Page 93 of Proof

“Cass, please,” I heard JJ beg.

He was in front of me. Even if it was all a dream, I didn’t care; I wanted to see him. It seemed to take forever to open my eyes because I was afraid of what I’d see. A dark cell, iron bars, guards looking at me like I was some kind of exhibit for their amusement.

But I had to seehim. I needed to see the face of the man who’d stolen into my mind whenever I’d needed him; I needed to hear him tell me he was mine and I was his.

Forever.

“JJ?” I repeated, this time more clearly.

“It’s me, Cass. It’s really me. I promise. Just open those beautiful eyes of yours and we’ll be together again.”

I nodded because JJ didn’t lie to me. JJ loved?—

The return to the present was like a thousand tiny bombs going off in my head at the same time.

JJ loves me. He told me so just this morning?—

Reality hit me like a ton of bricks as I opened my eyes. There’d been no prison cell. There’d been no attacker. I hadn’t put my hands around a would-beassailant’sthroat.

I’d put them aroundJJ’s.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I shouted as I stepped backwards. There was no stepping backwards though because I was sitting. I was sitting on a mattress that was ten times thicker than the one in my cell.

I tried to stand but everything began to spin and then I was back on my ass on the mattress. Gentle fingers wrapped around my elbow, steadying me.

“Cass, I’m fine—” JJ began as his hand closed over mine. I automatically yanked it away and scrambled back to put distance between us.

“I was going to kill you,” I said in complete and utter disbelief. How had I not known that it had been JJ the whole time? I should have known on some instinctual level.

“Cass, I swear to you?—”

“Your neck,” I said in a guttural voice that didn’t sound anything like my own. The red marks on JJ’s neck would turn blue in a matter of hours. So would the cheek that had hit the wall when I’d slammed him into it. Blood trickled down from a gash on his temple.

Blood I’d made his body shed.

Me. Not the falsely accused me.Me.Here and now.

I’d tried to kill him.

No, not try.

I’dbeenkilling him by slowly cutting off his oxygen. If his voice hadn’t reached me, his lifeless body would be lying at my feet.

“No!” I shouted in denial. I clambered off the bed and got as far away from JJ as I could. The wall stopped me. Not a concrete one, though. JJ was coming toward me, but there was no escape because I was cornered. During my outburst, I’d instinctively sought out the safest place in the room.

The corner.

The corner that’d always had my back, both literally and figuratively. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on my ass.

JJ was in front of me a split second later. He grabbed my face. I tried to pull free, but his grip was hard, painful even. “You listen to me right now, Cassius Ashby,” he bit out. He was pissed. Really pissed. “You promised to love me and that it would be forever. Nothing I did and nothing I’m going to do will ever change that. That’s what you said. Did you mean that or were those words a lie?”

“No,” I said with a violent shake of my head. “Not lies.”

JJ’s voice had softened a little, but he was still angry. “Last night after you told me you loved me, you also said you had to tell me some things that you knew were going to hurt me, but they were things you couldn’t keep inside any longer or they’d fester between us.”

I knew where he was going with this. “It’s not the same, JJ?—”

“Shut the fuck up, Cass,” he snapped. “You don’t get to say it isn’t the same thing until you hear what I have to say. You saw me at my worst, and you assumed that you had all the answers to explain away my behavior, right?”

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