GRANT
The chair was fucking murder on my back, but I didn’t care. She chose me. Theresa chose me over everyone else. She stood up to her father and her brother, and I was damn proud of her. I knew she was in pain, and I knew she wasn’t feeling well, and she still chose to stand her ground instead of rolling over and taking it. Theresa was a marvelous woman, and she never ceased to amaze me.
r /> And I wasn’t going to let some dumbass thing like a chair stand in my way of abiding by her decision.
I watched her fall asleep before my eyes fell to her neck. The bruises were turning all sorts of awful colors, and it made me want to kill someone. My vision dripped with red as I clenched my fists. Ike was a fucking dead man if he ever got out of jail. I’d be waiting for him, and I’d take pleasure in beating his face in until he was no longer breathing.
Men who laid hands on women like that were nothing but fucking cowards. Scum of the earth. Bullshit excuses for men.
With each bruise that appeared on her body over the course of her hospital stay, I grew more irate. The insides of her thighs had massive black circles, and I almost blew through the fucking roof. Not even jail could’ve kept him safe had he taken advantage of her like that.
I wasn’t in the mood to sleep. I watched her all through the night, my ears on alert for any sound that was off. If her father or Hollis came back, I was stopping them at the fucking door. She needed to rest uninterrupted, and I was going to make sure that happened.
No matter the cost to myself.
I dozed off a few times but woke up each time a nurse came in to check her vitals. Her heart rate was holding well, and her blood pressure was normal, but there were a couple of moments when she began to thrash. They ended as quickly as she started, and it only served to make me angrier. On top of the pain and the bruising and the concussion, she was suffering from nightmares.
I wanted to get in bed and hold her, but I wasn’t sure if that would make things any better.
The morning sunlight streamed through the one window of the hospital room, illuminating her face. She began to stir, and a smile trickled across her cheeks when she saw me sitting in the corner. My heart expanded at the look in her eyes and her unadulterated elation at the sight of me. I thought my chest was going to crack open with the light that filled its cavity. I was irrevocably dedicated to Theresa, hooked on her and addicted to her in ways no other woman had ever pulled me in.
I loved her.
At that very moment, I knew I was in love with her.
I always had been but from afar. In my dreams. In the memories of her. Her giggle and her glasses and her wild, beautiful hair. But I didn’t have anything to offer her then. I was struggling through college and living off debt trying to get my business off the ground. I had nothing to take back to her to prove myself worthy of her time or her affections. But as I sat in that chair and watched her eyes lock with mine, I knew I could give her what she deserved now.
With my business in a good place and her choice verbally made, I knew I could provide the life she deserved.
I would work my hands to the bloody bone to give this woman any damn thing she wanted for as long as she would have me. And I hoped against hope that would be a long fucking time.
I got up from my chair and walked over to her side. I could tell it was still hard for her to swallow. I took her hand and bent down, then brushed a kiss across her forehead. Her fingers curled around my hand as she stroked my skin with her thumb, sending electricity flooding through my veins.
“You need anything?” I asked.
“I want to go home,” Theresa said.
“You can’t. It’s still a crime scene.”
“How do you know?”
“Hollis sent me a text.”
She furrowed her brow, and I kissed the wrinkles on her forehead.
“It was information he wanted me to relay to you,” I said.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said breathlessly.
“I know you don’t. But we have to make sure you’re all right. We can’t get you discharged until this swelling is under control.”
“And what if my apartment still isn’t ready to go back to?” she asked.
“I have an answer to that.”
“I’m not staying with Hollis,” she said flatly.
“And you think I am? I’m putting myself up in a hotel room for a while. Figured I would take you with me if you wanted.”