“Told you, you don’t know me.” He lifts his hand, muscles bunching in his inked arm, and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“That’s bullshit.” My heart is hammering, my pulse rushing in my ears. “Something happened, didn’t it? That text message you got. What was it, Rafe?”
He turns his gaze away, lets his hand drop. “Sometimes…one has to take the law in his hands.”
“What?” I kneel on the bed and tuck my long hair behind my ears. “What do you mean?”
He laughs, a bitter, harsh sound that has nothing to do with humor. “I was christened in blood, Meg. Reborn in violence. I’m exactly what scares you.”
“You’re not like that,” I whisper, my voice barely audible.
And yet he hears me. He always hears me. “But I am.”
Useless to keep discussing this, it seems. “What are you going to do?”
“It’s better,” he says and bends to grab his clothes from the floor, “if you don’t know.”
A door is shutting between us, a door I tried so hard to open more than the tiny crack he allowed until tonight.
Don’t, I want to say. Don’t do this. Stay. Let me hold you. Tell me how to help you.
But as he starts getting dressed, something snaps inside my chest, something shifts. I grab my blouse and sweater and pull them over my breasts, ineffectively trying to cover myself up. All of a sudden I feel naked to my soul, and I can’t stand it. So mortified, so sad I think my heart will stop…but also angry.
Finally, angry. My pride is hurt.
I guess I’ve been fooling myself that he cares, and it guts me that I’ve misjudged him. He obviously doesn’t want to stick around. Doesn’t care for me. His questions about my past, my stalker, my safety, all of it was a front.
And I was taken in, fell for him like an idiot.
So I welcome the fury building in my chest—a hot counter-beat to the unbearable cold filling me, drowning me like icy water—and square my shoulders.
“This is goodbye, then,” I say, glad my voice is steady.
Goodbye. Speaking the word out loud feels like a stab wound. I fight the urge to press my hands to my chest, to staunch a bleeding that feels all too real.
He pauses in the act of pulling on his biker boots, and I notice his hands are shaking. He doesn’t look up, though, and before I know it, he’s opening my bedroom door and vanishing from my life once again.
***
After a night spent staring at the ceiling, and a day buried under my bed covers, eating Nutella from the jar and petting Raf, I decide to move my ass and go out. I need to find a new job, and get my mind off a certain moody, gorgeous boy who wormed his way into my heart and stomped all over it.
God, Meg. So stupid. You knew from the start the risk you were taking. You couldn’t fall for a normal guy, like Greg, no. Of course not. You had to go and crush on a douchebag like Rafe.
I feed the kitten, and stare blankly at Raylin’s door. I’m avoiding my bedroom at all costs. Don’t know how I’ll ever look at my bed again without seeing Rafe’s muscled, bare body sprawled on it, without seeing his handsome face and ruffled blond hair, without hearing his voice and the sounds of pleasure he made.
Oh crap… Wrapping myself up in pants and sweater, pulling on my boots, long coat, my scarf and mittens, I head out into the town.
Bastard. Fooled me. Had me thinking there was something more underneath the rough exterior, that the glitter I saw was real gold.
How wrong I was. I thought I was breaking him, when in fact I was breaking myself. My self-control, my confidence…my heart.
I kick at a small pile of dirty snow, considering which other coffee shops to hit and ask if they’re hiring, when, from the corner of my eye, I see a person hiding in the shadows. Fear sends chills down my back.
A stalker, Rafe said. I have a stalker. Carson’s man.
My stomach twists and bile rises in my throat. Holy shit. My heart booms in my chest as I turn and run. Not sure where I’m going, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t stop. I’m shaking, and I keep glancing over my shoulder, sure he’s right there, behind me, about to grab me and drag me away.
Pools of blood.