Page 151 of Save Me

“Save your fucking sorry for someone who wants to hear it.”

“It was a setup,” I finally tell her. “Blackmon was setting you up.”

Her eyes narrow. Though there’s pure venom in that glare, I hope she’s also taking in what I said.

“There were two bastards there waiting to attack and kidnap you. You wouldn’t have walked away if you had gone to that meeting this morning.”

Her nostrils flare, and her face firms.

“That’s why you did this? To keep me safe?” She spits out the last word.

“Yes. I would never do it for any other reason.”

“Really?” she asks.

I push out a breath. Maybe she gets it now.

“Yes.” I can’t get the answer out before I have to duck again as she hurls the second piece of wood at my head.

When I rise to look at her, her eyes are fuming. More than before.

“You think I didn’t fucking think of that?” she yells. “Do you believe I would show up to a meeting at six-thirty in the morning with a fucker I don’t know without any type of backup?”

She bends down, picks something up, and throws it at me. It’s one of the coasters that used to sit on the glass table.

“I was meeting with a contact from the police department to meet me there this morning. She was waiting for my call. I was never going to go there alone.” She throws something else my way. It’s one of my shoes.

She moves deeper into the living room, picking up another wooden stick. I step inside the living room.

“You shouldn’t have been there,” I say because even if she had a police officer with her, she shouldn’t be in a position where her safety is at stake.

“I shouldn’t have been here,” she says with such finality that my knees weaken slightly.

“You always belong here.” I look at her in her fiery gaze. “You can be as pissed as you need to be. You can break everything I own, but here, with me, is where you belong. Safe.”

“Safe?” she mocks. “With you?”

“Yes.”

She stops and cocks her head to the side. “How long, Dae?”

“Forever,” I answer without needing to think about it.

She shakes her head. “No. How long were you going to keep lying to me?”

I frown because I don’t know what she’s referring to.

“Are you trying to figure out which lie of yours I’ve figured out?”

“I never lied to you.”

Her eyes narrow farther. She digs in her pocket and pulls something out. In her hand is the handkerchief she gave me all those years ago.

“That was you … in that alleyway.”

My chest tightens even more.

“The boy I saw getting beat up by three guys.”

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