Page 5 of Satisfied
“Me too,” she says, and I jerk hard at her words before I’m quickly reminded what it is we were talking about. “I came out here for some air.”
I pull in a deep breath, giving myself a moment for the chilly air to clear the fog in my head and for the violent ache in my balls to ease up a bit. “Why didn’t you use the front door?” I say after a moment.
“Um…I, well…”
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” I ask, taking pity on my sweet girl who can’t tell a lie to save her life. “Sneaking out of Haven House when no one’s watching. You’re worried Cara or someone else from the shelter will stop you from leaving, aren’t you?”
I don’t need better lighting to tell that her face is flushed. “My ex put a tracker on my phone, and that’s how he found outI’m here,” she says after several beats. “He’ll keep showing up as long as he knows I’m here. I’ve tried resetting my phone, but I don’t think it worked because he keeps finding me even when I leave the shelter. Staying here only puts other women and their kids at risk.”
“I can take care of the tracker for you.”
“How?”
“Does it matter?” I say, finally pushing away from the wall and approaching her. She backs up a step and her back hits the door. “Let’s just say…I’m good with tech and can get rid of the tracker so he can’t find you. Hell, I can make him believe you’re in Mexico or somewhere across the ocean, if you want.”
She blinks up at me when I stop a few inches away from her. “C-can you really manipulate a tracker to display a false location?”
“Yes.”
This close, I catch the sweet rosy scent clinging to her hair, and I resist the urge to reach up and touch her. She sniffs. “It doesn’t matter, he already knows I’m here.”
“Do you not trust the Steel Rebels to protect you?”
“I can’t stay,” she says brokenly. “It’s not about trust. I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt, including the men from the club.” When she looks up to meet my eyes, I notice the blue in her gray and it sends my pulse drumming quickly against my skin. “Every time Jack shows up, I see fear in the eyes of the other women here, and it kills me because I understand why they’re afraid. I know what they’ve been through. Knowing that I’m playing a role in reminding them of their trauma kills me. I can’t stay here and wait for the next time he shows up. You can understand that, right?”
“Then come with me.”
The words tumble out of my lips before I know what I’m saying. When I came out here tonight, the goal was to convinceher to stay. To trust that the Steel Rebels would protect her from her ex. I want her somewhere I could keep a close eye on her.
“Ransom—”
“If you won’t stay at the shelter, then come with me,” I say, allowing myself the small pleasure of touching her by brushing the stray hair from her face and pushing it behind her ear. “I have a spare room in my apartment. My sister recently moved out to live with her fiancé, so you can take the room until we take care of your ex.”
Sure, I turned that room into my home office when my sister moved out, but I’ll give Abby mine if it’s what I need to do to keep her in my sights. There’s no way I’m going to let her leave and stay somewhere she’ll be vulnerable to her ex-boyfriend.
“He’ll trace me to your place, and that’ll put you in danger—”
I smile at that. “I can take care of myself, sweetheart.” Those words don’t do much to assure her, so I turn my palm up. “But if you’re that worried, give me your phone. By tonight, he’ll think you’re in a different city and he won’t come looking for you here anymore.”
She stares up at me for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip in a way that makes me want to tug at it and give her something else to bite on. Preferably my own lips. “Okay,” she finally says, sliding a hand into the back pocket of her jeans and passing me her phone. “My family has a lake house in Wisconsin. Maybe you could start there. It’s probably more believable than suddenly showing up in a whole different country.”
I smile as I switch off her phone, already excited by the prospect of sending the man on a witch hunt. “I’ll take care of it.”Of you.
“You really don’t mind?”
“I don’t,” I assure her, even though I know the truth is written all over my face. I’ve never made an effort to hide my feelings for her. In the weeks we’ve spent together, my expression has shown what my lips held back. Surely she’s not completely oblivious to that, is she?
Of course, Icouldclear it up by doing the one thing I’ve longed to do from the moment I met her. But after everything she’s been through, I’m determined to take things slow, so I bite back the need to kiss her. Force myself to back up a step.
“Do you want to go back in and tell everyone goodbye before we leave?” I ask, sliding my hands into my jeans so I don’t do something stupid like reach out and touch her again.
“They’ll try to stop me and tell me it’s safer for me at the shelter,” she says, her eyes moving back to the closed door. “It’s better for everyone if I’m as far from the shelter as possible. No one will say it out loud, but they all know it.”
“Alright, you can make the call to Cara in my car.”
She turns her face back to me, and I read the gratitude in her eyes. “Thank you,” she says with a small smile, and follows me out of the small alley. We walk in silence to the parking lot where I parked my car, and she turns to me with a confused expression. “Wait, you weren’t kidding?”
“What do you mean?”
