“Leave!”
She takes a step back, and I notice for the first time that she looks afraid of me. And for the first time in years, it bothers me.
She turns to leave, watching me over her shoulder like I may do something to harm her. In a normal situation, this is what I want. In this case, it’s not, not at all.
“Wait.” I reach for her, but she pulls back, fear, shame, confusion, and anger all mixed in her eyes. “How did you expect me to respond?” I snarl.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. And fine!” She throws her hands in the air. “Fine! I’ll leave you alone.”
“I told you a number of times to do just that, Tatum Longley.” I step toward her and grab her elbow. She freezes. “You wear a scar on your back. Someone shot you in the fucking back, and you are so damn desperate for a story that you put yourself in a position where you ask a man to fuck you, not knowing who he is? Then... Then you know who he is and you show up for a fight? Did you learn nothing the first time around? You keep pushing! I don’t know what to do with that, with you.”
“I learned to live.” Her words are fiercely delivered and the conviction in them does not go unnoticed.
“Then do it smarter,” I say, looking down at her.
Chapter Fourteen
“I am smart,” I counter as I look up at the beast of a man before me.
“Then act like it,” he retorts in a gruff voice as he continues looking down at me.
We are in some sort of standoff. Him against me, me against him. I feel like, if I look away, we both lose.
“I would have killed him, too,” I admit.
His stance straightens. Then he tilts his head as if he’s trying to figure out if the words are truth or lies.
I take a deep breath and push out the words I have not spoken in years. “I tried to save someone I loved. I jumped between him and the man holding the gun.”
“And you got shot.” He scowls.
I nod. “And you went to prison.”
“That’s what happens when you kill someone,” he says.
“If I had a gun, I would have shot the man who shot me. Then he wouldn’t have shot Gregory four times.”
“Don’t blame you.”
“And no one would have blamed you if you had just told the truth and said it was self-defense.”
“I killed him with my hands. Could have stopped when he passed out, but I didn’t.”
I don’t want to tell him that the fact finder in me, not only read every article and watched every local news stations story, but spoke to three of his classmates who said that the young man they all called Saint Michael would never hurt a soul, unless he had no other choice. They told me the man he killed was a drug dealer, but his family was wealthy and his friends were intimidating, so no one dared speak up against the things they had said about him. I don’t want to tell him that I spoke to two of the nuns who taught him and that they told me they had given statements to the police and tried to visit him, and that I know he hadn’t allowed it. I don’t want to say anything that would push him away any further.
Not yet, anyway.
I can see an invisible protective shield building in him. I know I need to do something, anything to change the situation, the mood, the interaction, or I’m going to lose him.
I can’t lose him.
“I’m hungry,” I tell him, to which he raises an eyebrow. “I’m going to eat lunch in a really shady area of town, alone, unless you go with me.”
He sighs and licks his lips. “Not hungry.”
I nod and step back.
“You going to a better part of town?” he asks, and I shake my head. “Thought you said you were smart.”
I smile to myself as I walk down the stairs. Then I look down as I cross the floor of the gym, not caring to see the speculative stares as I walk past the group of women taking the self-defense class, who have all made comments about “Kid.”
I promised myself I was coming here to close this chapter of my life, one I have been told to close a million times over the past seven years so I wouldn’t wind up in a situation I shouldn’t be in, with a man far more complicated than I could have imagined the first time I saw him. However, even with Melanie’s warning, with his warning, and with only three weeks until I head back to New York, I can’t stop the need to finish what I started.
Once outside the door, I start walking, when I hear a loud whistle.