I sat back, taking my hand away from his reach, snatching my phone as I did so. “No, it’s fine. I understand,” I told him curtly.
I stood. Troy did too.
“You consider this less of a crime because it’s happening to people who only have themselves to blame. Who live outside the proper society you protect from drug-addicted lowlifes. I get it.” My voice was flat because I was trying not to scream.
Troy rounded the desk and got in my way as I turned to leave, battling at the sharp prickling of tears behind my eyes.
“No, Lauren,” he protested. “I do not consider it that way. I treat these dealers with the same harshness as I would murderers. Because they are. I can’t technically do anything because Hope isn’t my jurisdiction, and a photograph that doesn’t explicitly show drugs being exchanged isn’t grounds for an arrest. But,” he continued as I tried to speak, “I do know a couple of guys in Hope who can set up surveillance, try and get this guy.” He stepped forward and grasped my elbow. “But there’s something in my jurisdiction that’s worrying me more than that. You’re my jurisdiction, Lauren. And I don’t want to see you hurt if I can stop it.”
I yanked my elbow out of his grip. “You can’t stop me from being hurt,” I said coldly, his words doing little to lessen the sting of the previous statement. “And I wouldn’t want you doing anything even if you could.”
Then I turned on my heel and walked out.
I didn’t tell Gage because, well, I wasn’t an idiot. I might not quite understand the why of our connection, or his violent protectiveness, but I knew it was there. And if his reaction toward Troy before we had even become a thing was anything to go by, I knew it was in Troy’s best interest to keep the communication under wraps. That, and nothing had come of it apart from a fresh tear in a wound that would never quite be healed.
He wasn’t going to do anything about the dealer who sold my brother his last hit. But I was.
“Women are the best at conquering demons, slaying their own dragons and all that. But the right man with the wrong demons can show you that.”
Gage was looking to be a dragon I needed to slay myself, if the savagely angry and beautiful man in front of me was anything to go by.
Hence me deciding that this—or any point in the near future—would not be a good time to tell him about the story due to go to print in a week.
“How do you know about that?” I asked. I obviously didn’t tell him. I was pretty sure Gage and Troy didn’t have weekly knitting circles, so I knew Troy didn’t tell him, and no one else knew.
“How do I know?” he repeated, voice slow and dangerous. It was a warning. Probably for me to ask another question, or plead forgiveness from the almighty being in front of me.
But no way was I asking for forgiveness. Gage might’ve scared me, but he wasn’t going to scare me into submission. Not when sex wasn’t involved.
My stomach did an involuntary flip with the promise of punishment Gage had tattooed onto my bones moments before.
I didn’t let it distract me… much. I jutted my chin up in defiance, waiting for the answer to my question in silence.
“I know because I know shit,” he seethed. “Because this is my fucking town, and when things have to do with the local boys in blue, I know a lot.” He placed his hand on my hip and yanked me to him. “And when it comes to you, I know fucking everything. Consider me the all-seeing fucking eye of Sauron.”
I blinked. His tone was deadly. “You like Lord of the Rings?”
Silence followed my words. Dangerous silence.
Gage’s face wiped of all expression for a moment. And then it changed. “Of course I fucking like Lord of the Rings!” he bellowed, right in my face. “It’s a work of fucking cinematic genius, and one of the best pieces of fantasy ever written. But that has nothing to fucking do with this.” He was still yelling, which was the only reason I didn’t smile at the contrast between the words themselves and the tone in which he uttered them.
And he wasn’t done.
He leaned forward, his hand still biting into my hip while the other grasped my chin. “You still haven’t answered my question as to why you went to the cop when I explicitly told you not to.”
With great effort, I yanked myself out of his grasp. The effort was not due to Gage holding me against my will, but because even when he was in the grips of fury, yelling at me and saying things I so didn’t agree with, I still didn’t want to be outside of the cocoon of his arms.