Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart, #3)(47)

“Let me protect him, too.”

There was my answer—everything had changed.

I wasn’t about to let my past railroad me any longer. Fear holding me hostage. Look what good that had done.

A war played out on her face, those teeth going to town on her bottom lip.

My guts twisted, wanting to dip in, kiss it away.

She glanced to the far wall, contemplating, before she looked back at me. “You really want to get to know him?”

“More than anything.”

“Why don’t you come back over tonight for dinner? But I . . . I’m not ready for us to tell him who you are. You’re my old friend. Nothing more. Not until we both can be certain you can handle this.”

Relief gusted through my soul.

So heavy I sagged forward and pressed my face to her heart that thundered in her chest. I wanted to reach out and touch it, carry some of her weight.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she said.

She leaned back, searching for space. For distance. I had to fucking pry myself from the lure of that sweet body. Wanted to pick her up and pull her onto my lap.

Undress her fast and kiss her slow.

Hold her and fuck her and love her and keep her.

The way I should have done all those years ago.

Discomfort wound its way back into the atmosphere, and she looked at the clock before she angled those eyes back on me. “I need to get home and get a shower. I start work this mornin’. Do you think you’ll be okay to take care of yourself?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

Fucking lie, but it didn’t have a thing to do with my busted to shit body.

I pushed to my feet and stretched out my hand. She hesitated for a second before she accepted it.

Every cell in my body tightened, the brush of her fire, the warmth of her hope.

“Thank you, Izzy. For coming here last night. For telling me. For giving me this chance.”

“Don’t mess it up.” Of course because it was Izzy Lane, there was no hardness to it. Just sincerity.

I scratched at the back of my head, not wanting to let her leave. What I wanted was to drag her into the shower with me and have her take care of me the way I really needed her to.

But I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be up for that.

“I’m going to have your car looked at today. Where are you working?”

How pathetic was it that I didn’t know a thing about her? Where she’d gone and how she’d truly been. Only knew these few minor details that were so major that my head was still spinning, nearly as fast as my spirit was reeling.

“Nelson Dentistry,” she answered.

“All right,” I told her, calculating how I was going to make all of this happen today.

She stood a foot away, itching, the air between us alive. “All right. I’ll see you tonight at seven.”

“I can’t wait.”

She grabbed her shoes from where she’d left them on the floor and threaded the straps through her fingers. Her hair fell all around her, those lips and those eyes so dominant in her slender face.

So goddamn gorgeous I wanted to reach out and touch her again.

She looked up at me with the full force of that beauty.

“Just . . . be careful with him, Maxon. That child has endured enough pain for a lifetime.”

She turned and started for the door, and the second she did, a million questions started coming at me. Faster and faster. Blow after blow.

Finally, couldn’t keep it in, and the words were getting loose from my tongue. “Dillon’s dad?”

Jealousy burned on my skin.

Had no right to it. But it was there. Wound up in that cute kid who’d been bouncing around, nothing but a pistol.

She froze at the doorway, spine going rigid. Slowly, she turned to look back at me. “That’s not somethin’ I want to talk about, Maxon. This is about you and Benjamin. That’s it.”

“You sure about that?”

Couldn’t help but exert it.

This.

Us.

The fact it was going to happen.

She held me with nothing but nostalgia and regret in that mesmerizing gaze. “You hurt me, Maxon. You hurt me somethin’ fierce. I’m not sure I can handle that kind of hurtin’ again.”

Then she left me there, my fists clenched at my side, a silent promise on my tongue.

She was mine.

And I’d never let a fucking thing hurt her again.





Thirteen





Izzy





“You spent the night at his house?” Faith screeched through the line.

My attention went darting around my surroundings, and I lowered my voice to a hiss as if it were the world’s most sordid secret. “Would you be quiet? Someone might hear you.”

Light laughter rolled out of her. “Like who? Your conscience?”

“This isn’t funny,” I said. “You know it wasn’t anything like that.”

Except for all those stupid feelings that had kept rising to the surface the whole time. The turmoil that spun, his and mine, the need that had become partner to it all.

Not to mention, having to sleep in that chair next to where he was lying, the man moaning throughout his sleep, whimpering my name the whole time.