Page 35 of Beat of Love
Her eyes watered, and she sniffed away the burn in her nose. “Don’t say that. You’re a good man, Rafferty Lawson.”
He barked a bitter laugh. “Don’t dupe yourself, darlin’. I’m rotten to my core.”
“Raff—”
“Just go, Brandy-Lyn.” His swallow was audible. “Please.”
His earnest entreaty negated all the harsh things he’d said about himself — hewasa good man — but it also screamed that he truly believed every self-deprecating word he’d spoken.
And he was partly right.
Hewasunpredictable, and that made him unsafe to be around.
Unsafe. But not rotten.
“You’re not rotten,” she whispered.
A long pause followed her whispered statement. “Don’t worry your pretty head about me,” he murmured.
Her spine straightened. “I was worried aboutElsa.”
The beam of light moved, finding the mare. She stood a distance away, motionless. “She’s fine.” He held out the flashlight. “Go, Brandy.”
Her hand closed around the extended handle. She hesitated, her back half-turned, heart thudding with adrenaline and something heavier. Instinct screamed to stay, to reach for him again.
“Please. Just go.”
His hoarse plea gutted her.
He wasn’t just asking for space. He needed it like oxygen.
She swallowed hard, forcing herself to let go. “Night, Raff,” she said, turning around. “I hope you can catch some sleep.”
*
Rafferty watched her walk away, the beam of her flashlight bouncing ahead of her. He hadn’t meant to scare her. When he’d jerked awake and found someone looming over him in the dark, grabbing his weapon had been a kneejerk reaction.
But that he’d pointed it atBrandy-Lyn?
Well,thatscared the shit out of him.
Almost as much as the nightmare she’d woken him from.
His chest ached as she passed through the gate, drove off on the UTV, and disappeared around the corner of the barn. The silence that followed was heavier than it had any right to be. He rubbed a hand over his face, gritty-eyed and hollow, the adrenaline crash leaving him raw.
He wanted her. Hewantedher like a man starved.
But what he wanted and what he could have were two very different things.
He was still too broken. Too full of shadows and sharp edges.
She deserved solid ground, not a man still clawing his way out of the dark.
And she was his brother’s ex-girlfriend.
Taboo, taboo.Taboo.
Yet he felt her absence keenly, a hollow ache that settled into his bones like the coming winter.
