“You need to let me go.”

I meant his hold on my head and just…

Me.

He did not let me go.

He made a speech.

A speech that was such, I hung on every word.

“We’re gonna sort this shit out and then we’re gonna date in a way you put a bag with clean panties and a nightie in my truck ’cause you’ll be spending the night. That is, before you got your stuff at my place, and I have mine at yours. I’ll make you breakfast. You’ll make me dinner. You’re gonna get your goddamn degree. You’re gonna find a job you dig. You’re gonna build the life you want, Evan. Don’t know if I’m gonna be a part of that. Just know, as of now, I feel the deep need to explore that possibility. And this is not a damsel-in-distress situation where I’m blinded to dick, intent only on saving the little woman. It’s because you like my eyelashes, you give a shit about the planet, you knew your brother was gonna get your ass in a sling but you moved to protect him anyway, you got no issue making the first move to go after what you want and you make fucking great bacon cheeseburgers, even without Worcestershire sauce.”

“You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met,” I whispered.

“And this is a bad thing?” he did not whisper.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to protect you?” I asked.

He slid his fingers back into my hair and curled them around my head.

“Trust me,” he stated, his tone now guttural, and those two words landed like punches in my gut, sharing inexorably that this conversation just took a dread turn. “This goes the way I want it to, there’ll be a time I got no choice but to land my shit on you. I’ll fuckin’ hate it, only slightly more than you will when you hear it. This is not the test of us, Evan. That will be the test of us.”

I stared in his intense blue eyes.

And got it.

“Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria,” I said softly.

“You know what a rape house is?”

Oh no.

No.

That was when I lifted my hands and grabbed his head.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Well, I’ve seen one.”

“Danny,” I breathed, my eyes stinging, the tears coming.

“So, you want it straight-up, Evie?” he asked but went on before I could answer. “Your brother and his shit is chump change to what I’ve seen men do to women.”

“Honey,” I whispered.

“And I’m gonna fuckin’ get you clear, Evan, are you hearing me?”

I nodded.

“And you are not fucking trash. I know trash. And that is not you. And not simply because, in every instance I ran up against trash, it had a dick. But that does include your fucking brother.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” I said soothingly.

“Don’t talk that shit to me or anyone ever again, Evan. Yeah?”

I repeated my nod.

“We done with your episode?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You have ’em whenever they come. Let ’em fly. And I’ll talk you down. You still with me?”

“Yes, Danny.”

With all that was happening, it was more than the fact I was a crier that I couldn’t stop it.

So the tear dropped from my eye to run down my face.

Mag shifted a hand and caught it with his thumb, then spread the wet over the apple of my cheek.

“Now, I’m making pancakes,” he declared.

A sharp giggle escaped me that wasn’t humor, as such, even if it kind of was.

“Okay,” I replied.

He started to move away but then didn’t and both his hands shifted so he could rub his thumbs over the apples of my cheeks.

“I got a really bad temper,” he admitted quietly, these words filled to the brim with shame and even fear that I knew to my soul he should not feel.

And thus, I held on, with hands and eyes, and listened.

“You gotta know that before either of us make moves to lock each other in. I wasn’t like that before. I can’t say I never got mad. But I never got mad in a way it was like I was outside myself, watching me lose it, and I had no control over how bad it got. I’ve been in fights. With guys. It used to get physical. And I lost my mind on Nikki a couple of times, just shouting, but she knew about it so she took it and it killed me, knowing she accepted that about me and I couldn’t control it. I found coping mechanisms. I haven’t totally lost it in a while, but I feel it sometimes, boiling under the surface. And I’ve researched it so I know it’s not something that will ever just go away, unless I medicate, and my job, I can’t do that. So…that’s what…” he drew in a big breath and finished, “you gotta know.”

“All right,” I said softly.

“It gets bad, Evie, I gotta stress that.”

These words made something inside me move, a weird fluttery feeling.

Tags: Kristen Ashley Dream Team Romance
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