had always been there. In fact, I thought it had been, and I’d been too wrapped up in my own sadness to notice his.
“So what do you want?” he asked. “You want me to let you go?”
I said nothing.
He gestured angrily out my window. “So leave. Get the fuck out.”
Tears sprang in my eyes. Wasn’t this what I wanted? Okay, in my fantasies I was dropped off closer to civilization. But even barring that, I wasn’t sure I could get by without him. I hated the helplessness, but in this moment, with my flesh still warm from cruel hands, I hated even more the thought of wandering.
What was the point? Niagara Falls wasn’t a person. It was just another place to be alone.
He sighed. “Let me keep you a little bit longer. You can take some time to recover. Then we can talk about what to do next.”
“Are you giving me a choice to leave?”
He frowned. No, he wasn’t. “I’m just asking you not to fight me anymore. Don’t run from me. And in return I’ll show you new places. I’ll even let you sit up front.”
He said the last wryly, and I puffed a laugh.
“I guess I don’t have a choice.”
“You do. More than you realize. But I want to…I want to keep you a little longer. I’ll make it good for you. Okay?”
God, he was so messed up. This was his way of asking for a relationship.
And I was so messed up too.
“Okay.”
CHAPTER NINE
The Niagara River flows at approximately 35 miles per hour.
“Where are we going?” I asked, climbing down from the truck.
He grinned, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “Wait and see, sunshine.”
Hunter had pulled off a wide dirt road. Parking was always a challenge anyplace but a truck stop, so we stopped in some grass. It was surely illegal but no one seemed to be around. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the thought occurred to me that he could dump my body easily.
But I wasn’t afraid.
He was just too…cheerful, almost. Brimming with anticipation to show me something. Like a kid.
Silly thought.
We hiked along a trail and reached a tall metal marker: Enchanted Falls, 1 mile.