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I reacted by draping my arm across her legs and loosely clasping her knee, keeping my eyes on hers the entire time, watching for the smallest hint of anything that might look like doubt. “Can I ask you a question?” I plucked up the courage to say. When she nodded, I forced the words out. “How are you feeling…about me?”

Her eyes widened. “About you?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “About me.”

Shannon was silent for so long that I was afraid she wasn’t going to answer me, but then she started to speak. “Sometimes I feel like I’m stranded,” she confessed in a small voice, dropping her gaze to where I was holding her legs. “Like I’m stuck in the same place and I’m drowning.” Clasping her hands together, she continued to speak, to gut me with her truth. “It’s like I’m watching the water rising, and it’s coming higher and higher. I can see it closing in on me, taking me under.” Shivering, she bit down on her lip. “It’s terrifying.”

“I bet,” I replied gruffly, trailing my fingertips up and down her jean-clad knee, unsure of what else to say and terrified of saying the wrong thing.

“And then you walk in and it recedes.” Tipping her chin up, she looked me dead in the eyes and exhaled a shaky breath. “You show up and all the bad just…goes away for a little while.”

I could feel her eyes on me, and it caused a slow burn to ignite inside of me. My skin was hot, my body coiled tight with frustration and excitement. I was sofucked.

“That’s how you make me feel,” she whispered, blue eyes burning their way right down to my soul. “Better. Alive. Free. Safe. Important. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in days, and that’s only because you’re here—because I’m withyou.” She grimaced then, like a painful thought had just come to her. “But I’m derailing your life,” she added, voice small. “I’ve dragged you into my family’s mess and I’m so sorry for that.”

Careful, Johnny. Be really fucking careful with your words here, lad.

She was a closed book that I had miraculously managed to pry open. I wasn’t about to make a mistake and have the pages closed in my face. “I can’t remember how this started or when I got wrapped up in you to the point where I feel like I’m strangling in your grief,” I finally said when words found me again. “But I know that I don’t ever want to go back to how it was before you.”

She was so strong, so resilient, and she didn’t even know it. I couldn’t imagine going through what she had and just getting back up again. But here she was, ready to put her trust in me, leaving her house this evening even though her father was still around. I mean, that had to fuck with her head, right? But she didn’t let it take her down. The girl was the definition of fall down seven times and stand up eight. No matter what seemed to be thrown her way, she always dusted herself off, climbed back up on her feet, and tried again.

“I’m just so tired of being here,” she confessed in a small voice. “I’m trying, you know, to just get on with it. To not dwell and to just be grateful, but I’mnotgrateful and Ican’tmove on. I feel like I’m still trapped, and every day I’m getting closer to the day when I won’t be here anymore.”

I didn’t understand, so I wasn’t going to tell her that I did. I had no idea about what she was dealing with or how she was even coping. All I could say was “I’m here.” And I would be.

“He’s giving me rules, Johnny.” Shannon scrunched up her nose, took a few shallow breaths, and then blurted out, “More rules. More laws—” She exhaled heavily and added, “More orders to obey.”

Yeah, I was going to lose it.

Breathe, Johnny. Take a fucking breath, lad.

It took me a moment to process what she had said, and many more to rein in my emotions and the sudden, desperate need to attack that I felt. “Darren?” I finally managed to ask.

She nodded weakly. “And I know he has good intentions, but I’m just… I’m so done with being controlled.” Shivering, she added, “When I woke up in that hospital bed, alive and breathing, I promised myself that I wouldn’t let anyone control me like Dad had. Isworethat I would never let that happen again.”

“You didn’t let it happen in the first place, Shan,” I told her, voice hoarse. “It was out of your control.”

“That’s the thing,” she replied. “I’m sick ofthingsbeing out of my control, Johnny.”

“Yeah.” I sighed heavily. “I bet.”

“You know, I still remember how I felt the first time I took a shower in this house,” she said then, smiling softly to herself. “I just stood in your bathroom for the longest time and listened.”

“To what?”

“The silence.”

“Shan…”

“It’s hard to explain,” she said and grinned. “But I never wanted to leave that bathroom, because I felt safe. Ifeelsafe with you.” Shaking her head, she blew out a shaky breath and said, “And that’s awful because it puts pressure on you.”

Reeling, I began to rack my brain for the words I knew I needed to put her mind at ease. To piece her back together again. I didn’t know. I just had feelings. Huge fucking feelings that were choking me and drowning me in a simultaneous pattern of addictive destruction.

My walls had crumbled. Everything I had built up in my bid to protect myself from the girl Iknewwould take me down had disintegrated. “Nobody’s making me do anything,” I finally said, feeling at a loss. “You’re in my house because I want you here.”

“Yeah?”

“One hundred percent,” I told her. “And that has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I justwantyou here with me, Shannon.”

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