Show Me the Way (Fight for Me #1)(51)

Seconds later, they were piling into her house, shouting for everyone to freeze.

Rynna dropped the vase. It finally gave up its fight with the impact, shattering into a thousand pieces when it hit the floor. Just as Rynna was doing the same. Dropping to her knees and hitting the floor.

Sobs wracked her body when she realized it was over.

That she was safe.

Right then? It was the absolute only thing that mattered.





21





Rynna





“Thanks again, man,” Rex said to Seth, the last officer at my house. He was a guy Rex had apparently known since high school, someone Rex considered a friend.

“Just, stay safe,” Seth said, glancing between the two of us before he ambled down my porch steps and slipped into the driver’s seat of his Ford sedan and pulled away.

Timothy Roth had been fired this afternoon. Apparently, my complaint of sexual harassment hadn’t been the first he’d received. Apparently, when his wife found out the reason for his termination, she’d kicked him out.

His wife.

I trembled at the thought of it, at the arrogance and stupidity of the man and how much worse it could have been.

The taillights of Seth’s patrol car splashed another dose of red into the blaze of reds and oranges and purpled blues that twisted into the sunset as he accelerated down the narrow neighborhood road.

Then it was as if the dial had been turned up on the silence.

So loud it was profound.

As loud as Rex Gunner’s presence that eclipsed all.

A thunder.

A thriving, living being.

His gruff voice cut into the tension. “Don’t like that you refused treatment. You sure you don’t want me to give Kale a call?”

I chanced looking over at him where he stood behind me on the far side of the deck.

My savage savior.

Streaks of blood were dried on his face, and a small gash oozed from the corner of his eye. His clothes were tattered, soiled with sweat and blood, his hair a mess, body still bristling with remnants of pent-up rage.

My lungs inflated at the mesmerizing sight of him. Every part of me expanded. Reaching toward him.

“You’re worried about me?” I managed. “You’re the one who came to my rescue. The one who put himself on the line. Again. I can’t . . . what if . . .”

His head angled and his shoulders rolled back, and the man took a powerful step forward.

The energy spiked.

“You think I’m not worried about you?” It almost sounded like an accusation. He took another step forward, the man a raging tower of protection. “You think I wouldn’t do it all over again? You think I would have let him hurt you?”

He was suddenly in front of me. My breath gone when he stood over me.

An imposing, conquering shadow.

Eclipsing the fear that had taken me hostage. If it weren’t for Rex, today would have ended in an entirely different way.

He lifted his fingers and brushed back a chunk of hair stuck to my cheek. His words rumbled like a threat. “I wanted to kill him, Rynna. He was going to hurt you, and I wanted to kill him. I would have. Second I saw you were in trouble, my heart was screaming out to protect you. To protect what belonged to me. To shelter what was mine.”

Mine.

The word trembled around us.

“Thank you,” I whispered. A tear slipped free, and my body began to shake with the aftermath. With the reality of it all.

A gasp ripped from my chest when I was suddenly swept off my feet and into the strength and security of Rex’s arms. He had one arm under my back and the other beneath my knees, my body held possessively against the strength of his chest.

“Won’t let anyone hurt you,” he murmured against my forehead. Carrying me, he angled through the door. “I’m gonna take care of you.”

“Rex.” It was a whimper.

“Shh. I know, baby. I know.”

I clung to his neck as he carried me upstairs. At the landing, he took a left and headed into my bedroom, pushing right past my unmade bed and through the cutout arch that led to the bathroom.

As if this man already knew the way.

He set me on unsteady feet and turned me to face the counter. My eyes met his in the mirror. A low growl climbed his throat, and he leaned around me to turn on the faucet.

The air constricted.

Charged.

I swore, our slowed, measured movements attracted every molecule within five miles. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, taking my hands in his and placing them beneath the fall of warm water. He gently rubbed our hands together, the basin filling with pink-tinged water as he scrubbed the blood free from our dirtied hands.

“Two weeks, Rynna. Two weeks I’ve been dying, hating the way I left things between us. Hating that I hurt you.”

His words brushed my cheek, and his presence filled my senses.

Overwhelming.

He squirted soap onto our hands, continuing to wash away this afternoon, as if he wanted to erase the possibility of what could have happened.

Carefully.

Meticulously.

His voice was a soft scrape at the shell of my ear, sending shivers down my neck, turning my heart into a thundering orb at the center of my chest. “All that time, I was wishing with every part of me I could change my circumstances. That I could be right for you. Then this, Rynna. Then this happened and I don’t fucking care, anymore. Don’t fucking care that this is wrong.”