“I’ll come with you,” I say lamely.

Instead of answering he lowers himself into the driver’s seat and slams the door.

Thirty seconds later I’m standing alone in the middle of a deserted parking lot, wondering exactly how much damage I just did to an already broken soul.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Paul

By the time I pull into the garage and storm into the house, my self-hatred threatens to choke me. I hang on to the anger like it’s a lifeline, because the alternative is despair. And despair might kill me.

I let the damned cane go flying with an enraged howl the second I enter the library. If my leg is hurting, I don’t notice it over the fact that my face feels like someone split it open. One of those little punks landed a shot. Not a solid hit, but enough to hurt.

I should have been able to wipe the floor with them. Just a few years ago, I would have. As it is, I did some damage, but I didn’t exactly dominate.

Hell, I shouldn’t even have been there at all—at the bar or in the fight. But I was. Because of her. Some f**ked-up mixture of chivalry and jealousy had me acting like a boyfriend when those kids cornered Olivia in the bar. She’s not mine to protect, but when I heard their laughter and saw the tension on her face, I sure as hell wasn’t thinking of her as my caregiver or an employee.

I was thinking of her as mine.

I pour a generous measure of Scotch and start to toss it back, but stop myself. Tonight I don’t want to go numb. I need to hold on to my anger. I need to remember this exact moment so I don’t make the same idiotic mistake again. I need to remember that I’m not normal. I’m not a guy who can go out to bars and have a drink with a pretty girl and catch up with an old friend.

That kid’s words keep running through my head. What are you, an extra on a horror set?

I’m not even mad. Not at the kid. That little shithead understands the way the world works. It’s Olivia who doesn’t get it. She thinks it’s no big deal for us to go grab a drink in a public place. But the worst part isn’t that she believes it. It’s that she temporarily lured me into that dream.

I should have trusted my gut. I should have listened to the part of me that knows people aren’t kind and good.

I take another sip of my drink. It’s tinged with the metallic taste of blood courtesy of my split lip, but I don’t bother going into the bathroom to clean up. Like the pain, the blood is a good solid reminder of the lesson I just learned.

Never again. Even in my neighborhood bar, my very own goddamned backyard, there’ll be outsiders. They’ll look, they’ll stare, and they’ll remind me that people like me and people like Olivia do not belong together.

I’m tossing wood into the fireplace, slowly stoking the flames, when I hear her come in. It would be easy to turn my anger on her, but I’m learning that any emotion when it comes to Olivia is destructive. I’m better off ignoring her.

Easier said than done.

I brace myself for Oh my God, are you okay? But she doesn’t say anything.

I stay crouched in front of the fire, ignoring the fact that the position aggravates my leg. I do my best to ignore the pain in my face. I do my best to ignore her. I’m failing at the last one because, damn it, I want her to touch me.

I hear the familiar sound of the stopper being pulled off the decanter and liquid being sloshed into the glass. For a second I think she’s pouring me a glass, not realizing I already have one in hand, but instead she walks back out the door.

Thank God. She just wanted to help herself to a drink and leave the monster to his ugly brooding.

I tell myself I’m relieved, but the truth is, the only relief I feel is when I hear her come back. I keep my eyes on the flames, but I hear the familiar sounds of her curling up in what I’ve come to think of as her chair.

She sits there, silent, and I know what she’s doing. She’s waiting for me to let her in.

Fat f**king chance.

But I give her a slight glance over my shoulder anyway, for just a moment, and the sight of her takes my breath away. The firelight makes her hair glow gold, and her eyes are dark and steady as she watches me. Her legs are curled up beneath her the way she does when she’s reading, my favorite faux-fur blanket tucked around her like it’s hers to take.

But that’s not what bothers me. What bothers me is that I want her to be mine to take. And when she’s looking at me like that, I can almost believe it’s true. I can almost believe that all I have to do is reach out to pull her to me, to devour her . . . and that she’ll come willingly.

She continues to hold my gaze as she idly lifts the crystal glass to her lips, taking a tiny sip of Scotch. I vaguely register the clink of the ice cubes in her glass. Ah, so that’s why she left the room—to get ice. It’s sort of a crime, given how much this liquor costs, but I don’t give a shit because she’s here. She saw me at my worst, and she’s here.

I carefully stand before sitting in the seat across from her, and then, because I know I can around her, I close my eyes.

I lose track of how long we sit there in silence, with only the crackle of the fire and the occasional rattle of her ice cubes breaking up the quiet. Both of us know without talking that she’s not here as a caregiver. She’s here as . . . what? A friend? Something more?

No, not more. When I walked into that bar, she was happy to see me. But not in the way a woman hot for a man would be. She looked like she was f**king proud of me, for God’s sake. Worst of all, her expression when I came to her rescue wasn’t relief. It was worry.