Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

Before you knew it, you were swindled right out of your heart and, if you let yourself unravel any further, most likely out of your panties, too.

I could feel the threat of it trembling in the air.

This tension that bounded and ricocheted and lashed.

Suffocating.

Curling through the cab like a million silenced questions that were never going to have any answers.

I peeked to my left at the man who was barreling down the road toward town. Leaned back in the driver’s seat like he’d belonged there all along, one arm stretched out to hold the steering wheel and the other with his elbow propped on the windowsill with his head rested on his hand.

He would have come across as casual if it weren’t for the fury that lined every inch of his glorious body.

If it weren’t for that fierce jaw he had clenched tight.

The sun sank low on the horizon behind him, rays scattering through the window and casting him in a golden glow.

A music god who’d stolen the songs right out of my soul.

Pieces of myself missin’ because they would forever belong to him.

“I don’t know why you’re actin’ so angry. I didn’t ask you to do this,” I mumbled, so quiet, trying to keep my voice in check.

Hell, I’d begged him not to.

He grunted, that jaw working like mad.

I had the urge to touch it. To brush my fingertips through the stubble. Press my nose to it, too.

There went that spiral.

Down, down, down.

I dug my fingers into the seat, refusing to let myself falter.

He cut me a glare. “And you think I was just gonna let you handle this yourself?” He glanced in the rearview mirror at Daisy who was being uncharacteristically quiet. I wondered if she wasn’t immune to any of this, either. If she felt the potency.

The roiling waves that grew higher and higher.

Sucking me deeper.

“Yes,” I told him, point-blank.

His head shook, and he scrubbed a palm over his face. “I never should have come back here.” He rumbled it under his breath. Like I wasn’t going to hear. Or maybe that was exactly what he’d intended.

I stared out the windshield. “No, you shouldn’t have.”

Not when he was never going to stay.

“Fuck,” he muttered with a shake of his head.

“That is a very bad word,” Daisy piped in. Awesome. My little heckler was listening from the back after all.

He flinched and glanced her way again. “Sorry, Daisy. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“That’s okay ’cause you’ve got no little girls to watch over and then you’re talkin’ all those bad big people wordses, right?”

He cringed harder, and he gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “Something like that.”

Slowing, he made a left into the hospital that was built on the outskirts of town.

Thank God.

I couldn’t take much more of being cooped up with him in this cab.

I was beginning to think the only options I had left were either to kiss him or claw his eyes out, and I was not in the market to get my heart mangled all over again.

The alternative didn’t seem all that prudent, either.

I hefted out a sigh of relief when he pulled into a parking spot in front of the small emergency room. Dalton was nothing but a speck on the map, and I figured we were lucky to have emergency services available at all.

“Here we are, sunshine. We’re going to get you all checked out,” I told her, doing my best to ignore the pinging of horror at what could have been. This could have been so much worse had Richard not been there to catch her when she fell.

And god, that destroyed me, too.

Knowing what he’d done. What he’d given. What he’d saved her from.

“I think I’m all the way fine. It’s only hurtin’ barely a bit.” She sent me the fakest grin.

“Let’s just see what the doctor says, deal?”

“Okay. Fine. It’s a deal. Let’s get this show on the road. I got reals important things to do,” she said, all kinds of matter-of-fact.

Richard sent me an exasperated look. Like he didn’t know what to make of her mischief, either. Whether to laugh or drop to his knees and cry.

My little angel child who was nothing but a hellion.

The second Richard put the truck in park, I climbed out. I rushed around to get Daisy, and then I was huffin’ out my displeasure when he was already there. He unbuckled her and pulled her into his arms, murmuring these words that cut through me like a dull, rusted blade.

Agonizing and slow.

“Here you go. I’ve got you. Don’t worry, flower girl, I’ve got you.”

Did he think that bein’ there now was gonna change anything? That it could make up for what he’d done?

“I can get her. I have to carry her to her room all the time when she falls asleep on the couch.”