Shane (Damage Control 4)

Could the guy report me for assault?

Shit.

She says nothing. What’s there to say? She parks down the street, past my building, turns the engine off.

That’s my cue to get out, go upstairs to my apartment, and change my sodden clothes.

“Am I going crazy?” I ask instead, hating how terrified I am of that. How I need reassurance that I’m not heading for a place where the nightmare is my reality. Where I can’t be rescued from, where pain and fear is the norm.

“No, you’re not,” she says firmly, and I look right into her eyes. Clear and determined. “But you need to talk to a therapist.”

I jerk back. “No fucking way.”

“Shane.” She leans toward me, and her mouth trembles. “Listen to me. It’s like this: you slipped. You’re down. Getting up on your own is hard. You need help.”

“No.” I fumble with my gloves, trying to pull them on. “Can’t. Not another therapist. Hell no. I can’t—”

“Okay.” She puts a hand on my arm, stilling me. “I understand. No therapist. Just me.”

I take a long breath, let it out. “Okay.” I take another. “Wanna come up?”

She smiles, a quick and uncertain thing, and it breaks me even more that it’s not her real, bright smile.

“I’m hurting you,” I whisper. That’s my greatest fear—up there with the fear of going crazy.

“Love,” she says, “is like that.”

She turns around and opens her door, climbs out of the car before her words make any sense. I sit there, frozen, something sweet spilling in my chest, running through my jumbled thoughts like a trail of honey.

What did she mean? Did she mean anything at all?

Forcing myself to move, I open my door, climb out into the cold evening. The wind cuts like a blade. “Cass.”

She comes around the car, takes my hand and tugs me toward the building. The wind whistles, and her words tumble round and round inside my head.

Love.

Love.

“I hope you have clothes for tomorrow,” she says the moment we enter the building and take the elevator that has been miraculously, finally fixed. “For the wedding. I should have reminded you earlier. Guys rarely think of such things.”

Caught in the process of trying to insert my key into the lock with clumsy, frozen fingers, I turn to look at her.

“After all this… this mess,” my voice catches, “you still want to go with me? Why?”

“Of course I do.” Her real smile makes an appearance, so bright it warms me up. “But you never mentioned it, so I thought maybe you changed your mind.”

I stare at her. How can she be insecure when it comes to me? Jesus. Never considered that. And she hasn’t answered the why.

I unlock the door and step aside to let her enter first. She snags my arm in passing, pulls me inside with her.

Dammit, now I’m smiling, too. How is she doing this? The door clicks shut behind us, and she drags me to the bedroom.

“Undress,” she says, shrugging off her coat and tossing it on the sole chair of my room, then turning the heater on high. “I’ll find you dry clothes.”

I lift a brow at that, but hell, why not? I start unzipping my heavy-duty jacket with its reflective bands and reinforced elbows as she starts rummaging in my small closet. Distracted by the way her skirt hugs her round ass and her black over-the-knee knitted stockings showing off her long legs, wondering what color her panties are and if they’re lace or not, I don’t immediately hear her question.

“Why the matchbox and…?”