Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(41)

An earthquake shook, the man a rigid fortress that towered and loomed. Beneath him, my entire being trembled, the quivers starting somewhere in my spirit and rattling out.

Uncontrollable.

Both of us shaking and shaking.

Trying to catch up with what we’d just let happen.

Another mistake tossed in that mounting pile.

I swallowed around the love and need and the hurt. “You don’t get to do this to me, Ollie. Not again. I refuse to let you do this to me.”

I could feel the erratic boom of his heart, contending with rage and all the things he wouldn’t allow me to see.

“Fuck . . . I’m sorry. I’m so goddamned sorry.”

He eased back a fraction and shocked me again when he shackled me by the wrists. My hands locked between us, he dropped his forehead to mine. “You can’t leave, Nikki. I know what you were getting ready to do, and I can’t let you leave.”

His voice was grief.

A plea.

He edged back and those blue eyes tangled with mine.

“And I can’t let you keep taking pieces of me and discarding the rest. Not again, Ollie. My heart can’t take it.”

And God, he just kept turning everything upside down because he reached out and cupped one side of my face.

So soft.

So sweet.

His thumb moved across the moisture I didn’t even know had seeped onto my cheeks.

“You can hate me all you want. I deserve it. I’m a bastard, and I know it. But I can’t stand the thought of you out there by yourself. Can’t stand not knowing who broke into your place. Can’t stand the thought of knowing you’re in trouble and not being able to do anything about it. Please. Don’t leave.”

“I don’t know how to stay here with you. Not when things are like this between us. It hurts too much.”

He flinched before all that rippling muscle tightened. Every inch of him hard.

“I need to take care of you. Tell me what’s happening with that girl at the ice cream shop.”

I started to form the excuse, but he cut me off. “No more bullshit. I know you’re in trouble.”

“I can’t tell you that.” It was the truth. I refused to break Brenna’s confidence.

His voice somehow softened, and his head tipped to the side as he looked at me. “What have you gotten yourself into, Nikki?”

For a beat, I hesitated, and then I gave him a little of my truth. “I just want to make the world a better place.”

Minutely, his head shook. Anger was clear in the clench of his jaw. “World is nothing but corruption and evil and greed.”

Like a fool, I pressed his hand closer to my face, savoring the warmth.

For one more moment, I relished in this brute of a man I had no business taking comfort in.

But he’d always, always been my safe place.

“If I can help one person—just one, Ollie—then I made that ugly world better for them.”

I wondered how long it’d been since I’d been that honest with him.

Pain struck on his features. Worry and adoration.

The last was always what nearly dropped me to my knees, but there was too much of that corruption piled between us for the last to count.

His soul soiled and brittle and hard.

There was no longer any place for me.

When he looked at me like that, though, it made me want to believe I was wrong.

He blew out a resigned breath. “I need to keep you safe.”

I searched his face, my voice quiet but strong. Because for once, I wanted him to be honest with me, too. “You want more than that.”

“No. What just happened was a mistake.”

He might as well have punched me. That was what his denial felt like.

How many more of them could I take?

A smile wobbled on my face. It was so fake I thought maybe my face might crack. “Then you have to let me go.”

“You know that’s impossible. I would kill for you, Nikki. Die for you.”

Then why wouldn’t he live for me?

Devastation crawled across my chest like a disease. Oliver Preston the infection and the cure.

He took a lumbering step back. An agitated, tattooed hand roughed through his hair, which was sticking up everywhere from my desperate hands tugging at it.

“You aren’t leaving, Nikki. Someone broke into your place, busted the door, trashed your stuff. You and I both know it wasn’t some stupid kids.”

My brow pinched in disbelief. “What? Am I your prisoner now?”

“If that’s what it comes to.”

Tears pricked at my eyes. “You’re such an asshole.”

He started for the door, mumbling under his breath, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

A second before he stepped out, he paused and shifted to look back at me.

The severity of it pinned me to the spot. “I’m just asking that you do this one thing for me, Nikki. One thing. All I’m asking is for you to stay.”

Without saying another word, he turned and strode out of the room, shutting the door when he went.

How was that fair when the one thing I wanted was the one thing he would never give me?

Not when the only thing I wanted was for him to stop breaking my heart.





14