Page 53 of My Secret to Protect

WakingupinArlo’sguest bedroom is a weird experience. The bed is so insanely comfortable that I managed to get a bit of sleep, but it was broken, waking at random intervals with the feeling and fear that I was being watched. I know I’m not. I wasn’t, not here in Arlo’s house. I know I’m safe here, but the fear is so deep in my bones at this point I don’t know that it will ever go away.

When I pick up my cell phone to check the time, my heart jumps, my stomach twisting at the sight of multiple messages from unknown.

Unknown: Breanne, I warned you. I’m not ready yet. I don’t have everything ready. Stop pushing me.

Unknown: I’m sorry. I don’t mean to lose my temper, I just, I love you. Please stick to the rules, princess.

Unknown: Stay in Forest Falls. Get away from that ogre. I can forgive your behavior up to now, but it has to stop.

Unknown: I want you out of that house today, Bree. Go home. If you stay there, you will push me to do something I will regret, and I don’t want that, sweetheart.

Unknown: You’ll ruin everything if you don’t stop.

Unknown: …

Unknown: Tell me you understand, Bree.

Unknown: You are testing my patience!

I stare at the phone in my hand, watching the messages roll in. Some of them words, threatening, warning, apologizing, and telling me how much I mean to him. Some of them emojis, some of them nothing more than an ellipsis, which I read as him waiting for me to get the message and respond, but I don’t. He’s unhinged, and according to Arlo, that’s exactly how we want him. It’s working, and I should be pleased with that, but tears prick my eyes as I curl my body around and hug my knees to my chest. I’m tired. I’m scared. I’m frustrated. I hate that Nolan is doing this to me, causing me this fear and panic, and I hate that I’m here with Arlo when he’s so far away. I could reach out and touch him, but he wouldn’t be there, not really. He won’t ever be there, and that is breaking me.

I never let him go.

I thought I did. I moved on. I set up my career and my home and had a fuck ton of casual sex before I started to try and fill the hole in my life, but now, being near him again, I know I never truly let him go.

He was arrested four weeks before my eighteenth birthday, almost exactly nineteen years ago, and watching him pinned to the hood of that van, then placed in a police cruiser, glaring at me with an expression I never understood, was the last I saw of him. I went to the police station, but they wouldn’t let me see him. I kept trying. I tried to go to his trial. I tried to visit him in prison. I tried to write to him. One of his brothers from the MC stopped me outside the courtroom, said Arlo didn’t want me there, and he wouldn’t let me in. I wasn’t allowed to visit him when he got locked away, and my letters came back unanswered. It made no sense to me, and it broke me. Then, my dad died, and I put Arlo in a locker at the back of my mind because my hero was gone. I didn’t have room to grieve two men, so I chose my dad and let Arlo go. Only I didn’t, not really, because, despite it all, I never stopped loving that man.

Nineteen Years Ago

‘Bree.’Mynamesoundedpainful on his lips as his fingers gripped my thighs under the short fabric of my dress as I straddled his lap, but I didn’t stop.

Kissing his neck, I circled my hips, grinding down on the hardness behind the zipper I was reaching for.

‘Pix, you gotta stop.’

‘No, I don’t.’ I popped the button on his jeans, and his hands lightly gripped my wrists, making my shoulders slump. ‘Arlo, I don’t need something fancy. It’s not my first time. I just need you.’ I was breathless and needy, practically begging.

Arlo and I had been getting close for weeks now, and he was, without doubt in my mind, my soulmate. We’d made out a lot, got pretty damn handsy, we’d got each other off with our hands and mouths, and we craved each other when we were apart, but as much as I felt desperate to have sex with him, he wouldn’t do it.

‘Bree, you mean too much to me to be a quick fuck on a blanket somewhere or in my truck.’ I rolled my eyes. I’d heard this already, but in my horny state, I didn’t want to hear it again. ‘When you’re eighteen, and we can make this thing really official, I can have you in a bed, the way we’re supposed to, and believe me, I won’t let you up for air all night.’

He gripped the back of my neck and kissed the hell out of me, stealing the air from my lungs as his fingers slipped under the damp fabric between my thighs. That would do, I thought, for now, his perfect fingers would do just fine.

I wasn’t a virgin. Arlo knew that, and he definitely wasn’t. The age of consent in South Carolina was sixteen, but he still wanted to wait until I turned eighteen to take that next step. We couldn’t have sex in my grandma’s house, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he was taking me to his room at the club. He was determined that when we had sex for the first time, we would be naked, in a bed, with nowhere else to be, and I respected that. I did, but I also wanted him badly.

‘I never met a girl as horny as you.’ He chuckled as I climbed off his lap after catching my breath.

‘Woman,’ I corrected, and he smiled across toward me. We were in his truck. Not the van he spent his days inside but a pick-up truck he bought just so we could hang out inside it when we went out. ‘And it’s your fault. You start my engines, Arlo Harper. What can I say?’

Turning his attention to the view out of the front windscreen, he inhaled deeply and blew it out, and I knew that meant he was getting ready to tell me something serious.

‘What is it?’

He held out his hand for mine, and I slid along the bench seat, facing him, my legs crossed, my knees touching the side of his thigh, and he turned his head to find my eyes with his.

‘Bree, I—’ Oh god, was he breaking this off? My heart raced as I tried to school my features. ‘I have to tell you something, but I need you to be my girl right now, not the future cop, okay.’

I took a breath, knowing my instinct was to lay down the law but also knowing that I was involved with a man who walked on the other side of the line.

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