“I think I’ll be fine,” she said. “I think all I have to do is tell anyone who tries to fuck with me that I’m Evan Arden’s girlfriend, and they’d just leave me alone, wouldn’t they? Or do you have some code name I should use instead?”
Fuck.
She kept telling me she wasn’t stupid, and she was right. I still hadn’t given her enough credit though. She kept catching me off guard with her ability to infer the relationship between my words and the actions of others. Maybe I was just used to chicks who knew enough about what was going on to turn a blind eye to their surroundings, and Lia didn’t fit into that category. She was trying to figure this shit out, and she knew how to put the pieces together.
It wasn’t helping.
Lia must have tired of me staring at her and tried to push past me again. I wouldn’t let her, and she glared nuclear bombs at me from her irises.
“Get out of my way,” she growled.
“I can’t,” I replied with a shake of my head.
“You won’t,” she snapped back. “That isn’t the same. I’ve already gotten rid of one dickhead who spent a lot of time controlling me, Evan. I didn’t do that just to pick up another one.”
“Lia, I can’t let you go out there. It’s dark and it’s the fucking murder capital of the world out that door. You are not going out there!”
“Bullshit.”
“You want me to bring it up on the fucking internet? You go look up this neighborhood!”
She paused for a moment and glanced from me to the door and back again. She took a breath and clenched her teeth together. The tension in her arms and legs told me exactly what she was thinking: one, she didn’t believe me, and two, she was considering punching me right in the face to get by.
There was an asshole inside of me who wanted to tell her to just fucking go and leave her on her own. She was making all of this too difficult, and I didn’t have the time to fuck around with it. It was the same part of me that took over when I fixed my scope between someone’s eyes and pulled back on the trigger. That part of me, however, apparently wasn’t in control.
“I need you,” I said quietly.
“What? So you can sleep?”
It was snarky and sarcastic, and I deserved it.
“Yes, but not just that.”
Her look softened, and she dropped her hands from her hips.
“I mean it,” I said with a softer tone. “I can’t let you go out there by yourself. Fuck, I shouldn’t be out there, but it was the best option for now. In the morning…”
I paused, felt my heart start beating faster in protest but continued anyway.
“In the morning, if you still want to, I’ll take you to the airport and buy you a plane ticket to wherever you want to go. You don’t ever have to see me again, but I can’t let you wander around this area of town at night. You wouldn’t last an hour.”
Her eyes locked with mine again.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she finally said.
I nodded, and she dropped her head and shook it slowly as she turned around and walked back toward the bed. She turned abruptly and yelled at me.
"I don't know what's going on here, but you're scaring me!"
Stepping forward and reaching out with
my hand, I cupped the side of her face and moved in to kiss her. She wasn't going to have any of that, though, and turned her head away as I leaned in. I pulled back and ran my tongue across my lips.
"I'm not trying to scare you."
“Well, you are!”
My stomach tightened up on itself. I couldn’t figure out any way to resolve this with her and didn’t have the slightest idea what to do or say. My normal reaction to anyone else would have been to sit down, shut up, and I would do what I needed to do. With her, everything was ridiculously complex. None of my usual responses worked.