Page 25 of Love's Ace

I dropped my eyes the instant I heard the disgust in his voice and nodded. I didn’t have anything to pack—I didn’t have anything to do, other than look toward the door that he’d obviously broken to make sure I couldn’t get out after he’d gone to bed last night.

“Do you have somewhere in mind?”

There was a moment of silence, and he shrugged a shoulder. “Not really. I’ll call a car, and we can just stop at the first place we see outside town.”

Calling a car was probably a good idea. The driver would be by himself, and I could keep my eyes down instead of letting them wander. I’d worried Wren was going to ask us to walk, that I reallywasgoing to have to fight with myself to stop any reactions threatening to spill to the surface when I saw those lines drifting between people. I still didn’t understand what was going on. I couldn’tcontrolthe anger that surged through my body…

And I hadn’t lied before. I’d killed people, more people than I should have, but it had never been someone who didn’t deserve it. It had never been someone who was… innocent.

Those men on the street had been innocent. They’d wanted to help me, and I’d nearly…

“Fine.”

It was the only thing I could manage, but he seemed to take it as enough. He walked into the other room and pulled out his phone. Ten minutes later, a dark car was pulling up in front of the hotel.

I hated that I still didn’t trust myself—I hated it even more that I unconsciously took a step toward Wren as soon as we left the motel room, because Iknewthe way I could keep that rage inside me calm. I knew the easiest way to make sure I kept my head.

I wasn’t going to tell him.

I wasn’t going toaskhim to touch me.

I didn’tneedhim.

I ducked into the car without looking at the driver, and I made sure my focus was on the ground instead of the world around us. The last thing I needed was some couple coming out of a room beside us and setting me off because I couldn’t think straight.

When Wren climbed into the backseat beside me and muttered something to the driver about an arbitrary destination, I felt some of the tension flood out of my body. If I turned in his direction and focused on the floorboard, I couldn’t see anything else. If I closed my eyes, the only thing I could do was smell the faint scent of sweat from the driver and something deeper coming from the man beside me.

If Ikeptmy eyes closed, I could pretend that everything hadn’t turned on its head in the last few days, that everything wasn’t changing. That I didn’t have a line running out of my chest and straight into the heart of someone who would rather see me dead than alive.

My fingers drifted up without me thinking, and when I touched the red trailing between us, I heard Wren’s breath catch in his chest. I hadn’t missed his reaction to it before, and it was only instinct alone that had stopped me from yanking the thingfrom my chest out of pure spite. As much as I hated the world around me, I didn’t want to die.

Iwantedto live. I wanted to be safe.

I wanted…

“Could you stop that?” Wren’s voice came out sharp beside me, and I felt the corner of my lips lift into a grin when I probably should have just listened to him.

I kept my touch on the thread light, but I didn’t move my fingers.

“Why?”

I risked slitting one eye open to look at him, but all I saw was his profile—his sharp jawline was tense, ticcing in the silence. His eyes were closed, and if I wasn’t mistaken, a small pulsing tremor rippled through his body before he realized I was looking at him. He turned his attention to me with a glare, violet eyes flinty, but swirling with some underlying emotion I couldn’t read. I needed a translator, maybe a map—I needed a damn star chart to navigate the expression on his face, because it was a galaxy away from anything I’d ever felt, anything I could understand.

I dropped my gaze instead of trying to figure out why it made my chest ache.

Out of the corner of my vision, I could see streaks of color, and some part of me worried that if I saw a hint of red, I’d fling myself out the window of the car. Just because Wren thought I was a monster, and just because I thought so too sometimes, didn’t mean that I wanted to leap out of a moving vehicle.

After a few seconds of silence, Wren’s voice came again. It was soft in the hush of the car, because we were both aware that there was someone else in here with us. The awkward tension had caused the driver to turn up his music and focus on where he was taking us, but he was still here.

“Does it bother you when your eyes are closed? You seemed fine in the diner until you… weren’t.” He added the second part with the slightest bit of accusation in his voice, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d tried to attack people or because I’d stabbed him. Of their own accord, my fingers drifted to my leg and ran across my thigh. Wren’s voice came again, slightly softer this time. “It’s fine.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I’m just letting you know.” He cut me off before I could work myself into saying something malicious. “I heal quickly. I can take a lot of damage.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a comfort, so I ignored it altogether. “I can still… feel everything around me like some angry buzz in my head, even with my eyes closed. It’s…”Agonizing. Exhausting.“Tolerable.”

My lie was even more bold because I knew a truth I hadn’t before—a truth that changed everything. It wasbetterwhen he touched me… better when I could feel his skin, cool and solid against mine.

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