Dominate (Deliver 8)

She pulled in a calming breath, which inadvertently drew his sexy, masculine scent into her lungs. He smelled amazing, but she was immune. Damaged. Closed off to anything beyond a casual hookup.

Ten years hadn’t dulled the thorns inside her. If anything, time had made her harder, icier, more set in her ways. She wasn’t looking to change. Detachment suited her career and safeguarded the life she’d built for herself.

But it didn’t negate the fact that Evan was her friend. Her only friend. He didn’t deserve to be stonewalled.

She lowered the backpack to the porch and rested her hands on his biceps. Thick, corded muscle stretched the sleeves of his shirt, every inch honed through manual labor in his construction job.

At age forty-three, he was two years her senior, divorced, and living paycheck to paycheck just like her. His modest two-bedroom house was well-kept like hers. He drank cheap, domestic beer like her. His life was humble, unsophisticated, and honest. Like hers.

But unlike her, he had no reservations about putting himself out there—his generosity, his vulnerabilities, and his overprotective heart.

Evan was a catch, and every unattached woman in their small Texan town wanted him. He needed to stop wasting his time with her.

“All right.” She straightened her spine, wishing she were anywhere but here. “I’m listening.”

“You should see the look on your face. It’s as if a conversation with me makes you physically ill. It’s not like I’m asking you to marry me.”

Blood drained from her cheeks, and she suddenly felt lightheaded and shaky.

“Fuck, Rylee.” He cupped her neck, eyes blazing and mouth twisting with malevolence. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

She never told him about Mason, never even mentioned she was divorced. But over the years, Evan had put it together. Every time she shut him out, he blamed a man she tried to forget.

“Are you going to slay all my demons?” she asked.

“If you let me.”

“Because I’m not strong enough to fight them myself?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. You’ve been fighting for years, proving to the world that you’re an impenetrable badass. I get it. You don’t need me or anyone else. But dammit, if you let me in, you won’t have to fight alone.”

With a sigh, she rested her cheek on his chest. “You’re a good man.”

“The best you’ll find this side of the Rio Grande. You should be chasing me, not the other way around.”

The only thing she chased was her career, but she wouldn’t insult him by voicing what he already knew.

His hand settled on the back of her head, holding her against him. “Tell me where you’re going.”

“Three hours from here.”

“Which direction?”

“West.”

“The desert?” He tensed. “Have you lost your mind? A beautiful woman in no man’s land? Alone? It’s crawling with rattlesnakes and scorpions and hell knows what else. Not to mention there’s no cell service. No hospitals. What in God’s name is out there worth risking your life?”

“Closure.”

“So this is about the ex-husband.” His fingers angrily fisted in her hair.

“Not exactly.” She shut her eyes, searching for an ambiguous version of the truth. “I need to deal with some things. Personal issues I should’ve put to rest a long time ago.”

More specifically, she needed to deal with the boy who had been writing to her—or rather, his dead girlfriend—for ten years.

Except Tommy wasn’t a boy anymore. He was twenty-seven. And dangerous.

It was never her intention to announce herself to him, let alone meet him in person. Hell, she never should’ve logged into his girlfriend’s account. But if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be alive today to contemplate whether or not she was doing the right thing.

He’d been there for her on that bridge without knowing it, and she’d been here for him ever since.

For over a decade, weekly emails arrived in the Tommysgirl account. Each message came from a different anonymous address, but they were all from Tommy. After she read each one, she snapped a photo of it, marked it as unread, and deleted her IP address from the activity log.

The day after sending each message, he always went in and erased it. He only needed to change the password on the account once, and she would’ve been locked out. But he never did. Because that would’ve locked out his beloved ghost.

An absurd thought, but she knew how his mind worked, perhaps better than he did. He was smart. Too smart to believe that dead people read emails.

But sometimes, beneath his brave, self-assured words, she sensed the lasting sorrow of the boy he’d been. A boy who’d lost his girlfriend in a car accident, his only parent to cancer, and had been abducted and raped by a heartless sex trafficker, all at the age of seventeen.

He’d survived things that most people couldn’t fathom and found the courage to write down his trauma in harrowing detail. She never wanted him to learn she’d invaded his privacy. His emails hadn’t been meant for her, and responding to them would’ve been cruel. But when he sent that last message a week ago, she had no choice.