Page 5 of Diesel
Slowly, I roll onto my back, my head turning even further to the opposite side of the room.
He’s sitting against the wall, his jean-clad legs thrown out in front of him. The stubble he usually has is thicker, like he hasn’t stopped to shave, and his tee is wrinkled beneath his kutte, pulled tight around his broad shoulders.
I stare at the leather, my chin wobbling as I hold back my tears.
“How did you get in?” My voice is hoarse, as if I’ve been screaming in my sleep. Maybe I was. It feels like I’ve been screaming for months. “I locked the door.”
I don’t know why I ask that. There are a hundred otherquestions I should have led with—ones that I don’t know if he’ll ever give me the answers to.
Beneath the anger burning in his eyes is a spark of relief, like he didn’t know what he’d find when he caught up to me. “I picked it.”
I stare at him. “Of course you know how to do that.”
“It’s not hard. You just have to know how to align the pins. They aren’t really meant to keep people out. They’re an illusion so law-abiding suits feel safe in their beds.” His rambling is familiar and comforting but the way his eyes darken is not. “But I’m not a law-abiding suit, and there’s no door in this world that can keep me from you.”
Yeah, he’s pissed.
The bite in his tone is one I’ve only ever heard him use with other people. Never me. That’s why this is so hard. I know he loves me, or he loves me in the only way he can, and that isn’t even the problem. The issue is him disappearing and sneaking back into my life like I’m a pit stop between club jobs.
My stomach sinks, churning again like there’s a storm raging inside me, mirroring the one building in this room.
“I don’t know why I expected you to give a fuck about my boundaries.”
He stands slowly, and I sit up in the bed, ready to put it between us if I need to. I don’t fear him hurting me, not physically. He doesn’t need to lay a hand on me. He’s already destroyed me a thousand ways without ever lifting a finger.
“When your boundaries put you a hundred miles from me in a shit-stained hotel room in some dump of a place, no. I don’t give a fuck.”
My tongue feels coated in sand at how level andcontrolled his tone is. He’s holding back but I’ve pushed him to his limit with this.
I should stop. But I’ve never been smart, and my mouth has a mind of its own. “Still better than what I left behind,” I mutter.
I want it to wound and it does. He flinches like I’ve shoved a blade into his chest. I expect to feel satisfaction at hurting him the way he’s hurt me, but I don’t.
I just feel flayed open and empty.
Zane’s brows draw together, and I can see he’s trying to figure out what I mean. “You left behind a good life.”
I scoff, because he just doesn’t see it, and I’ve tried to get him to so many times. I told him I didn’t feel important, that I needed more from him and he’d frowned at me. Then he’d kissed my forehead and said I was the most important thing to him in this world before he left.
For a week.
“Well, you can get on your bike and go back to that good life alone. Tell me how it feels to sit in that apartment without me, eat meals for one, and then have me turn up once a week to fuck you and leave.”
The silence is unbearable. I don’t think he’s breathing. He hasn’t taken his attention off me, but he’s frozen in that way he gets when his head is spinning problems.
“You think I don’t want to wake up next to you every day? That I don’t want to eat with you, watch you smile and light up?”
“I think you’ve made it clear how you feel, Zane.”
The way he tenses makes me want to wrap my arms around him even as my chest aches. He’s trying to understand, but I don’t know how to explain the loneliness I feelto him anymore. The way I need him so much my heart breaks when he’s gone.
The way I feel like I’m nothing to him and that it hurts more than if he’d just erased me from his life completely.
He steps closer, his hands fisting at his sides. Molten rage burns through him. “You think I’d ever fucking allow you to just disappear from my life?”
My heart thumps, solid and heavy in my chest. I’m not scared of him, but I am afraid what I might do in the heat of the moment, so I slip off the bed, putting it between us like a barrier—just in case I’m tempted to go to him.
He reads it wrong, of course he does. He thinks I’m protecting myself from his anger.
