He shrugged. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“Unbelievable.” I sighed.
“Wraith, what the fuck happened back there?”
“Nothing.”
“Like fuck, it was nothing. It was like you flipped a fucking switch.”
I hung my head, closing my eyes. “The other night, you told me that if I knew what was good for me, I had to walk away.” I turned to face him. “Well, now I’m telling you the same thing. If you’re smart, you’ll walk away.”
“Yeah, see,” he took a step closer, “I have this tendency to run toward trouble instead of away from it.”
“That just makes you stupid.”
He took another step. “And that makes you trouble.”
I swallowed, biting my bottom lip.
“Why did you run away from me after…after what happened back there?”
The memory of how good his touch made me feel woke more butterflies inside my gut—a sign that this was all wrong and not supposed to happen. “Onyx, you don’t know me.”
“Running away from me every time won’t fix that.”
“My life, it’s complicated.”
“All our lives are complicated.”
“Not like mine.”
He inched forward, his scent surrounding me, and I sucked in a breath. “I’m not one of those guys who believes in fate and shit. But somehow, when I look at you, I can’t help but think that this,” he gestured between us, “was meant to happen.”
If only he knew how fucking wrong he was.
“Wraith.” He stepped right up to me, and I bolted to the side, away from him. Being close to him was fucking with my head.
His eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is going on? Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Okay.” I pushed my fingers through my hair, leaning my head back and staring up at the night sky. “You did nothing wrong.”
“Then what? Talk to me.”
“I barely know you, Onyx. How am I supposed to talk to you? Just open up and tell you the soppy, sad story of my life?” Confusion collided with anger—anger I felt toward myself, toward the turn my life had taken, and how it was no longer my own. “That would be naïve of me, wouldn’t you say? To take the secrets I had collected my entire life and throw them at your feet, hoping you can save me from my sad existence.”
“No. All I’m saying is to stop running from me.”
“But you told me to, remember? The other night, you told me to walk the other way.”
He darted forward, right up to me, eyes burning with determination. “And I told you that was your first and last chance of walking away. You don’t get another chance.”
“Why?” I challenged. “A man like you can have any woman he wants. Or are you one of those guys desperate to find a broken doll to fix?”
“Is that what you are? Broken?”
“No. Not broken. Destroyed.”
His irises darkened, like he had just seen all my secrets. As if he had seen the level of my destruction. “You’ve been hurt.”