Lawrence Bennet.
Fear climbed my throat.
Locking it up in an excruciating kind of terror.
Not for me.
For her.
It felt like I was going to suffocate in the cabin of my car. Inhaling, I tried to break up the frozen shock, and I forced myself to shift into gear, releasing the brake so my car could roll away from the curb, barely accelerating and praying the rumbling engine wouldn’t draw attention.
When I got to the corner, I gunned it.
One sight in mind.
One reason.
One answer.
I’d promised her I would protect her.
And that was exactly what I was going to do.
Thirty
Grace
Frantic pounding echoed from the front door, cutting into my sleep and sending me bolting upright. With my palms pressed to the mattress behind me, my eyes darted around my room, confusion clouding everything. That was when I noticed my phone continually lighting up from where it sat on the nightstand.
Blip after blip.
Quickly, I fumbled for it. My heart that had spent the evening being subjected to the worst sort of turmoil jumped into an erratic rhythm when I saw who the string of texts were from.
Ian: Open the front door.
Ian: You have to be pissed at me. I know. I’m a dick.
Ian: But you need to open it right now. This isn’t about us.
I didn’t even question it. I threw off my covers and raced for the door, not taking the time to put on pants. I was barefoot, wearing just a tee and my underwear, fumbling down the darkened hallway to the door that a heavy fist was banging on again.
On the other side of the house, a light flickered on, and I knew Gramma had to have been awakened, too.
I rushed through the two locks and tossed open the door.
Ian was there, pacing on the stoop, gripping at mounds of that soft hair.
The man so menacing. So big and powerful where he raged at the door.
“Ian,” I whispered the shock, my mind struggling to catch up with what was happening. Why he would be standing there in the middle of the night after he’d spent the rest of the day and evening out in his car.
I knew keeping watch. Needing distance and not having the ability to fully walk away.
But after whatever had happened in the bathroom, my soul had ached with the reality that it had to. That after all of this was said and done, after the trial, after he saved my family, he had to walk.
He had to protect himself.
His career and his heart.
I knew, without a doubt, he didn’t have the full capacity of loving us.
Not the way I’d come to realize that I loved him.
His thick throat bobbed. The man stood in the wispy shadows of night wearing the same bloodied shirt, though the buttons were askew, the sleeves shoved up his arms. The man was a disaster.
His beauty so intense it was almost a tragedy.
“Grace.”
“What’s going on?”
His jaw clenched, anger blistering and crude, brutal possessiveness flashing in those strange-colored eyes. “We have to get you out of here.”
A bolt of terror stumbled me back. “What?”
Without being invited inside, he pushed through the door, angling as if he couldn’t stand it if our bodies were to touch. Like that might be the one thing that would finally push us over the edge.
As if we hadn’t already arrived at that point the first time we’d met.
“We have to get you out of here. You and the kids. Right now.”
I swiveled to watch him stalk into the house, and my sight caught on my grandmother who was standing off to the side, wringing her frail fingers together with her white hair sticking up all over the place.
I wanted to tell her everything was fine. To go back to bed and not to worry. I didn’t think I could pull off a lie that great.
Because I felt it—the disorder howling in the space.
Reaching out, I snatched Ian by the wrist before he had the chance to go busting down the hall. “Tell me what’s happening.”
He whirled around. I was taken aback by the fierce agony cut into every line on his face. “You’re in danger.”
“How . . . how do you know? What happened?”
“I don’t know, Grace. I don’t fucking know . . . but I know.” He stabbed his fingertips against his heart. “I know.”
He rushed for me and gripped me by the face with those big hands. Stealing my breath. Shattering my world. He’d been shattering it all along. “Please . . . you have to trust me on this.”
I couldn’t tell him that I trusted him more than I’d ever trusted any other man in my life. I couldn’t tell him that he was the one who felt like safety. Couldn’t tell him that he felt like the goal we were running for.
The only thing I could do was nod frantically.