Shield (Greenstone Security 2)

Luke was here.

It wasn’t the cliché rushing of the events of the night before that came with waking. I knew what happened the second I opened my eyes. I didn’t have a luxurious second of ignorance. My gaze wandered to the space where my rug used to be.

Luke hadn’t left.

Luke was in my kitchen, presumably making coffee. By the sounds of the clanging of metal, breakfast too.

He was doing that because he was a good guy. And that was what good guys did for the women who they’d held in their arms the entire night, not letting go, giving them silent strength. Giving them silence.

My eyes went to the pinkish stain once more. Then, with pain, I craned my neck to my bedside table.

His badge was still lying there. I had a terrible premonition, looking at it, that it wouldn’t be going back on him again.

Because of that stain.

Because of me.

He wasn’t blaming me. He hadn’t left. Escaped. He’d made a choice to pull the trigger. To dump the body. To take off the badge. To stay the night. To make me breakfast.

It was the choice I’d wanted, been waiting on for years.

But it was a forced choice.

I’d killed a man. In front of him. Forcing that choice.

Then I’d forced it even more by making him kill someone too.

My violent life caused this.

I yanked back my covers, intending on just as violently getting out of bed, forcing myself to stomp into the kitchen and end this beautiful thing born out of violence before I could make it ugly.

But the pain hindered that.

So I was forced to gently and gingerly get myself up, tiptoe to my robe, every step, every movement a jolt to muscles and bones that resented me for it.

The time it took me to get to the kitchen was also time for the smell of bacon to drift through my house. I followed it to see Luke’s corded and muscled back, bare, in front of my stove.

I froze, all intentions forgotten with the picture of Luke shirtless in my kitchen. The back of his hair was still mussed from bed. The one he’d woken up with me in.

For a second, I entertained the idea that I could have this. That I’d wake up without all these injuries and pain, step over carpet that wasn’t stained with blood, find Luke in the kitchen and not have to expel him from it. From my life. I could live it with him inside it. That we could somehow fit.

But when you loved someone, truly loved someone, you’d never shave away parts of who they were, cut them up. Which was what I’d have to do if I was to make Luke fit in my kitchen, my life. Cut him to be able to somehow slot into my life. Take away things that made him him.

I couldn’t do that.

I wouldn’t do that.

Because he was an alpha male, and a cop to boot, he sensed my presence.

“Rosie!” Within seconds he was in front of me, hands resting lightly on my hips as if he expected me to topple over. “You’re not meant to be out of bed.” He frowned at me, anger glittering as his eyes went over my face. Featherlight, his touch followed the pattern of what I guessed was an epic shiner. “If I could kill him all over again, I’d make it much slower,” he gritted out, the fury and violence in his voice utterly foreign.

I flinched at that, the readiness to once again unleash something that wasn’t meant to be inside him.

Because he was Luke, the good guy—kind of—he immediately pulled his hand back, fear that he was hurting me filling his eyes.

“Sit down, Rosie. Where does it hurt?”

He gently placed me in a chair and I let him.

He pushed the hair from my face, his own expression granite. “You need a hospital.”

I frowned. “I don’t.”

He glared at me. “I hate that that’s a fucking lie, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to go to one, does it?”

I gave him a smile. It was faker than the Chanel bags sold out of trunks in the Valley.

He frowned deeper. “Remember what I said last night, Rosie. You don’t have to be okay here. You don’t have to be strong for people. You don’t need to shield your feelings from people who you’re scared of hurting or burdening more. I’m not here because you need to protect me from shit. I’m here for the opposite reason. I’m here to be your fuckin’ shield.”

The intensity of the words stole all my oxygen, stole even my heartbeats. There was a second where it all hung on the edge and I almost did it. Let go of everything, let it overtake me, let Luke do that for me. Showed him the Rosie no one had ever seen me be.