Page 40 of That Girl is Trouble

“Kat,” I admonish.

“Please, Axe?”

Her lips brush against mine, just barely, but enough to send a damn shock straight to my dick. Fucking fuck.

“What are you asking me?”

She wraps her fingers around my hand and guides it down to her hip, then up under the T-shirt—my T-shirt—covering her body, over her warm skin. And I let her. I let my fingers drift along the edge of her panties. I let my mind wander to all the places I could touch.

“Make me forget,” she whispers. “Please? Just… It’s all I can see. The blood. His face. Just make me forget.”

I could be that guy. And if this were any other woman, I would be. I’d slide those damn panties off and fuck her to sleep so maybe we could both forget. At least until morning. And she’s all but begging me to do it.

With a sigh, I redirect my hand to her back and pull her into a tight hug. Kat lets out another sob and buries her face in the crook of my neck.

“P-please, Axe. J-just make it stop hurting,” she wails.

“I can’t make you forget. Doesn’t work like that.”

“Then make this feeling stop.” Her voice is loud now, panicky, her breath laboured. And she suddenly wiggles out of my arms and sits upright, her hand on her chest. “I can’t breathe. I can’t—I can’t breathe. Something’s wrong. Something’s—”

Pushing up, I place my hand over hers on her breastbone. Her chest is rising and falling so quickly it’s a wonder she hasn’t passed out. “You’re okay. Just lay back.”

“No. No. I can’t—I can’t breathe.”

“Trust me, yeah?” I push her back gently, and she goes without a fight. “Flat on your back, Kat. Knees down,” I say as I lie beside her, my hand still on her chest. “Big breath.” Kat inhales a deep swell of air, her panicked eyes on me as she waits for me to talk her down, to fix it, to make the hurt stop. “Now hold it.” I count down slowly from five. “Let it go.”

She does as I ask, her chest falling as she lets out a long, shaky breath.

“Again.”

She takes a deep breath, holding for five seconds and then releasing once more. I have her do it three more times, and at the end of her last breath, the panic is gone from her eyes and the trembling has faded.

Kat swallows. “You… fixed me.”

“Five deep breaths. It’s what I used to do in lockup. When I would get a little… panicky.”

Scrutinizing me, her head turned while her body is still prone on the mattress, she furrows her brow. “You? Panicky? Men like you don’t get scared.”

“Men like me, like Jess, get scared all the time, Kitty. And when I was locked up, sometimes I let myself think a little too hard about how small that room was. And it was”—I clear my throat to suppress a shiver, but it racks through my body anyway, all the way to where my hand still rests on her chest—“it was crushing.”

With a nod, she takes another deep breath and focuses on the ceiling. “How do you… stop thinking about it? How do you forget?”

“Don’t ever try to forget what’s happened to you. The world is ugly. And fucked up. And not fair. But when bad shit happens, you can let it break you or shape you. That’s it. There’s no forgetting.”

Kat sighs, chewing on my words, but she doesn’t speak again. She doesn’t roll over and let her fingers wander over my skin, and I don’t move my hand from her chest. I lie beside her, counting her breaths as they slow, watching her eyelids flutter shut.

When they don’t pop back open, I push up, quietly rolling out of bed, and head to the door.

“Night, Axe.” Her voice is a whisper in the dark.

“Night, Kat.” I pause at the door. “You can’t ask me to do that again. What you were asking me. To make you forget.”

It’s silent for a beat, and then she says, “Why not?”

“Because next time I might not be so good at being the better man.”

I close the door before she can respond, leaving her alone, in my bed, for the night. Because painful as it is, tonight I’m the better fucking man.

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