Page 42 of After Dark
He reached over and traced a pattern over her heart, through that almost-see-through shirt she wore. “I don’t care if you spent your whole life before you met me in a garbage can. I don’t care if you never read a book. All I care is that you’re here, Josette. You have nothing to prove to me. I love you, and when I say I love you, what I mean is that I just want all of you, all the time.”
“I’m back for good,” she told him, and her eyes were glossy. “I mean it. I know you can’t trust me, but I —”
“Want me to trust you? I want this legal.” She looked at him as if she didn’t understand those words, so he shook her slightly. “Josette Warren, you’re the love of my life. I want you to marry me.”
This time, she shook. She wrenched herself away from him, and he let her. She stumbled to her feet and moved away from him and the chair—but then stopped. It was as if she wanted to run away, but couldn’t bear it.
Now she had her back to him, and he could see her hands curl into fists at her side, but she wasn’t taking off. He could admit that he’d thought she might.
“You don’t understand,” she said urgently, like it hurt her to talk. To say anything at all. “I’ve always beenwrong, somehow. I’ve always been an outsider, never inside of anything. People don’t want me.” Her voice broke a little onthat, and he wanted to jump in, but he held himself back. With that control he was supposed to be so good at. “I’m good for a whole lot of fucking, of course, but I’m not the girl you take home to meet the family. I’m not even the girl whose own family wants her to come home.”
Arlo made a low noise. “You’ve met Frederick. He’s basically family, because I haven’t talked to mine in years. He’s fucked you into tears more times than I can count, which counts for a whole lot more than an awkward family dinner in my book. I think we’re good, baby.”
He heard her whisper that word.Baby.
She turned around then and she looked so beautiful to him that it hurt. Even with tears streaming down her face. Maybe especially then. For years that had been the only way he could tell if she felt anything.
“Talk to me,” he encouraged her, careful to keep his voice easy. No command. No orders. “You can do it, Josette. Trust me.”
And suddenly it was like they’d shifted back in time to that night eighteen months ago that had sent her running. He found himself bracing in the chair, wondering if this was another moment that would break them.
But even as he thought that, he knew it didn’t matter.
She could run away as many times as she liked. What he’d said earlier was true. She liked her freedom, but she liked it on a leash—because she liked to know that there was a hand on the other end.
His leash. His hand. She’d always come back.
He was Arlo Finn. He’d fought his way out of greater hellholes than most people could or should imagine. He could certainly wait out Josette, who he already knew was as in love with him as he was with her.
Or none of this would work the way it did.
Arlo watched her closely. He heard how quickly she was breathing. He could see the panic all over her, but he didn’t get up and go to her. Didn’t help her.
He waited.
And truth be told, he thought he might have preferred to find himself back one of those hellholes instead of this, because at least then he could fight.
She pulled in a very deep breath and it came out shuddering. It seemed to take an enormous effort for her to meet his eyes.
“No one marries girls like me, Arlo,” she said, and there was a whole lifetime of sadness in her voice. And worse than that, resignation. “I keep trying to tell you.”
He rose from the chair then and he moved toward her until he was towering over her. He reached down and fit his hand to her clavicle, but not quite choking her. More tracing out the place where her collar had sat.
Just one way of proving who they were to each other, but he figured Josette needed it to be fully legal and only reversible with a courtroom involved to really, truly believe him.
To let go of all those voices in her head and listen to his instead.
To remember, when it got loud in there, that his was the only one that mattered.
Because he was the one who was in love with her, and always would.
He leaned down and put his face right next to hers. Her eyes went wide.
“Watch me, baby,” he said.
Like a promise.
Chapter Eleven
