Shutting my eyes, I gripped the bottle until I was sure I could feel her leftover warmth emanating from the glass. God knows I had none left of my own.
I took the beer into the bedroom and set it on the bedside. She might wake up and need the alcohol. I’d get her water too. And I should change the sheets, though they were fresh yesterday. But she deserved better than this.
Better than me.
Sinking on the edge of the neatly made bed—I was nothing if not Anna Costas’ child—I buried my head in my hands. I pushed my fingers through my hair then just pulled until the relentless churning in my gut started to subside.
Fox was my friend. I didn’t know how it had happened, but it had. How would I ever look him in the eye again, after what I’d done? He deserved to know. And Mia…
Mia would kill me.
I wanted her to. I deserved to die for this. For so much else, and now this too.
My eyes burned as I fumbled through my nightstand. My mamma’s Bible was sitting on top, next to the condoms I’d carelessly thrown in there the last night I’d had a woman over. Months ago now. I grabbed the handful of them and dumped them in the trash, then flipped through the dog-eared Bible my mother had read every day of her life. My father hadn’t wanted it. My older brother, Dante, had scoffed at its contents. But it had mattered to her, so it mattered to me.
Right now, I had nothing else to cling to but the faith I’d abandoned so many years ago. Back when I’d been young and cocky enough to think faith was for the naïve. Now I knew it was the only thing that would get me through this night, and all the ones that came after.
After.
Job 10:22 was where my finger landed, the spot marked by the prayer card from my mamma’s funeral.
A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.
I read the words with my eyes full. Clutching the pages in stiff fingers, I didn’t look up when a shadow appeared in the doorway.
Shadows everywhere, memories I couldn’t bear, thoughts I couldn’t scrub away. Then there was me. Somehow still breathing, when those I loved were long in the ground.
She walked toward me and knelt at my feet, her expression heartbreakingly understanding. How could she understand me? She didn’t know who I was, what I’d caused. And it was only the beginning.
Now I’d harmed her too. Beautiful, sweet Carly, who had only wanted to get to know me. As if I were an ordinary man, who didn’t have three deaths on his head. That wasn’t even counting tonight, because I couldn’t. I couldn’t add anything else to my tally.
It was only when I let my gaze travel down her body that I realized she wore my shirt over her still damp skin. She’d only buttoned the middle button, and the top couple were open, which left her ample cleavage on the verge of spilling out. I glanced away, but that only brought my gaze to the shirttails hanging down her bare, wet thighs—and the shadowy cleft between her legs.
She wasn’t wearing panties.
I snapped the Bible closed and shoved it in the nightstand drawer, then started to stand up. But her hand on my leg stopped me cold.
“You’ve been running from me for months,” she said softly, without any censure. “Don’t you think maybe it’s time to stop?”
I shut my eyes, because that wa
s the only way I could stop from dragging her up onto the bed. “Staying away from you for your own good doesn’t equate to running.”
“It does in my book. And who’s to say what’s good for me?” Before I could summon a response to that idiotic question, she rose and undid the single button, shrugging the shirt off her shoulders and letting it fall.
And Christ, her body was a masterpiece.
She was all honey and rose gold, small and packed in all the right places. Her tiny waist flared into rounded hips that turned into long, supple legs. Her skin was the color of peaches, especially between her thighs. She was completely smooth, her puffy lower lips on display.
Lips that were already visibly damp.
I dragged my focus upward, desperate to reach her face again and bring this conversation back to a place that felt sane, but her breasts were impossible to ignore. They were large for her frame, the nipples tight and a deeper peach shade than the slit between her legs.
She was like ice cream, and I’d been starving for so fucking long.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I managed, swallowing over the dust in my throat as I searched for something to drive her away. Not the apartment. No, she needed to stay, so I could be sure she was safe.
Because the wolf is always the best choice to protect the lamb.