Shield (Greenstone Security 2)

“Okay, so you’re not leaving,” she repeated, like she almost didn’t believe me.

I hated that too. Trust between girlfriends was almost as sacred as those naked photos you only showed them. I broke that.

“Nope. Not too far, at least. I’ll be back, I promise. See you never,” I said, trying to stick to old Rosie’s script.

Lucy’s face warmed to a smile I didn’t deserve. “Love you always.”

I gave her a smile and Keltan a wink before turning and purposefully walking out the door, as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

As if I wasn’t close to collapsing.

I couldn’t.

I still had a part to play to the entire crowd of people in the waiting room.

I wanted to see them all, despite the bitter taste in my mouth at seeing the stranger I turned into when I dove back into my previous life.

Running was the easy part. It was coming back that was the bitch. Nothing went away while you were hiding; everything stayed exactly preserved, like a fossilized demon of all your mistakes.

I just had to stop being such a coward.

It was a family reunion, not a firing squad.

So why did it feel so much like the latter?

Just before I made it to the waiting room, a hulking form rounded the corner and I froze.

There he was. The fossil I had craved just as much as I’d dreaded uncovering.

Luke.

Chapter Seven

It would be nice if life was like the movies. Not only would I always look fabulous, regardless of whatever dirty situation I’d come out of, but everything would turn out for the guy and the girl in the end. After a long and painful separation, they’d finally reunite, run into each other’s arms and forget all the differences, the suffering that kept them apart.

But that shit only happened in the movies.

Reunions like that weren’t glamorous, or passionate, or romantic. They were stiff, awkward and hurt more than a bullet through the chest.

Which I would’ve taken my chances with, me being in a hospital and all that. They could work with physical wounds.

Emotional ones were a shit show.

His presence hit me. Physically. Took the air right out of my lungs. And not in a good way.

“Rosie.” He didn’t say the word as much as breathed it. But not delicate and quiet. It was like he’d yanked it up from some visceral part of him, the five letters of my name cutting at his throat as they passed through it.

I couldn’t even manage the four letters of his at that point. I couldn’t manage any four-letter words. I knew what I did would have consequences. With all the stupid shit I did, I knew.

Mostly I didn’t care about the consequences. Or thought they were worth it.

But these consequences, staring me in the face in the form of a broken man I used to know, almost brought me to my knees. Which was saying something since I’d just stood at the bedside of my best friend who nearly died and managed to keep my shit together.

This man always knew how to get me undone, without even knowing he was doing it.

“Luke,” I said, my voice scratchy and low.

One glance at him and I knew he’d changed, but what he did the seconds after I spoke showed me just how much.

He grabbed my shoulders roughly, so slim darts of pain shot up from where his hands pressed into my skin. I didn’t cry out, despite it hurting and being surprised. I had good practice at keeping quiet when in pain. Who knew that what I’d learned from Venezuelan human traffickers would come in handy with the gentle and kind cop I used to know?

He slammed me roughly against the wall, boxing me in with his body.

“Where. The. Fuck. Have. You. Been?” he clipped, each word as physical as his previous grip on my shoulders.

I stared into his blue eyes. The ones that used to be liquid and soft, inviting like a calm ocean in July. These weren’t those. I was looking at hard granite, the stuff that could crush you, that was colder than the wildest ocean in the middle of December.

There was a lot more different about him too. The way he got my attention physically, violently. Yeah, that was new. Even now, when he wasn’t even touching me, his hands resting on the wall beside my head, there was a pulse radiating around him. Similar to the one that hummed from Gage when I got close enough, which was rare.

It was rare because most people didn’t radiate on a level beyond normal. It was the level of murderers, men who walked through the valley of the shadow of death without anything anyone to protect them from evil. They faced it alone. And part of them still resided there.

I’d put Luke there. Me.