Page 44 of Bitter Desire
I jerked back as if I had been slapped. “No.”
“I’m not good for you, Honey. This is all fucking proof of it. Everything I touch goes to shit. You have to get clear of me.”
I went silent, staring at him where he still stood by the window and fought down the rising panic in my belly. This felt like good-bye. How the fuck had we gotten here? I wanted to go back to this morning with Law holding me and me waking up in his bed. I had to stop this—whatever it was that Law was gearing up to do.
“I was a part of Cairn, with or without you. I knew Christian with or without you, and you said it was him making those calls, so how do we know this doesn't have something to do with that?” I pointed out. “Sure he might not have the balls to kidnap me, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t working with someone that does, or that he didn’t pay someone to do something crazy.”
“Someone from the Cairn then?”
“Could be. That’s how I met Christian, how he knows we’re together, the only way that people really know we’re together. Page Six doesn’t count because that shit is half made up anyways. We’ve only been together for a short while and it happened there, and if it happened there then-”
“Then Zeus knows.”
“Bingo.”
“You think Zeus has something to do with this?” He looked surprised and I shrugged, leaning forward in my chair. If we were going to play this game of what-ifs? Then why not lay it all out there?
“All I’m saying is that Zeus is capable of anything, right? He put us together. We still don’t know why. Connie might have been the one writing the letters to us, the one saying you were my chaperone and the general face of it all, but that doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t do a thing Zeus doesn’t tell her to. If she did that, then we know who really wanted it to happen. And then,” I paused and looked down at my hands. My head was swimming and it was hard to keep speaking but I did it anyhow. I was doing great. I had Law listening to me. I had to keep going. “Then all of this happened. And we both know not a damn thing happens in that club that Zeus doesn’t know about. It’s his world there. If Christian is calling me, he knows. If Christian had anything to do with what happened in the Catskills, then Zeus knows.”
Law didn’t look the least bit happy at the point I was making. “Fuck.”
I sipped my coffee, and it was easier to breathe. Far easier now that we weren’t recounting my shitty childhood or the last time I’d seen my mother. I’d take trying to figure out who’d tried to kidnap me over that any day of the week. “What?” I asked.
Law rubbed a hand over his face. “If it’s Zeus, then it’s serious. If it’s Zeus, then it’s not going to go away without me doing something about it.”
“If it’s Zeus then it would have happened no matter what,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t matter if I was with you or not, if Zeus had it in his head to play with me then it was a done deal. You know that. You’re just collateral damage.”
Law stopped pacing and came back to the table. “He wouldn’t have noticed you if it wasn’t for me. We both know that. I don’t like that you being with me makes your life more dangerous.”
I lifted my chin meeting Law’s gaze. “Well, that’s too bad because you’re stuck with me.”
He cracked a smile. “Is that so?”
“Damn straight. I’m not going anywhere, so stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you need to save me from myself, from my own choices by cutting me loose,” I said, giving voice to my earlier fears. I sat up straight and pinned him with a glare. “I’m not letting that happen, because I choose you and that’s the end of it.”
We stared at each other for another beat before Law came forward and sank down on his knees in front of me. “I just want to keep you safe,” he said, hands coming to rest on my knees. The weight of his hands on me calmed me. My robe fell to the side, sliding away from where he touched me and the warmth of him, the weight of my man’s touch on my body, kept me in the moment. Right with Law and not in my head, not in Texas, not on that shitty dusty dirt road I walked back to town with my bag heavy on my back. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I wasn’t.
I leaned forward, hands moving to cup his face. “And you will, but we do that together. Got it?” I asked, resting my forehead against his. We stared at each other for another beat before Law gave the slightest of nods.
“Got it.”
I smiled. “Good.”
Chapter Eighteen
LAW
I was going to kill Zeus.
The man was a fucking ghost as far as I was concerned. If it was him playing with Honey, there was not going to be a damn thing the Cairn or anyone could do to keep him safe from me. I glanced over my shoulder and back into the kitchen where Honey was still eating her breakfast. She was munching on bacon and drinking her coffee, a book in front of her and I sighed at the perfectly content look on her face. She was calm, happy, and didn’t have a damn place she needed to go.
I was going to have money transferred to her account later that day. The second I got off the phone with Charlaine, I was going to make sure Honey was set up with six months of living expenses. No, not six months, a year. I wanted her to be able to breathe. I didn’t give a shit about money and she needed it, which meant I was taking advantage of the shitty situation we were in and making sure she had the room and security to breathe.
“Don’t be. That’s just how my mom is. She’s mad at the world because her life didn’t work out the way she wanted. So she, well that’s just how she is.”
