Keep Me Safe (Slow Burn #1)(29)

He simply nodded, confirming her assessment.

“I’ll go then,” Ramie said simply.

“No!” Caleb barked out, his expression growing black. “You are not going anywhere. It’s not even an option.”

She blinked at his vehemence. “I was hungry,” she said in a low voice, her attempt at changing the focus of the conversation.

“Of course you are. I’m sorry. I should have had something sent up to you. You shouldn’t have to come downstairs to . . . ​this,” he said, gesturing in the direction his sister had departed.

The grief in his eyes was too much for her to bear. She closed the distance between them and took his hands in hers, looking into his eyes.

“It isn’t your fault, Caleb. You can’t blame yourself for this. For her. For me. Any of it. And you shouldn’t have to choose between a stranger and your sister.”

His eyes suddenly blazed, his fury bursting through her mind. It was so scorching that she instantly dropped his hands to break the connection between them.

“You are not a stranger,” he said savagely. “You aren’t nobody, Ramie. You’re somebody. You’re important. To me. You’re important. So stop telling me what I can and can’t choose. Stop telling me what to feel.”

“I’m not . . . ​I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

She turned away, her heart beating so rapidly in her chest that it was a dull roar in her ears, her pulse. She had no idea what to say, how to respond to what he’d said.

“That’s it?” he demanded. “You apologize . . . ​for what, Ramie? What exactly are you sorry for? Sorry that I care? Sorry that you aren’t dead? What are you apologizing for, or do you even know?”

She turned back, going still, her hand resting on the back of the bar stool. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t know the answers to any of it. I’m not trying to make you angry, Caleb. God knows I’m grateful—”

He lifted his hand and pushed it outward as if outright rejecting her words. “I don’t want your f**king gratitude. Just save it. Nor do I want you to keep offering goddamn apologies left and right.”

“Then what do you want?” she burst out. “What do you want? Because I don’t know and I’m not good at playing mind games or guessing games for that matter.”

He was suddenly right in front of her again, heat radiating from him in waves. His jaw was tightly clenched, his features as hard as stone. And he was pissed.

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“What? What don’t I get?” she yelled at him. “What is it that I’m supposed to be getting? Because I don’t know! All I know is that I’m bringing more pain and suffering to a family who has already experienced way too much.”

She broke off as a sob welled up in her chest, constricting her throat before spilling out, ugly and guttural. Her shoulders heaved and she covered her face with her hands.

Caleb sighed and then suddenly she was in his arms. She buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist, holding on as if he were the only anchor in a vicious storm.

“What don’t I get?” she whispered against his shirt. “Because it seems to me I get exactly what the situation is.”

He grasped her shoulders and pulled her away so they were looking each other in the eyes.

“That I want you.”

She stared soundlessly at him as his words penetrated the thick curtain of despair and isolation. She went so still that she realized she was holding her breath and finally let it escape in one long exhale.

“What you don’t get is that I want you,” Caleb repeated. “What you don’t get is that the idea of you in the hands of a monster terrifies me. What you don’t get is that you are important to me. And what you don’t get is that no matter how much my sister hates you being here, I’m not letting you walk out of my life and that has nothing to do with any debt I or my family owes you. Or any obligation I may have felt a year ago. It has absolutely nothing to do with you saving Tori. I won’t let you go because I want you to stay. I realize you’ve never had anyone fight for you, Ramie. But you do now. You have me.”

“No one has ever wanted me,” she whispered. “They’ve wanted what I can do, what my abilities can do, but never me. Do you know what that feels like?”

Caleb’s expression softened and his eyes darkened, not with pity, because that truly would have driven her over the edge. But with understanding.

“We aren’t as different as you think,” he said quietly. “I’m a Devereaux. And people—women—want what that name brings. Money, power, prestige. But they don’t want me. Caleb. They want Caleb Devereaux.”

Sharp understanding hit her and shame burned her cheeks. She was so self-absorbed, so ensconced in her own pity party that she failed to see beyond her own issues. Caleb had considered her selfish, before, when he hadn’t known how her abilities worked. He wasn’t wrong. She was selfish. And it wasn’t a pleasant revelation.

She’d gone through her whole life expecting the worst, settling for the worst. Never fighting for more. Never expecting more. How could she hope to gain more if she didn’t demand it?

She’d spent so much time railing at the injustice of it all and poor little unloved Ramie. She’d allowed herself to be stripped of her soul. No one had done that to her. She’d done it to herself. Because she wasn’t strong. Because it never occurred to her to want more than what she’d been dealt. Or to go after happiness instead of waiting for it to be magically bestowed on her. Instead she’d wallowed in her own misery for a decade.