Page 7 of Dallas

He can feel that I’m holding back, and I don’t have it in me to lie to him. There’s no point anyway since this is why I’m here. I just hate bringing it up. I hate exposing myself.

I wish I could tell him it’s because my life is so great and I just wanted to give him an update. That I could be thiswhole, complete person like he is. With a career and a family.

But no. I’m a broken little girl inside, still looking to Dallas Dodge to fix me.

“My…my mom’s ex. The one who abused me and went to prison. He found me. He knows where I work and where I live. I’ve been trying to get away but I don’t…I don’t have anyone else. I don’t have any options, I…I’m screwed, Dallas.”

I sound as weak and pathetic as I always have with him. No one else knows this version of me. Since moving here, I’ve mellowed out a little bit – on purpose. I’ve been a bitch, quite frankly, in my life after Dallas.

I’ve kept people at arm’s length; I’ve been needlessly hostile. I’ve made an art form out of not collecting friends.

After I crashed and burned out of my last job, I knew I needed to make some changes, which I’ve done to the best of my ability in the time since then, but I know it’s been an imperfect process.

But I’m not being brave for the sake of it now. I sound scared, because I am. I sound like I need him, and I do. It’s been too long without him, and I want to melt into him. I want to beg him to protect me. To hold me. To keep me.

He looks at me with those blue eyes I’ve never forgotten. But he’s different now, too. Not a boy anymore, a man. And there’s more than just comfort in those eyes. It’s so intense, I look away. But he reaches out, and he takes my chin in his hand, forcing my gaze up to him.

He’s so familiar, but so different now. His face chiseled now, his jaw dusted with golden stubble. I can’t breathe, and I don’t know if it’s fear or hope making me nearly choke now.

“Sarah, you’re coming home with me. Tonight.”

Chapter Three

Sarah

He’s so definitive that I know he’s not joking. Not that he would joke about this anyway.

Not the Dallas I knew back then, anyway. I realize I’m assuming a lot, but I have to believe our soul connection-or whatever the hell it is–matters even now. With all the time and distance, I have to believe it matters.

“I feel pathetic,” I say. “But I don’t know what else to do, I don’t know where else to turn…”

“You don’t need another option,” he says. “You have me. You can turn to me. You did the right thing.”

I feel warm. Like I’ve been scratched behind the ears, which is the most bizarre comparison I can ever come up with, but I feel it.

And I just feelhappyin the weirdest way. Like I might be able to take a full breath. Like I might be safe.

“Do you need any more to eat?”

“No. We don’t need to order anything else.”

“Have you been eating?”

I’m undone by that question. It’s been so long since anyone has looked after my well-being.

Years.

I do have people in my life, but I don’t let them in. They don’t really know me. They don’t know about this, about how much I’m struggling. About how I’m losing sleep, about how I can’t eat. He’s the one person I felt like I could trust with this information. He’s the one person that I felt safe with.

“Not really. But I will. After this. Now, at least I don’t feel like there’s a giant rock sitting in the bottom of my stomach.”

“Tell me everything. From the beginning.”

“Okay. You know the story of what happened. How he was arrested and put in prison for what he did to me.”

“I remember.”

“Well, my mom got custody again while he was in jail. And she changed my name. Our names. To outrun one of her ex-boyfriends. Another abusive asshole. Toher, not to me, of course. But there was always a thing with Chris to her that was just…it didn’t matter what he did to me. She just couldn’t let them go. She never could. So when he got out of prison… She contacted him.”

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