Page 210 of Branded
But I hadn’t expected them to have understood how important it was to me.
God, I loved them.
God, I loved this man. Loved that he’d cared enough to ask. Loved that he was kind and thoughtful and a good friend. Loved his body and mind and heart. Loved him.
The concrete rumbled. The demons rattled at their doors.
And for the first time ever I didn’t just wish the demons would vacate the castle, would cease to exist…I also wished that I could tell someone about them, could somehow do something to negate their power over me.
What would it be like to live without those demons?
Hazel would help me with that.
She had helped me with it, had connected me with Marin.
And that card was in my purse, my wallet.
And…I hadn’t so much as called the number.
Because I was?—
No. I wouldn’t go down that path. Not tonight. Not again. Not fucking ever. I slapped another layer of concrete down, threw an iron door into the walkway that led down to the basement.
I turned to Raph. “What if I said I was afraid of flying?” I asked softly.
His face went blank. No, not blank. It went careful, as though he were studying me, trying to sort out if there was a wrong answer. But then it seemed to change, going back to just Raph. Gentle still, but also with warm blue eyes and a soft jaw. “Then we would do something else.”
“Just like that?”
Quiet again, studying me. “Just like that, sugarpie.”
“I—” I broke off, heart pounding, and it was ridiculously hard to admit, “Not used to that, Raph.”
A beat. Then a soft, “I know.”
Heart still pounding, but the words came slightly easier now. “Didn’t see that growing up either.” What my father said went. What my stepfather decreed had to be obeyed, for risk of?—
“I didn’t either.”
I stared into gorgeous blue eyes; knew he wasn’t humoring me.
At the beginning of this, I’d wanted to fix him, to make him smile and feel again and do all that feeling while being happy. But he was jackhammering at my defenses, at the concrete, and he was making me feel so much, too much, but…
It was addicting.
It was impossible to resist.
It was—for all my talk of healing him and then moving on—it was something I wasn’t willing to give up. Not yet.
And maybe…if I talked to Marin, if I fixed the cracks, maybe I could banish the demons, and maybe I could keep Raph.
That had my heart pounding even harder.
That had hope curling through my middle.
I reached over and touched his jaw. My heart didn’t slow. If anything, my pulse picked up the pace, and I suggested, “Maybe we can make something different from what we both had?”
Eyes as warm as the Caribbean, hot white sand beneath my toes, a sticky, humid breeze over my skin. “Yeah, honey. I’d like that.”
