Page 77 of Hold Me Before You Go

“Grayson?” she called.

“Yeah, baby?”

Her brows came together, as if she was scared to tell me something. I leaned forward, cupping her face in my free hand, the tattoo of the red snake bright against her fair skin, reminding me of how I almost lost her. “Sunshine, you have to talk to me. I know you understand that. I wish you didn’t have to relive all the shit you’ve been through, I wish you never had to talk about it again, but I’m a certain type of man. I’m the kind of man who kills, baby. You know this.”

Carrie leaned into my hand, my thumb brushing over her bottom lip as she nodded, tears shining in her eyes. After this shit was over and every single mother fucker who hurt her or even thought about hurting her was in the fucking ground, I hoped I would never have to see her cry sad tears again. The sight of them gutted me from the moment I saw her in her darkened living room last year and that feeling would never go away.

“I’m going to kill him,” I promised her darkly.

“I know you are,” she croaked. “I tried—I tried to warn them, but they didn’t want to listen.”

Something bloomed in my chest as her words settled in the air between us.

She warned them about me.

She knew what I was going to do to them, and she wasn’t afraid.

“Wait—what do you mean, just him? What about Monica?” she asked.

My thumb moved up to her cheek. “The sheriff you met earlier?”

She nodded. “Yes, Chase. He wants to question me. I guess he wanted—”

“The body of a woman in her mid to late thirties was found in a motel bathroom just a few miles outside of town,” I explained, cutting her off.

Those baby blue eyes I’d become obsessed with widened. “He fucking did it. He fucking killed her,” she breathed, looking away from me.

“You knew he would?” I pressed.

She shot me a look. “Grayson, Brandon, and Monica,….they weren’t…They weren’t the smartest kidnappers on the planet.”

“Baby, most kidnappers aren’t,” I deadpanned.

“They constantly argued—well, one argument was because I instigated it,” she told me. “Brandon was getting impatient, and he had his gun pointed in my face—”

“I’m gonna burn him alive,” I muttered.

Her lips thinned, fear shining in her blues now.

My brows snapped together, reading her. “What?”

My woman broke our gaze, and she looked to her lap. “I don’t want to tell Chase this, but you, I have to tell you. The second it happened, I knew that when I told you, you were going to be the one to send him to hell.”

Every single muscle in my body tightened as my nostrils flared, my gut boiling. “He fucking touch you, Carrie?” I growled low, the words barely even words. I pulled my hands from her and stood up, needing to move. My hands started to shake as I paced back and forth across the room, waiting. I couldn’t push her, not about this. I had to wait.

I had to fucking wait for her to open up. If I pushed her, I wasn’t a good man. If I wasn’t a good man, I didn’t deserveher. And if I couldn’t have her, then there wasn’t any point in breathing.

“Carrie,” I grunted, stopping at the end of the bed, bracing my hands on the metal frame, my shoulders tight.

She looked up again, and my eyes dropped to her plump, trembling bottom lip. Her breath hitched as emotions overwhelmed her, and I dropped my head.

He fucking touched her.

He took advantage of my woman.

Suddenly, the demons of my past were banging on the door I’d locked them behind only days ago, ready to torture me again. My chest was heaving then, but I couldn’t close my eyes or I would see her being held down. Only this time, I feared it wouldn’t be the terrorists holding my sunshine down, it would be Leo, Brandon, and Robert. Robert would be the one holding the blade—

“Grayson?”

---