Page 6 of That Girl is Trouble

“Promise, Axe. Promise me. It’s too quiet there. I love my sister, I do. But it’s silent all the fucking time and I hate it. I’m always alone. And here, I’m not. Here, even if you don’t like me, even if you hate me, at least someone’s around to talk to me. She’s always gone. Always working. And before that, it was just me and my mom, and she didn’t talk to me either.”

My chest twists again. “No one hates you, Kitty. Let’s talk about it in the morning, yeah?”

She nods, wrapping her hands around her middle.

I don’t want to ask. And I almost don’t. I’m not sure if it would help, bringing that up. Did Graves get there on time? Did he stop it?

“Did he…” I swallow. “Kat, did he—”

“No. No, he didn’t… he didn’t get that from me.”

With a sigh of relief, I rinse the towel, then get back to cleaning up her face. We don’t speak again, and when I finally soak up the last of the blood, I scoop her up and bring her into my room, where I deposit her on my bed. When I turn to leave, she grabs my wrist.

“Stay with me?” she asks.

I give her a once-over. The only thing covering the girl’s body is my fucking T-shirt, and I sure as fuck am not crawling into bed bare chested with a fucking teenager.

“Kat—”

“Please.”

I run my hand over the short bristles on my head. “Wouldn’t look right, Kitty. Okay? Graves finds us like that after what just happened, and Tex would have another body to clean up.”

Her eyes are pleading, her lip trembling again. Fuck. Me. “Just… just until I fall asleep?”

Huffing out a sigh, I drop my head. “All right, but no touching.”

I slide in next to her, and she curls her still-shaking body close to mine. Swallowing thickly, I resist the urge to pull her into my arms. I don’t know how to comfort a woman after she’s been through a thing like that. Do I touch her or keep my hands off her? Do I talk about it? Stay quiet? Kat says she hates the quiet, but in this moment, maybe she’d prefer it.

When her breathing evens out, I know it’s time to get up, to pass out on my couch because I drank too much tonight, fucked the wrong woman, and then was woken by Kat’s screams. I’m fucking exhausted. I need sleep, and I can’t be sleeping next to this girl.

But I don’t move. Kat looks peaceful when she sleeps. So unlike her usual temperament, and as each minute ticks on, her body sinking further into mine, her hand resting on my chest, her forehead pressing to my shoulder, it gets harder to fucking leave.

So I lie here, studying her, telling myself I’ll get up in a minute and spend the rest of the night alone on the couch, away from her, where I should be.

When the sun wakes me up, she’s in my arms, her head on my chest, her hand resting softly on my stomach.

It’s wrong. I shouldn’t be this close to a woman so young. Particularly this one. Graves would fucking skin me alive if I touched her, but instead of slinking out of the sheets and leaving her by herself, I pull her tighter and let myself drift back to sleep.

Hours later, she stirs beside me. I ease my eyes open, only to find her face so close to mine it might actually be a crime. It sure fucking feels like one.

She shuffles closer and presses her palms to my cheeks.

Gripping her wrists gently, I pull her away. “Kat,” I warn. “No touching. It’s not right.”

“Just for a second,” she whispers, sweeping her hands back up my chest and over my chin, pulling me closer.

The pads of her fingers trace the line of my jaw and move up my cheeks once more. Her touch is light. Barely there. But still wrong. So fucking wrong.

Seventeen. Seventeen. Seventeen.

No. Not even. Not yet.

Sixteen. Fucking sixteen.

“Thank you for keeping me safe,” she murmurs, her lips almost on mine, a phantom kiss sliding over my mouth.

“Kat,” I say again, my tone harsher, but she’s already pulling away and pushing out of my bed.

---