11
Jess
What Do You Want Me To Say?
“I’m not asking to be saved!” I snap. “I’m asking you to stop doing illegal shit so I don’t have to send fruit cake to the prison once a year. I met you only a few days ago, and I already feel like we’re on a sending fruitcake and‘I’d feel bad for convicting you’basis.”
With a scoff, he sits taller and wipes a tattooed hand over his jaw, but stops again when he remembers his split lip.
“Why do you keep saving me, Kane?”
His head snaps to the side when my question surprises him. “Huh?”
“Why did you lose that fight tonight?”
“I–”
“Why’d you bring me here instead of the hospital?”
“We–”
“Every single thing we do comes only after we make a choice. Some people might say things happentothem, like I didn’t choose for Lance to touch me, but Ididchoose to go out, which put me in his path. You chose to save me the other night. I saw you.” I meet his sparkling black eyes. “I saw you just before he grabbed me. Then you were gone for ages. I thought you ran away. I thought youchoseto leave me. But you didn’t. You came back. You chose to come back.”
“I couldn’t leave you.”
“Why? You don’t know me. I was a dumb woman dressed like a call girl. You said he’d hurt other women this month. Why’d you saveme?”
Clearly unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of questions, his forehead wrinkles with displeasure.
“You could’ve walked away. I thought you did. Then you chose to come back. Why?”
He shrugs. “I dunno. You looked in my eyes. You asked for help. So I helped.”
“This is more than carrying my bags to the car, Kane! You killed a man. It might’ve been a heat of the moment thing, but I know you think things through. You risked a lot by doing that for a stranger. For a call girl.”
He offers nothing more than a careless shrug. I’ve gotten under his skin. Kane Bishop has answers for everything.
Except me.
“I know your world, Kane. I didn’t grow up there. I don’t participate in your clubs. But I know Abel made you fight tonight. He gave you an impossible task… to punish you.”
Again, he nods.
“The day after I was hurt, after Lance, you had cuts and scrapes and bruises you didn’t have the night before. Were you punished?”
Another nod.
“So why?” I’m tempted to move onto my knees and slap the side of his head. “Why? You’re risking a lot for a woman you don’t know.”
“What do you want me to say, Blondie?” An equal in rage, he moves forward. “What do you want me to tell you? I couldn’t leave you because you’re beautiful. I couldn’t let Lance touch you, because your eyes latched onto mine and it felt like we knew each other. You’re more dangerous to me than I am to you. You create this instinct in me, like a fucking pet I have to protect. I live a solitary life, Jessica. I’m a man with nothing to fear, because there’s nothing anyone could take from me, nothing they could do to me that would truly hurt. But then you walk around in your slut shoes and pretty eyes, and suddenly, I have a huge fuckin’ liability.” He throws his hand up. “Are you proud of yourself? If I die, it’ll be because of you. If I go to prison, it won’t be because of a case you built on me, but because I’d kill anyone for you. Soon, that gray area will turn to straight black and white, I’ll kill the wrong person, and I’ll be sent somewhere not even my boss can get me out.”
“So stop killing people! I can’t believe I have to say that. Stop. Killing. People. Even bad people. Call the cops. Call Alex. He’ll take care of shit, then you can be free.”
“Right, so next time someone’s got you by the throat in a dark alleyway with his pants down and you’ve got fear in your eyes, I’ll just ask him to hold on a sec so I can call the cops? You want it to go on ten minutes longer than it did tonight, to give yourbig, brave, hero copbrother time to get dressed and haul ass?”
The reminder of that man tonight – of his fingers touching me, of filth crawling on my skin like bugs – has tears rushing to the surface.
I’m not a crier.