Kept from You (Tear Asunder 4)

I shouldn’t have. I should’ve just kept going. I knew before our gazes clashed that his eyes were on me because I had these little heated tingles.

He stood in the doorway, hands gripping the frame above his head with the familiar angry glare. But it was different now, softer. No, not softer, quieter. Controlled.

Killian Kane may fool the media into thinking he was a nice guy, but I wasn’t so sure.

I watched Savvy as she pushed open the fire exit door. The moonlight shimmered off her red curls hanging down the left side of her face before the door shut and she disappeared from sight.

Shit. I slammed my fist into the doorframe.

What the hell was she doing?

Christ, she wanted to dance at Compass. Savvy didn’t belong in a nightclub dancing in front of a bunch of drunk assholes who were thinking about her naked.

No chance in hell was that happening. Not while air still filled my lungs.

It was completely illogical. Insane. And uncalled for, but Savvy Grady couldn’t pop back into my life then expect me to help her get a job at a club dancing. Not only a club, but a club I’d invested in and half-owned. Although, she wouldn’t know that. I was a silent partner for reasons that I didn’t advertise. Not yet anyway.

I ran my hand back and forth over my head then down my face. Fuck, hearing her lyrical voice dripping like honey as she’d said my name was like the wall I’d put up around me splintered and lay at her feet. She barely pronounced the harsh K, so it sounded like ‘Illian. Fuck, I missed that. I missed everything about her—exactly the reason I’d stayed away from her in high school until I didn’t, and that led to a kiss that had screwed with my head for the last eleven years.

I’d thought the piece of Savvy I had inside me had been erased, but a girl like her you couldn’t erase. Just like an addict was always an addict, she was my drug.

I’d watched her for months in high school. The girl who offered a shy smile to everyone. Who helped out the school nurse. Who volunteered at the hospital every Sunday visiting the terminal patients. I’d found out her dad had died there, but I didn’t know from what. I tried to keep myself from her, but my eyes always found her in the hallways. On her walks home. I’d even gone to school early in the mornings so I could watch her through the fuckin’ tiny window in the door of the gymnasium when she’d practice her dancing alone.

And she was a good dancer. Really good. It pissed me off when she’d told me she was just okay on the school steps that day, because she was better than just okay.

I was drawn to her from the beginning, partially because we were the complete opposite. I remember wanting her back then, even just to sit with her and talk, but I was too angry and fucked up to ever have her.

Then I’d kissed her at the cemetery after her mom died. A kiss that sealed her inside me.

I clenched my jaw. Damn it, I’d warned her never to come near me again.

And now she was here, walking back into my life.

Savvy.

The girl who said everyone had good bits, but it was she who carried them. She simply handed them out to everyone she encountered. Like passing out chocolates, she passed out her good bits to people when they needed it.

Even that piece-of-shit druggie Josh whom she offered a quiet smile of sympathy when I had him up against the lockers.

She’d handed me her good bits, too. There was no choice in whether to hold onto them. Once she gave them to you, they were permanent, like she was.

Her smile. Her touch. The way she cared about people.

And even me. The asshole who never smiled or gave a shit about anyone.

That was a lie. I gave a shit about Savvy, even if I’d tried not to. Her goodness was my fuckin’ drug, drawing me to her.

The truth was, she never left me. I just kept myself from her because I knew exactly what would happen—this. A possessiveness I had no control over, and I controlled everything about my life. I’d never had a girlfriend. Never wanted the attachment. Never wanted something to love and lose. I’d loved and lost the most important person in my life.

It was easier being alone. It was safer.

I chugged back the rest the water then tossed it in the bin.

Jesus, was she crazy wanting to dance at a nightclub? Compass was the safest of all of them, Brett and I made certain of that, but it was still a club, and people drank and became unruly and did things they didn’t normally do.