Page 85 of Save Her from Me

“What’s that look for?” I asked.

Ariel had gone pale. Throughout my whole introspective ramblings, she’d listened, letting me get the story off my chest, just as Ben had asked me to do, but in the last minute, something had changed for her.

I worked through the end of the conversation. Raphael?

I pinned her with my gaze. “Oh no. Get that out of your head.”

She blinked at me. “You don’t know what’s in my head.”

I took her hand and kissed her palm.

“Yes, I do. I can read your mind, remember?”

She flushed. In my imagination, I enclosed her hand in mine and tugged her to my chest. Kissed her again. Spent the rest of the evening doing all the things she wanted to try.

But I was riding a dangerous edge of possessiveness.

During sex, I hadn’t cared. I’d taken ownership and claimed her.

A warning played out inside my mind. After everything I’d just told her, about the dangers of an obsessive man, what the fuck was I doing?

Ariel had given me an out.

For her sake, I should take it.

With difficulty, I forced my lips to move. “Nothing has changed between us. We’re better acquainted now, that’s all.”

“Acquainted,” she repeated, her voice strained and her expression unreadable.

“If it complicates things, for the sake of being friends, maybe we shouldn’t do that again. But I don’t want to feel bad about it either.”

She swallowed and glanced away. Nodded. “If that’s what you want, I agree.”

It was the wrong decision. Everything inside me screamed that I was a fool.

My phone rang with my mother’s name on the screen.

I exhaled, frustrated at what I’d done to myself as much as my mother’s persistence.

Ariel squinted at the device. “From her position of denial, she’s still trying to see you.”

“She hasn’t stopped.”

“Changed your mind about letting me help?”

“No.”

I glared at the phone until it went to voicemail.

Ariel wouldn’t meet my gaze. Instead, she took up her phone and placed a call.

“Hey, Daisy,” she said. She spun away and listened to her friend.

I’d been dismissed.

I hated it.

Even if this was exactly what both of us needed.

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