Page 39 of Looking Grimm

Everything paused. My brain went dead silent, emptied of all thought beyond those three words.

He loved me.

My parents loved me. Donovan had. But everyone else…

I pushed free of Nash’s embrace. A sour look contorted my features, and I dipped my head so he didn’t see it.

“Ripley said that shit,” I muttered.

“That he loves you?” Nash asked, and I laughed bitterly.

“That you do.”

Bending, I grabbed my jeans and boxers from around my ankles and pulled them up, thumbing the buttons through their holes while Nash kept close.

He had shitty timing coming clean about this stuff. Shitty taste in men, too, if he wanted me. But he didn’t. Not really.

“You don’t love me, Nash,” I told him. “You can’t.”

He caught hold of my chin and tilted my face toward his. Despite the inky dark, I saw his brow creased over soft, sorrowful eyes. “Why can’t I?” he asked. “You’re perfect.”

I bristled at his touch. It was a far different sensation than moments before when he was every good thing in the world. He was still a good thing—an impossibly good thing. Better than I deserved.

“I’m a mess!” I blurted, shaking him off. “I’m a murderer. A whore. I ruin everything I touch.”

There was more where that came from. A laundry list of unflattering statements inhabited my thoughts. They came around at the worst times, picking at the wound that gaped inside me. It was the same pit of pain I feared I would tumble into when I thought about Donovan, or about how all those unkind things were irrefutable truths.

“People die because of me,” I continued, fighting thetremor in my voice. “Everyone else has the good sense to be afraid. Even your sister. So, what’s wrong with you?”

My fists balled at my sides, physically grasping for the determination not to collapse onto him and cry.

How long and how badly had I wanted someone to love me? So much it ached. I wished I could come home to him and be safe with him. I wished I could love him back, but I wasn’t sure how.

“I’m not scared of you, Fitch,” Nash said, low and even. “I know you too well for that. Just like I know youarescared.”

Of damn near everything.

He looped an arm around my waist and tugged me gently toward him. I exhaled, feeling pitifully relieved as I slumped into his embrace.

His body heat warmed me as I breathed him in. His cologne was something like patchouli, I’d decided, and intoxicating as always. Allowing myself to be held gave way to grabbing onto him until both of my arms were locked around his torso. I clung on more tightly than a man who wasn’t scared would, feeling his chest rising and falling and his heart pounding rhythmically beneath my ear.

“I find it hard to believe you really want to do this alone,” he said.

“Do what?” I mumbled.

“Everything.”

A bitter smile pulled at my lips. “I don’t.”

“Let me do it with you, then,” he replied, too quick to volunteer himself for a task he didn’t understand.

There was so much he didn’t know. So much I hadn’t told him. Starting with poor Charlie and ending with thecaptive twins pissing themselves in the floor of a hotel room.

When I tuned back into the conversation, Nash was puffed with pride. “I feel like I proved myself tonight,” he bragged. “As a getaway driver, at least.”

I snuffled through a laugh. “That was hot as fuck.”

“Glad you liked it.”

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