Out of Love(66)

Chapter Twenty-Seven




Livy


I trusted him.

Wylder asked for me to trust him without any more questions, and I did. I said it made me feel weak. He said putting that kind of trust in someone showed unmeasurable strength and bravery.

He escorted me to all of my classes and left Jericho with me until he made it back to the class to get me. I knew he skipped out on parts of his own classes to make sure he was always there. I hated it.

The fear.

The worst kind of fear—the unknown.

Lying to my dad.

Lying to my friends.

The firehouse started to feel like a prison, and Slade started to feel like an actual warden—like I used to feel at home with my dad. We made a few trips to the beach, but not my beach. He wanted us to lie low from my usual hangouts, which meant shitty surfing at best. And just me. He stood guard on the beach with Jericho.

“Still studying?” I asked, climbing into bed in one of his T-shirts.

“Yep.”

“Think you know enough to pass?” I grabbed his computer and set it on my nightstand.

He lifted an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

I crawled onto his lap. He still had on his jeans, no shirt. “I don’t like this.” I ran my fingers along his abs.

“My stomach?”

With a slight grin that fought through my pain and frustration, I shook my head. “I don’t like not knowing. I feel like a child in a classroom with sirens going off, and I don’t know if it’s for a fire and I’m supposed to run out of the building, or a gunman and I need to lock down in a safe room.” I glanced up at him. “I don’t like not knowing what I’m supposed to fear.”

He ran his hands up my bare legs. “I don’t want you to fear anything.”

“But I do.”

His hands turned, angling up my inner thighs. Pure torture. We hadn’t had sex since he deemed things to be on high alert.

“I can’t fuck you and protect you.”

His words of rejection echoed in my head, but the direction of his hands sent mixed signals, especially when he realized I wasn’t wearing panties.

“Wylder …” I closed my eyes when his thumb grazed my clit.

“What do you need, Liv?” he whispered, as his fingers slid a little farther back, teasing my very wet entrance.

“This …” I opened my eyes just as those fingers entered me. I pressed my hands to his chest to steady myself, feeling drugged from his touch … a touch he’d refused me for the entirety of the previous week.

“You like this?” he asked, making slow strokes in and out of me.

“Y-yes …” I closed my eyes, leaning down to kiss him.

He grabbed my chin to push me back, his gaze shifting to the door for a split second. I stiffened, grabbing both of his wrists and twisting my body to see the open doorway. The ghost that wasn’t there. At least that I saw.

“I can’t.” I pushed his hand away from my neck and climbed off his lap. “I want all of you. Not two fingers and a gun on the nightstand.” I let my gaze drift to said gun on his nightstand. He slipped it under his pillow at night, but honestly, I didn’t think he’d had a minute of sleep since the day he dragged me home from the beach. He ran on coffee and high-caffeine drinks that filled the fridge.

The worry line between his brows deepened for a second before he swung his feet off the side of the bed. After a few breaths of just sitting there, hanging his head, he stood and disappeared downstairs. I leaned against the headboard, pulling my knees to my chest, knowing he’d be back after his final sweep of the house.

Jericho perched himself inside the bedroom door, and Wylder shut it and locked it. “I’m going to shower,” he mumbled once my guard dog was in place.

When the water turned on, I pulled down the sheets to get under them. Noticing his laptop still open on my nightstand, I reached over to shut it, just as a message notification popped up in the righthand corner.

Name unknown.

I glanced at the bathroom door before pulling the computer onto my lap and clicking his message screen.

Where’s my souvenir?

My heart pounded. Who was the unknown name? There were no previous messages. I clicked onto my name in the message screen.

No messages.

Clearly, Wylder erased all messages.

Clicking back to the unknown name, I let my fingers hover over the keys, shaking.

What do you want?

My pinkie finger rested over the return button for a few seconds, then I hit it, knowing I didn’t have long before Wylder would be out of the shower. He didn’t take long ones. Two to three minutes was all he allowed himself to be unarmed and vulnerable.

I want you to stop fucking the target and send me the souvenir. Your choice, but I’ll give you a bonus if it’s her head.

Moments …

That moment. The official moment my existence shattered.

Every dream—gone.

Every inch of trust—gone.

Every ounce of love—gone.

Jessica said I’d feel it; that moment when desperation became the hardest punch, the sharpest knife, the fastest bullet.

I wanted to cry. Inside I sobbed from the pain and the fear. On the outside, I moved my body.

Closed the computer.

Slid on a pair of jeans.