Lawless (King #3)(66)

I couldn’t hurt her. I would find another way. I grabbed what’s her name’s forearm to make her stop her pointless hand job, but it wasn’t her my eyes darted to.

It was Ti.

MY Ti.

Standing at the foot of the bed.

She appeared straight faced. Impassive. Almost expressionless. I knew better than to take her at face value. Thia ran deep, but covered up even deeper. What I saw behind her flat expression scared the shit out of me, because it was more than her usual spitfire self.

She was mad.

Pure unadulterated RAGE mad.

The naked bleach blonde kneeling next to me barely paid Thia any attention, and continued to stroke me as she looked back at her despite my hand on her arm trying to stop her. “You want in?” she asked Thia.

Maybe she wasn’t there. Maybe I was just dreaming. Because Thia Andrews had been occupying my dreams since that first night in the shower.

It wasn’t until she spoke that I knew for sure it wasn’t a dream after all.

I thought she’d run.

I’d done this so she would run.

Not from the house. From me.

But she didn’t. The girl was always surprising me.

She walked right up to the bed with a look of determination in her eyes that I’d never seen before. She reached over me and plucked one of my guns from one of my holders, which was the only thing I was wearing. She aimed at the naked blonde and cocked it. “Get. Out. Now.” The fake seductive look on the blonde’s face instantly disappeared and was replaced with fear. She jumped from the bed and ran out the door without a backwards glance.

I know it was the * thing to do but I couldn’t help it.

Maybe it was because I was drunk.

Maybe because I was tired of not knowing what to do or who to trust or how to protect the girl who had wiggled and smiled her way into my broken heart.

I laughed.

Not just a little laugh either. I laughed at the absurdity that my life had become as well as the situation I was currently in.

Thia turned the gun on me and that’s when I noticed the tears threatening to leak from the corners of her beautiful green eyes.

I froze.

“Shit.”

Ti sniffled, although she was obviously trying to hide the fact that she was on the verge of crying. An unfamiliar feeling took over. My heart lurched into my stomach and I felt sick.

Guilt.

I’d committed every crime there was to commit. I’d done shit that sane men would never dare to even think of, yet I’d never felt a shred of guilt for any of it.

Ever.

Until now.

Until Thia.

Love. It was the only kind of torture I wasn’t familiar with.

I was quickly learning it was the most painful kind of them all.

“You know,” she started. Her voice was as shaky as the gun in her hand. “You really need to stop trying to make me hate you.”

I muddled through my cloudy thoughts in search of a response, “And why is that?” was the best I could come up with.

Ti laid the gun down on my bare stomach and I resisted the urge to reach out and tug her down onto me. She was about to turn the handle on the door when she turned back. Tears stained her cheeks and my gut twisted in a way I was beginning to hate as much as I hated myself.

She looked me right in the eye and held my gaze.

“Because it’s working.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN




Bear


No amount of coffee or cold water could have dragged me back into sobriety after I’d seen the look on Ti’s face in that room.

Alcohol and anger go hand in hand like junior high sweethearts.

I’d drank enough Jack to set me into a coma, yet after she’d walked out of the room I was more sober than before I’d had a single drop.

I pulled on my jeans and ran after her.

Thia wasn’t in the living room. She wasn’t in the garage either. I was worried she’d left completely and started thinking of where the f*ck she would go or who was out there waiting to hurt her when I spotted her on the dock. She was bent over, her hands moving furiously. I didn’t realize what she was doing until she untied the rope from the dock and hopped off the dock.

By the time I got down to the dock she had already pushed off and was too far away from me to reach out and pull her back. “Ti, we gotta talk.”

“I think you’ve said plenty.”

“Ti, get your ass over here.” Ignoring me she continued to row furiously. She was obviously inexperienced and didn’t move too far too quickly. The muscles in her arms strained as she rowed harder and harder without much progress to show for it.

“There is a nasty rip current under the dock. It’s a struggle for me or King to get the boat through it, so you might as well give up and come back now,” I said, crouching down on the seawall.

She only fought harder, slowly she gained ground inching further away from the dock and from me. I hadn’t been lying. The current was a bitch to get through if you didn’t know exactly where it stopped and started. Took us months to figure out how to clear it in less than a few minutes.

As much as I hated the fact that she was doing her damnedest to get away from me I was impressed by my girl’s strength.

There was no way to make this right.

I craved her forgiveness just as much as I craved her body. Her soul. Her spirit.