Page 125 of The Bad Wedding Date

“That’s what we intend to find out.”

“Those men… the ones Ray caught. Didn’t they tell you why he’d hired them?”

“They don’t ask for a reason when they’re being paid enough money, baby.” I wasn’t sure if his term of endearment had meant to slip free, but he didn’t flinch when he said it. Something about that word that I’d always found so cringeworthy now sounded so pure and perfect when falling from his lips. “All they care about is the cash.”

“What did you do to them?”

He stared at me in silence.

“I’m not frightened,” I assured him. “Nothing you can say will make me look at you differently.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

“Did you kill them?”

“Not yet.”

“Yet…” I breathed, looking back out at the skyline, nodding my head. Well, I had asked for his honesty. I couldn’t backtrack on that now. “And do you plan to do the same to Penn?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“What he had planned for you.”

I shook my head and closed my eyes, unable to imagine what that might have been.

“If he wanted to hurt you, Charlotte, I’ll hurt him, too, and I won’t apologise for it.”

“Stop,” I whispered.

“Look at me.”

Turning back to him, I fought back the conflicting emotions rising within me.

Moving to the edge of the sofa, he parted his legs and rested his arms on his thighs, leaning forward as he clasped his hands together and held my gaze. “I don’t hurt people for no reason. Those two men hadn’t only broken into your apartment and threatened you. They’d done it to a lot of women before you. The justice I serve up for those women is on me. I chose to make those bastards pay. Now, I won’t ever lie to you if you ask me a question like that again, but I won’t let your thoughts about what I do make me change how I feel about what I do, either. I enjoy it, Charlotte. It’s who I am. I clean the streets the police can’t clean.”

“And what happens when you get caught one day?”

“I guess I’ll get what I deserve, too.”

“Which means you leave me…”

My words hit him. I saw it in the way his nostrils twitched, and his jaw followed them as he tried to compose his answer.

“Who looks after me then, Fraser, huh? Who keeps me safe when you’re behind bars?”

“I’d never leave you unprotected—”

“I don’t give afuckabout being unprotected,” I said with a little too much force, but my emotions were sitting right on the surface of my skin, desperate to pour out in any way they could. Reaching up to place a hand over my own heart, I dug my fingers into the material of my jumper. “No one can protect this if you’re gone.”

It was as close to telling him I was falling in love with him as I’d got, and the way he swallowed a second later told me he’d known the significance of what I’d said, too.

Moving to the edge of the sofa I sat on, I copied his pose. “Maybe I don’t need saving from everyone else. Maybe I need saving from you breaking my heart.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? You’ve just admitted that nothing matters more to you than justice.”

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