Out of Love(54)

I started the Jeep and put it in reverse, like backing off a cliff. If I left, there was no going back. No second chances. He would disappear forever. Nothing more than another ghost in the firehouse—a gaping hole in my chest. Months of memories that would haunt me forever.

For … ever.

I hit the brakes a few feet before the street and gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles blanched, closing my eyes. “Mom … tell me what to do.”

“… you can’t judge someone by the culmination of their actions. The right person will see your soul in a way no one else can see it. I fell in love with your dad’s soul and it branded me in a way that made it impossible for me to not love him with all my heart.”

Forever was too long. I’d been in the Jeep for less than ten minutes trying to leave, and my lungs couldn’t breathe without him. Shoving it into Park, I picked up the pieces of my vulnerable …

Frightened …

Suicidal …

Stupid, crazy, impulsive heart.

And I ran inside the firehouse just as he carried two bags down the stairs. He stopped on the bottom step, hands clenching the handles of the bags giving me ample vein porn. I panted, my heart outside of my chest on full display. Swallowing past the thick emotions choking me, bottom lip quivering as I tried to hold it together, I glanced at my watch and whispered, “Ten minutes.” My gaze lifted to his. “It took me ten minutes to come back.” On a slow blink, I lost the battle with my tears. “My brain told me to leave…” I batted at the tears “…but my heart never made it out the door. So if you need to save the world, I won’t tell a soul. I just want to love you.”

He gave me nothing when I needed everything.

I deflated. It was too late. He didn’t trust me. I just needed one breath to realize that without him I would never take another one.

Did one breath break us? Did we end in ten minutes? Could I go back in time and un-spill my soda? Un-see the contents of the dungeon? Could I go back and not fear him, not start that call to the police?

“I broke us,” I murmured in defeat as my posture deflated and my gaze fell to my feet, refilling with tears. After the silence between us began to tear at my soul, I drew in a shaky breath and turned, leaving because the choice to stay was no longer mine.

“You move in with me. If you’re in … you’re all in.”

I stopped three steps from the back door, inching my head to glance over my shoulder.

He dropped his bags to the ground. “What’s it going to be, Livy?”

My gaze shifted to the trapdoor for a few seconds before returning to his dark eyes unwavering with the gravity of his ultimatum.

“You …” I said so softly I wasn’t sure he heard me because I don’t remember meaning to say it. The word floated out on a breath, like every breath whispered his name. “It’s always going to be you, Wylder.”

“Then get over here so I can love you back.”

In spite of the urge to run into his arms, I took each step with purpose, my heart making sure my brain understood we were all in. Even when I made it to him, toe-to-toe, hands itching to touch him, we took another breath before jumping off the cliff.

Fingers in hair.

Mouths colliding, reckless and passionate.

When we touched, it felt like he had a part of me ineradicably ingrained into him, and I frantically searched for that tiny part of myself to feel whole again.

So yeah … I jumped in … all in.





Chapter Twenty-Two




Wylder


What did I do?

I didn’t need a college degree. It just looked good. Image mattered. The perception of normalcy mattered. Livy felt normal. Twenty-five-year-old men had girlfriends. Sex every night. They drank beer and surfed.

Normalcy meant nothing to me. Two parents, T-ball, and trips to Disney World weren’t part of my childhood. Abe taught me to hunt small game by ten, and I hit the perfect lung shot for a prized elk by thirteen. After I mastered my bow hunting skills, Abe put a gun in my fourteen-year-old hands. He said I was a natural, just like my dad.

I hunted my first human on my eighteenth birthday. Abe called it a rite of passage. I didn’t know his name or anything about him except he raped and killed the niece of a U.S. senator, but the DA lacked the evidence to convict him. So he walked … three days before I turned eighteen. Investigators said the assassination was clearly a hired job.

Clean.

Traceless.

Expertly executed.

I took pride in that, as did Abe.

Combat training followed, molding me into the perfect killing machine. Abe said the people who really kept citizens safe were faceless. They didn’t wear uniforms or badges. And they operated under a different chain of command.

Abe was it.

He was my chain of command.

The number one rule that I learned at a very early age, when he broke my middle finger for flipping off my mom, was don’t ever question or disrespect authority. I didn’t even know what “the bird” meant. I’d seen some other kid at school do it to a teacher when her back was to the class.

“Why is this knuckle bigger?” Livy held up my hand, tracing the lines along my palm, right up to that knuckle that never healed quite right.

I eyed the two guys taking seats in front of us that Monday morning. They eyed Livy like they had a fucking chance with her. I felt certain she got those looks a lot, but I hadn’t noticed until then.