Page 69 of Beat of Love
“You still with me?” she asked softly.
He nodded, his brilliant sapphire-colored eyes rimmed red, but the wild edge was gone. In its place, something quieter.
Worn-out, yes. But real.
She offered a small, tired smile. “Good. Because I’m not going anywhere.”
And how true were those words.
Because, despite all common sense, she was quickly falling for a man who was so off-limits it was almost laughable.
17
Not going anywhere
The desk lamp turned her hair into burnished copper, its soft waves spilling around her face while the blue glow from the monitor caressed her sun-kissed skin. Her lips moved in a silent murmur, syncing with the rhythm of her typing, and her tongue slipped out and traced their shape, leaving behind a glistening sheen.
Rafferty’s hands clenched at his sides, aching to touch her, to slide into that curtain of copper and tilt her face up to his. He knew he shouldn’t —fuck, he knew better— but wanting her had never felt like a choice.
And then, as if she sensed the heat of his gaze, her fingers stilled. Slowly, deliberately, she looked up, eyes finding his with unerring accuracy, lips parting slightly as if she'd heard every hungry thought in his head.
Brandy-Lyn didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. The air between them pulsed, thick with something electric and dangerously close to surrender.
He swallowed hard, remembering why he’d come. “About earlier,” he began, voice low. “I hate that you saw me like that.”Breaking down like a weakling, he silently added.A chickenshit coward.
She stood and slowly walked over to him.
His breath caught. She was close now — too close — and every instinct screamed at him to claim the inches that kept them apart, to pull her in and lose himself in the soft swells of herbody, the quiet steadiness of her presence. To bury himself in her warmth and shut out the cold press of memory for just a little while.
But he didn’t move.
He stayed rooted, every muscle locked against the pull of want. Because beneath the hunger, beneath the ache, there was fear — not the trembling kind, but the kind that knew he was damaged, plain and simple. Darkness lurked just beneath his skin, ready to surge forward and wreck whatever fragile good he’d managed to hold on to.
And Brandy-Lyn Powers was nothing but goodness.
Coming here tonight had felt right at first — necessary.
It had taken a long run to clear his head and figure out a way forward.
But now, standing in the thick silence between them, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he’d made a mistake, showing up while the aftershocks of his breakdown still rattled inside, making him unpredictable as hell.
It wasn’t just his own emotional instability he had to reckon with — it was the physical threat looming over everyone he cared about. Kamilawasstill at large. Until that threat was neutralized, he couldn’t even think about dragging Brandy-Lyn into his volatile world.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty — he wouldn’t sleep tonight until he’d faced the shame clawing at his insides and said what needed to be said.
Once he admitted his greatest shame, she’d recoil in disgust.
And that’s what he wanted. Shock her into sendinghimpacking.
Make her retract those words that had echoed in his soul all afternoon.
I’m not going anywhere.
She reached for his hands, fingers brushing lightly against his. “You never have to hide your pain from me,” she murmured.
Pain. Shame. Guilt.
They folded into each other — pain bleeding into shame, shame curdling into guilt — he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. He sidestepped and laughed, but there was no humor in it — just bitterness and exhaustion. “You say that now. But you don’t know all of it.”
