“I know what you told me.” His warm eyes go hard, unyielding. “I want to know how you ended up in the arms of someone who has a history of violence.”
“Jesus, Darius. Why can’t you ever listen to me?” I lurch to my feet and throw up my hands. “I told you to stay out of this and let me deal with it. You are honestly unbelievable.” I spin on my heels, taking one step forward.
“Stop.” The fierceness in his voice keeps my feet glued to the cement. I turn back to him, catching sight of his blazing eyes as he coolly adds, “You’re not running from me tonight. Sit down.”
I fold my arms, staying put.
The staring contest continues for many long seconds before he sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t want to fight about this. But, earlier today I found out you have been dating a violent man. Help me understand why that is, because the woman I know wouldn’t go anywhere near a guy like that.”
I still don’t move.
His entire posture goes lax, voice softens. “This is about my concern for you, Taylor, nothing else. I need to know you’re still you in all this.”
I see the raging emotion blazing across his face and the love that he shows me sometimes. I see the worry. I see the history we have together. I see that Darius’s world isn’t right if mine isn’t. I also see my protector. “It’s not as bad as you think,” I eventually admit, taking a seat next to him.
“Then please explain,” he implores, “because right now all I see is every bruise on your face, every minute of pain he caused you.”
The torment crossing his face guts me. It’s so real that I want to fall into the sensation because it’s so safe. But Darius’s love comes with conditions, and that isn’t any better than the love Shawn offered me.
In fact, it might be worse.
At least I knew what to expect with Shawn. Sometimes the way Darius hurt me blindsided me. “At first, I didn’t know all the stuff going on in his life that would eventually lead to…this.”
“You didn’t know he had been violent before?” Darius asks gently.
I shake my head. A car honking its horn snaps my attention to the busy street ahead, and I hesitate to answer. “No, I didn’t know, and none of the friends I met through him knew either.”
“How did you meet him?”
I glance at Darius again. “At a bar.”
“Hrmph,” is all he says.
I don’t reply. I don’t need his judgment.
The muscle in his jaw clenches twice, making what he says next even more surprising. “And by the time you knew more about Shawn, you cared for him, making it harder to give up on him?”
I can only stare at him. Darius gets me in ways no one else does. It’s for those reasons I fell in love with him. In a world that always seemed so big, so scary, so unstable, he always seemed to be my center. It’s like he can read my soul. No one else can do that, not even Allie. “I just…”
“You felt bad for him,” Darius finishes for me.
I half shrug. “I know how weak that makes me look.”
“No, it’s not weakness,” he corrects, staring out at the road now. “It’s the way you care. You want to fix. You want to help. You want to love the people no one else wants to love.”
I know he’s talking about himself, because as much as he knows me, I know him, too. I see the shadows in his eyes. Darkness that he hides well, but can’t hide from me.
Shawn isn’t the only man to show me the darkest parts of his soul. Darius has his own demons, too. While I could comment on them, I don’t. “Maybe that’s true, but he didn’t break me, so you don’t need to worry.”
Darius watches me for a long moment and his emotions are being expertly controlled when he slides his finger under my right eye. “If this is all true, then how did this happen?”
A slow shiver descends my body. I know how that touch feels and the power it holds. I know how Darius takes a woman; how he owns her body as if it belongs to him. I can’t forget that on a physical level, he is everything.
I lean away, attempting to stop the way my body pulls to him. “I kicked Shawn in the balls.”
Darius lowers his hand and begins to smile. “You kicked him in the balls?”
“Well, yeah, he called me a bitch, so I kicked him in the balls, which led to him smacking me in the face.”