Page 92 of Hold Me Until Morning

“Yes.”

His nod was tight. “How long have you been apart?”

“Three months.”

“And it’s safe to assume you were the one who did the leaving?”

“Pruitt collects things. Possessions. He doesn’t like when he gets them taken away.”

Cody flinched, his voice a scrape of animosity. “Seems like a solid douche to me.”

I fiddled with my fingers, gaze dipping away before it drifted back up to him.

I needed to lay this out. Make him see.

“He’s someone you don’t want to mess with, Cody.”

The heap of a man stilled, a frozen boulder of heat, like he was afraid to trust himself to move. The protectiveness I’d felt from him earlier lapped against me in warm, dragging waves.

“Already told you the bastard can come at me, Hailey. He’s going to find out really quick I’m not someone you want to mess with, either. Especially when it comes to you.”

It was scored in dark aggression. The mark of a man who didn’t shy away from destruction.

He always came off as carefree.

Heedless, even.

Almost reckless in his detachment.

But that wasn’t close to who was standing in front of me right then.

“You don’t owe me anything.” I nearly begged it, knowing I should put a barricade up between us. Send him away. Stop this before he got any deeper.

But my spirit leaned his direction.

He reached out like he could touch it, and he set one of those big palms on my cheek again. The brush of his thumb was achingly tender as he ran it back and forth along the hollow of my eye.

“That’s what friends do, Hailey. They share the load, and it looks like yours just got a little too heavy to bear.”

Threads of guilt curled around my ribs and tightened around my heart. What kind of friend was I, doing this? Allowing him to invade my space like this? Touch me the way he had last night when I knew the trouble it would bring him? More so, with the way Brooke had felt about him?

But that was so long ago, and this…

Intensity blazed as he traced my face with his eyes, as if he sought to memorize every line and divot and curve. His caress soft and adoring.

I felt beautiful beneath it, the way this man saw me. The way he made me feel. But he didn’t have the first clue what he was signing up for.

“I can handle Pruitt,” I forced out.

“Of course, you can, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. Let me be strong enough to carry some of it,” he murmured. “Let me be there. For you. For Maddie. Let’s chase this fucker off, then you can get on with your life the way you so clearly need to do.”

“Why would you do that for me?” My head barely shook, trying to understand.

“Because there’s something special about you, Hailey Wagner. There’s always been.” Then he cracked a grin like he didn’t think either of us could endure the weight that sagged the room any longer. “That and I really like the sound of my name on your lips when you come.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry with the heat that flooded, pulsing between us.

In an instant, that tether of energy writhed and thrashed.

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