Page 107 of Outside The Wire

I jerked back in shock. “What?”

She pushed up, wincing as I helped her gingerly sit upright. “All of that not ever leaving. You swear?”

“You…you faked it?”

“Well, you were going to walk out the door.”

“Jesus!” I shoved to my feet and spun away, my heart still racing a million miles a minute. “What the fuck?” I shouted.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Asher.”

I spun around and cursed as she struggled to get to her feet. Stomping over, I helped her up. “So, you purposely fell, knowing you could injure yourself even more, just to get my attention?”

“Well, how else was I supposed to stop you from walking out that door, you big brute?”

My jaw dropped as I stared at her. She’d never been so forceful with me before. In fact, she was always so sweet. I’d never seen her like this.

“Yeah, I got your attention now.”

“Holly—”

“No, we are going to sit down and discuss our issues like adults. You are not going to sleep out in your truck or slip into my house when I’m sleeping. I already spent the night without you and it sucked big monkey balls.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Big monkey balls?” My lips twitched for the first time in days.

“It’s a real thing.”

“I have no doubt it is.”

“Now…can we sit because that actually did hurt and I’d really like to not be on my feet anymore.”

I rushed over to her as she swayed slightly, gripping her hand as I lowered her to the couch. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to walk out on me again.”

I sighed heavily, taking the seat beside her. “I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and turned to face her. I didn’t know where we went from here. Everything was so screwed up. “Holly, I don’t know if I can give you what you need.”

“I know,” she said softly. “And I don’t know if I can accept never knowing.”

I nodded, figuring she would say that. “So, where do we go from here?”

“To bed.”

My brows furrowed in confusion. “Um…what?”

Her lip quivered and tears filled her eyes. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go to sleep. I’m tired and my body hurts, and I just want you to hold me. I’ve had a really shitty couple of days. I don’t want to think about any of this.”

“That’s not going to solve anything,” I reminded her.

“I know, and I know our problems will still be here in a month or three months or six months…whenever we decide to discuss this again. I just know I can’t deal with it right now. I thought I needed to know, but it turns out there’s just too much other shit going on to think about one more thing. And I really can’t deal with you leaving right now. Maybe that’s selfish of me, but?—”

I didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. My lips were on hers before she could get another word out. I didn’t care what happened six months from now. Right now, I had a reprieve and didn’t have to think about what might happen, and that was going to have to be good enough.

She whimpered as my hand gripped her arm and I immediately backed off, cursing myself for not protecting her. “Sorry.”

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