Page 284 of Dark Love

“Dahl.”

“No, I am. I spent most of my life hiding from my problems. And I never want the fact that I’m a coward to ruin us.”

“That won’t happen.”

He doesn’t understand just how much I can stick my head in the sand. “We need to talk.”

“Then we’ll talk. But Dahl, you and I are forever.”

“I love you so much.” It’s tempting to let those lips of his distract me forever. “You can’t kiss me. Because if you kiss me, I’ll forget everything, but how wonderful your lips are.”

“Okay.” Vex sets me down.

“The library is all set up.” I take his hand and dash up the stairs.

“S’mores and scary stories.” He stands at the door, staring at the little tent I built in between the bookshelves.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have scary stories to tell me?”

Just one. But I’ll never have the strength to talk about that. “You’re going to do the talking. I’m going to be shoving the pre-made s’mores in my mouth.”

“You really want to do this?”

No. It’s the last thing I ever want to do. “We need to do this.”

“Okay.” He slips off his shoes and sinks down into the nest of pillows and blankets that I made.

Instead of sitting down next to him, I sit across from him, grabbing a s’more.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You. I love you, and I know who you are in your heart, but I don’t know you. Let me get to know the real you. The dichotomy between the man I see in front of me and the man you lead me to believe you are confuses me. Who are you? Do you have any family? Are you a crime lord, a vigilante, a counterfeiter, or something else?”

“Counterfeiter?”

I shrug. “You have a lot of money. And that’s a relatively innocuous crime. Who hasn’t imagined printing money?”

“Dahl, you have a wild imagination.”

It’s kind of a requirement for my job. Responding could set us off on a tangent, so I sit silently watching him.

“Can you really handle this? Because I’m not the man you think I am.”

“You are the man I think you are. There isn’t anything that you can tell me you’ve done that would make me think otherwise.”

“I’m a human trafficker.”

What! The s’more slips out of my fingers. A man who saves women can’t sell women to be hurt. Take a breath. There’s more to this than the pain and challenge in his eyes. “Explain that to me.”

He shakes his head. “You aren’t running away.”

“Explain it to me.”

“I tell you I’m a human trafficker and you ask me to explain.”

“Yes.” Before my courage fades away.

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