All Chained Up (Devil's Rock #1)(71)

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” she insisted, even though she knew as she uttered the words that they would have little impact. His mind was made up.

“You’re not hearing me,” he growled, his eyes growing more distant. Cold, shuttered blue. He was already gone from her. She was talking to air. “I’ve got to be in control now . . . I can’t be that kid I was all those years ago. With you, I feel like him again.” He motioned between the two of them. “This . . . us . . . is me out of control.”

She sucked in a deep breath and angled her head, truly hearing what he was saying even if he did not. “So what you’re saying is that I am no good for you.”

Her words hung between them, a truth that felt as awful as teeth sinking in, latching onto muscle and sinew, striking bone and sending pain vibrating through her. This wasn’t about him being so f*cking noble and letting her go because he wasn’t good enough for her.

He thought she was bad for him.

He looked angry and a little bewildered. “I didn’t say that—”

“Yes. You did.” Essentially that was it. The truth.

She backed away, sipping air into lungs that felt raw. “I get it now. It doesn’t matter what I think or feel. It doesn’t matter that I might be a little in love with you.”

As soon as the words escaped, she knew they were a lie. There was no might. She was a lot in love with him, and she stood before him exposed, her heart bared and bleeding.

“Briar.” He said her name gently, pitiably. As though she were a dumb girl who went and fell in love with him when he didn’t want that. When there was no chance in hell he would stick around and love her back. God. She was that dumb girl. “You don’t feel that way. This was sex. Good sex. Sometimes that gets confusing—”

“No,” she snapped. “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot who doesn’t know the difference between sex and love. I know what I feel.”

For a moment he looked like he might touch her again. If he touched her, she would fall apart.

But he didn’t.

“And,” she added hoarsely, the words sliding from a throat that felt raw with burning tears, ready to fall, “I know what someone looks like when he’s running away. Because he’s scared.”

“I am scared,” he admitted, his jaw locked tight. “Scared of making the same mistakes and going back in that box again.”

So she would be a mistake.

“Understood,” she said, with far more composure than she felt. “So go,” she commanded. When he still stood there staring at her, she blurted out, “Get the f*ck out.” The sooner he was gone, the sooner she could fall apart.

He didn’t even flinch at her language. He nodded once, looking so damned stoic. The same impenetrable mask he wore the first day she met him at Devil’s Rock.

Without another word, he slipped out of her bedroom and out the front door.

HE CURSED AS he slammed into his truck and pulled out of Briar’s parking lot. Regret welled up bitter as blood in his mouth, but not for walking away from Briar. That had to happen. She thought she loved him, but she didn’t. She was wrong about that. She couldn’t love him.

He was getting out just in time. Hell, he probably should have gotten out sooner. When he initially tried. Before she showed up at Roscoe’s and threw his world off kilter.

He wouldn’t lose control again, and Briar made him do that. He felt too much around her. He wanted her too much. Cared about her too much. His mind shied from thinking about love in relation to her. It wasn’t love. He came from a world where you staked a claim. Prison taught him about taking, having. Marking what was his. That was his instinct when it came to Briar. Not love.

She was risk, and he had vowed to leave risk behind when he stepped out of that prison.

He regretted ever starting this between them in the first place. He regretted that he hurt her. He should have f*cked his way through half of Roscoe’s instead of having something clean and sweet like Briar.

His phone started ringing in his pocket. A quick glance down revealed his aunt’s name. He felt a flash of worry. He hoped everything was okay with Uncle Mac.

He answered, “Hey, Aunt Alice, everything okay?”

“Knox, have you seen the news?”

“No, what’s wrong?”

“There was a riot at the prison.”

His stomach heaved. “North?”

“We just got a call. They took him to Memorial Hospital.”

“What’s his status? Will they let us see him?” He knew the only way they let family visit inmates in the hospital was when the prognosis was grim. As in deathbed grim.

“Not yet. The social worker said he’d call back with an update.”

“I’m on my way. Be there in ten minutes.”

He hung up and stared straight ahead into the setting dusk, his gaze burning. The guilt he felt for leaving North behind twisted and swirled like an angry hive of bees in his stomach. It was just one more thing. One more weight added to the piles of bricks that already crushed him.

He should have been there. Then maybe North wouldn’t be in the hospital now.

He pressed down on the accelerator, eager to get home and be near the phone when they called back.





TWENTY-FOUR