Page 190 of Ride With Me

My heart dropped. I’d not exactly planned to go back just yet, but overall? Yeah, that had been the plan. I’d wanted to go back, wanted to see my mom, wanted to?—

I exhaled. “Are you?—”

“Fine,” she interrupted. “But they want to get you for assault and battery with the intention of killing. They are going to lock you up.”

When she put it like that… “Okay, I’m staying away,” I muttered, then told her I loved her and hung up.

It was only when I looked up again that I realized Rhodes had heard every single word in this quiet place—and now looked at me as if he finally could see the monster he’d not wanted to believe me to be.

Rhodes

With the intention of killing.

The words echoed inside my brain as I shot out of my seat and ran out of the diner. I’d heard the words, had seen the truth of them on his face, and yet…

I couldn’t see Kaden being what I just heard him to be.

Also… How close had I come to being another hitchhiker-murder-case?

I doubled over when black dots danced in my vision, my breath coming even shorter. I rested my palms on my knees, trying to regain my bearings, but I couldn’t.

He’d touched me.

I’d slept next to him during the drives, had trusted him.

They always say the bloodiest murders come in the prettiest packages. No wonder he’d turned pale when I told him I was a lawyer.

“Little prince, are you okay?” His hand come to my back, and I straightened, pulling away.

“Don’t touch me,” I snapped, my heart thundering my chest. I looked at him, saw him, and yet…

He was still Kaden.

He still had the bad boy look that made me weak, and he still had those lips, lips I’d been dreaming about.

His expression was pained, the anguish written in all of the lines of his face, and I nearly snorted. What right did he have to feel that? “I’d never hurt you,” he whispered. “Never.”

And as I looked at him, I freaking believed him.

“Not me,” I retaliated, “but others. You hurt others. How close did I come to be blood on your hands instead of cum?” I didn’t care how many people heard us; I was too far gone because…

I was too far gone.

I’d fallen for him, closed off and unknown as he was to me. I still smiled to myself when we separated in the evenings to sleep, still wished he’d reach out to brush a strand behind my ear just because I craved his casual touches.

And to think I’d wanted to talk to him because I wanted to see if somehow, we’d be able to work something out… Something beyond sex and permanence.

Oh god, he’d gotten all my firsts.

“It’s not like that,” Kaden insisted, his eyes pleading. I didn’t know what he was asking for, just that part of me longed to run to him and wrap myself in his arms to forget what I’d heard.

I pointed at him. “Who was that on the phone?”

“My mom.”

Of course. Only a mom would love her son enough to make him run instead of handing him in. She’d try to protect him no matter what. Jesus, what had I gotten myself into?

He stepped closer, arms raised as if he was approaching a wild animal, and my mind stuttered to a halt. I did not have allthe facts, and I’d been with him for days. He could have hurt me a thousand ways to Dallas and he hadn’t.

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