Page 135 of Full Mountie

I just…stop.

Footsteps race up behind me, then slow.

“Don’t run away,” Lachlan says, his voice cracking.

I can’t turn around.

But I’m not running.

“I love you.”

I’m really not running now. Stupid hope. I straighten my back.

“Talk to me.” He’s close now. Almost right behind me. “Tell me what’s going through your head. Help me understand what’s got you scared.”

“I’m not scared.” It’s a knee-jerk lie that takes me right back to high school.

I pace into the alley, then turn around.

He spreads his arms wide, his hands turned up. “What can I say?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. I’m fucked up. There. That’s the truth of it. Happy now? I’m so broken inside it doesn’t matter what you say, because the words get garbled in my head. There will always be a piece of me that is primed for flight.”

“Sure, okay. So now that we know that, we can cope.” His lips twist into an almost-smile. “Beth can practice her rope skills and tie you down.”

“It’s not funny. I…Something inside me…”

“You’re a hard-ass man now, for a very good reason. I should have seen it sooner.” He exhales roughly, then turns and leans his back against the brick wall behind him.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting comfortable.”

“In an alley.”

He looks around, lazily, like this is no big deal. “This is where you led me. Next time, freak out in the direction of a park.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

“Sure there will. And maybe I’ll lose my cool sometime, and Beth might snap at us for getting food on the couch. “

“What are you doing?”

“You already asked me that.” His voice is smooth, and I suddenly realize what’s going on.

He’s interrogating me. Good cop. If I don’t give him the information he wants, he’ll try the bad cop. Get in my face. Get loud.

I laugh, because what the fuck else can I do?

And the twisted thing is, I like this good cop, bad cop routine. It gets under my skin, gets me going.

It’s hot.

I’m so fucked up.

“I can’t tell you that there would be an us without Beth,” he says quietly. “Because I refuse to consider that possibility. But I can tell you that not once in the last week did we consider the possibility that we—” He gestures in the general direction of wherever he thinks Beth is. “Could be an us withoutyou. This whole time, we’ve been giving you space, not that it looks like you’ve used that wisely to do any thinking.”

I can’t think. I’m stuck in survival mode. I didn’t even see it coming.

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