Page 32 of Dark Biker Protector

She stared at me for a moment, as though she couldn’t quite wrap her head around what I was saying.

"You want me to...?"

"I want you to live here with me," I told her. "Give up that crappy apartment. You and Cinnamon, you can come move in with me. I promise I’ll be better than your last landlord. You have my word on that."

She laughed, as though she could hardly take in what I was saying to her right now.

"You mean it?" she asked. "You really mean that?"

"I really mean it," I replied. Cinnamon jumped up on to the bed, and crawled on to my chest, bopping his head against my chin.

"I...I don’t know," she replied, but I could tell from the smile on her face and the way that her eyes were shining that she wanted it.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Isn’t it too soon?" she replied, biting her lip. "I don’t want to rush this..."

"And I don’t want to waste time," I replied, reaching out to link her hand with mine. "I want to be with you, Abbey. I want you to live here with me. I want us to make a life together. If you’ll have me."

She hesitated for a moment before she responded, but the smile spreading out across her face told me everything I needed to know.

"Yes," she breathed back, finally. "Yes, of course I’ll move in with you."

She laughed as she wrapped her arms around me, nudging Cinnamon aside so she could lay down on my chest. I squeezed her close. I felt like I would never be able to get near enough to her – as though my body would always be craving more, craving as much of her as I could get.

But this? This was a start. And it was exactly the start I wanted to make.

One where both our pasts were behind us, and we could move forward exactly as we wanted to – honest, open, without having to hide pieces of ourselves or worry that our pasts were going to come sneak up on us again.

Just us, the two of us, together like we were always meant to be. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Chapter Twenty – Abbey

I watched as Iris stepped through the door to the coffee shop once more – saw the way her eyes darted around nervously, as though she was expecting someone to sneak up on her at any moment. I felt a rush of compassion for her. I knew what she was going through, how hard it would be to accept that all of this was really over, but it was.

And I was so glad I got to be the one to break the news to her.

She locked eyes with me, and, with her head down, hurried over to join me. She slipped into the seat opposite me and offered me a quick, nervous smile.

"Is everything okay?" she asked me. "You said it was urgent on the phone..."

"It is, but in a good way," I assured her. "I just wanted you to be the first to hear it."

"The first to hear what?"

I took a deep breath, I had been planning on how to say this ever since I had reached out to her – I didn’t want to hit her with the full weight of knowing what had happened to our mutual ex, but I needed to make it clear to her that she was never going to have to worry about him again.

"It’s about Franco," I replied. She tensed, her eyes darting back and forth.

"Is he here?" she blurted out, and I shook my head.

"No, no, nothing like that," I promised her. "You’re okay. I wanted you to know that...that he’s not going to bother you again. Or me. Or any other woman, for that matter."

She stared at me, the words clearly not quite making sense inside her head yet.

"You mean...?"

"I mean he’s dead," I told her, finally. There it was, the words I had been holding back – the words I still couldn’t quite believe myself. It was hard to trust that they were real, but they were. My boyfriend, my love, he had brought it to an end just a week before, and Franco was never going to cause any trouble for anyone else again.

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