Page 40 of A Beta Protects

I nod, fighting a smile of my own. “He’d broken his leg and couldn’t walk for six months, so you can probably understand my suspicions about what you’re nursing under that shirt.”

I’d thought Aaron was crazy for not telling me how bad it was, but he said it was as much about mentally pushing through something when everything has gone to shit. Or, in his case, when you’ve broken your leg in two places and don’t know if you can stand. Instead of saying you're having a shit day, it’s outstanding.

I’m not sure I get it, but I’m not a Marine, so maybe I’m not supposed to.

Dom lifts his shirt and my brain short circuits. So must my body, because I don’t even hesitate before touching the wall of rock hard muscle inches from my face. I know he said I could touch whatever I wanted, but I’m sure he wasn’t giving me permission to grope him under a minute later.

“See? Not a scratch on me.” His voice is decidedly more husky than it was a moment ago.

He’s right. I swear I’m looking at the same spot where there was a bullet hole and blood, but Dom’s skin is unmarked. Literally not a single scratch on him.

“I saw a hole in the shirt,” I whisper, struggling to believe it.

Dom grasps my wrist and I look up, startled, as he lifts my hand and brushes his lips across my knuckles. “Maybe we can ration out that touching, huh?”

I don’t need to ask him why. His eyes are heated, and when they dart to my mouth, I wish he would kiss me.

“Okay.” I make myself take a small step back when I want to step closer.

Dom has done so much for me already. The more he does, the more Bryce would want to kill him.

He squeezes my hand, keeping hold of it as he leads the way through the forest. “Come on, I know a nice spot we can sit.”

We walk for another five minutes, winding through trees and bushes.

It’s not quiet. I’d always thought a forest would be silent, but birds chirp high above us, small woodland creatures scurry around the brush, though I never see them. There’s a constant stirring of leaves as the wind produces this hypnotic sound that makes me want to curl up and go to bed, like listening to rain hit the window.

The nice spot is beside a pool of water too small to be a river or even a pond. It’s like we’re in our own world. No people or houses or traffic noises anywhere.

It’s perfect.

We sit on the soft earth, and I don’t care about staining my clothes. As I wrap my arms around my raised knees, Dom leans his back to a tree, his long legs stretched out in front of him. We sit quietly, enjoying the soft sounds of this forest.

I don’t know what Dom is thinking.

I’m thinking about everything that brought me to this moment. Not leaving Bryce. Having married him at all. And why. It’s a question I’ve mulled over and over for years. When we first got married, I was eighteen. Bryce was a few years older.

Those first few years weren’t terrible. Or maybe Bryce was more subtle about controlling me, so they didn’t seem so bad.

The last five years were the absolute worst.

Now I think I know why.

Every year, Dom would send me postcards from all around the country, and they would remind me of how trapped I was in Palmerston, tied to a man who I knew would never let me go.

Five years of control, of regret, and of being smothered by a man who I thought loved me. It wasn’t me he loved. It was controlling me.

That’s when I realize whose idea the elopement was.

“It wasn’t me,” I whisper.

“Kira?” I feel Dom turn to look at me, though I keep my eyes on a softly swaying branch across from us.

“I thought it was my idea to elope, and it wasn’t.”

“His?” He rests his shoulder against mine, quietly reassuring me. Or maybe it’s to comfort. Whichever one it is, it’s working.

I look at him. “I’d wanted to go to college before we got together. It was a dream come true for a quiet, nerdy girl who hung out with the librarian to have someone like Bryce Peters, star quarterback, notice me.”

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