Page 8 of Diesel
This close to him, I want desperately to touch him, to tell him I love him and to beg him to love me back, but I don’t move. I can’t.
He lifts his gaze, as if he knows what my thoughts are. “You can hate me as much as you want, sweetheart, but you don’t walk away.”
I know he’s only saying this because he doesn’t want to lose me. Nothing has changed.
“I’m not the one who checked out on us, Zane.”
“I’m still here.”
He is, but it doesn’t undo the weeks of loneliness or uncertainty, the nights I slept with him inside me and the mornings I woke alone. It doesn’t magically erase the pain that sits in my chest constantly now.
“You only came for me when I left.”
He looks like I’ve punched a hole in his chest and torn out his still-beating heart.
His jaw works for a second, like he’s trying to calm the eruption building inside him. Then he does what he always does. He ignores the painful truth. “Don’t move.”
He closes my door and heads into the room he just dragged me out of.
I consider running, but what would be the point? He’d catch me. I’ll never outpace him and I’m too tired to try.
I watch the door until he appears a moment later, my bag clutched in his hand. His eyes meet mine through the windscreen, as if he half expected me to be gone.
I fold my hands in my lap as the back door of the car opens and he puts my bag on the back seat. Then he gets in to the driver’s side and starts the engine.
Before he pulls out of the parking area, he turns to me.
“Run again and I’ll hunt you to the ends of the fucking earth. You’re my woman. My fucking wife and the only way we’re done is if I’m cold in the ground.”
THREE
MAKENNA
I stareout of the side window like a moody teenager. I don’t speak to him, don’t even look at him. I can’t. I’ll break if I do. The crushing silence filling the car is suffocating, and I let it smother us both.
He came.
Six days late, but he’s here.
His phone rings, muffled in his pocket. He doesn’t answer it. Doesn’t take his eyes off the road.
I cut my gaze to him. “Are you going to answer that?”
“No.”
Okay then… “What exactly is the plan here, Zane?”
He doesn’t answer. I’m not sure if that’s because he doesn’t have one, or because he knows if he shares it with me, he’ll freak me out. He’s always believed his intensity is too much for me and that I need protection from his darker side, but he’s wrong. I’m more worried about becoming a footnote in his life than what he keeps locked in a cage inside him.
“Are you just going to ignore me?” My words come out terse.
There’s a beat where neither of us move, and then he says, “You hungry?”
I blink.What the…?“You abduct me and then ask if I’m hungry? Do you treat all your kidnap victims like this?”
He growls low in his throat, more animal than man right now. “You’re not a victim. You’re my fucking wife.”
I scoff, unable to stop the nastiness from bleeding through the sound. “I’m not your wife. I’m a convenient pitstop between you playing with your biker friends and whatever you get up to when you’re not with me. I’m just the girl you fuck when you’re bored. Practically your fucking whore.”
