To hear.
To understand.
It felt like my throat was a landslide of jagged rocks. “And that’s your goal you were talking about? Becoming partner. Becoming the head of your firm?”
He gave a tight nod. “Since I was seventeen, I wanted to be an attorney.”
“And you chased it?” I asked.
Something fiercely sad wove through the sharp lines of his stunning face. “I guess I did, didn’t I?”
He smiled softly, and I was pretty sure that was gonna be the end of me.
Because when he tucked me into his side, his big body wrapped around me from behind, I knew I’d come to a crossroads.
Too late for a detour, Grace.
I was already there.
Falling.
And I knew this was going to hurt. But there were some things in our lives that were so much more important than anything else.
It wasn’t even a question.
The admission I was initially going to make fell silent on my tongue as my heart and mind processed who Ian was. Somehow, Ian found comfort in it, and I could feel the rigid lines of his body slowly relax.
His breaths evened out, even though he didn’t lessen his hold, and when I carefully extracted myself from the cradle of his arm, he groaned and rolled fully onto his stomach.
I sat up at the edge of his bed, looking down at him, eyes memorizing every line of his muscular back, all of it again covered in ink.
My stomach pitched.
Tossing me into a freefall.
No parachute.
Nothing under my feet.
Praying he might be there to catch me when the man was completely unprepared for what I was going to ask of him.
All of it felt so wrong and so right.
But I guessed he’d been spot on when he’d sat in my chair at the salon and teased that it was fate.
I hadn’t believed him. Hadn’t even given the idea a smidgeon of credit.
After all, I’d taken a chance on a stupid party and then had Kenneth Millstrom laugh in my face.
I’d run because of him, my things scattered on the ground. And this mysterious, dangerous man had been the one to help me back onto my feet.
My heart expanded, overflowing with hope.
A chance.
One my gut told me had always been worth taking. I just hadn’t fully been prepared for what kind of chance that it would actually be.
I slipped off his bed and quietly sneaked out of his room, nothing but longing in my gaze as I paused at the doorway to peer back at him sleeping.
Yes. Yes. That’s what it had to be.
Fate.
Because I didn’t think I’d ever felt so safe in a man’s arms before his. Had never felt so sure of the goodness that radiated from inside.
Trusting someone was nothing but a chance thrown into the wind, and I didn’t think I’d ever wanted to put my trust in someone so fiercely.
I just had to figure out how to convince him to take a chance on me.
Fourteen
Ian
“This is bullshit. I told you I was finished with all of this,” I hissed below my breath where I sat in my office at my desk, mashing my teeth together so hard I didn’t know how they hadn’t ground to dust.
Anger had become a raging vortex in that hole carved out in the middle of my chest.
I hadn’t thought it could get deeper.
I was wrong.
Wasn’t surprised, either. I mean, fuck, what did I think?
Invite a girl into my bed and think she was gonna stay? I knew better than that.
Thing that bothered me the most was that I’d even wanted her to.
Still, I was the pathetic fucker who’d panicked when I’d woken and found the spot next to me empty. Jumping out of bed and running around my house like she was playing a twisted game of hide and seek.
I’d been just as prepared for the scenario that I was going to have to throw down some blows to protect her.
Fight for her.
The fact I was itching to showed just how fucking stupid I was.
Taking a chance.
What bullshit.
But the problem was, I hadn’t lied to her. Being with her that way? Closer to a woman than I’d ever been?
I’d lost a piece of myself.
A goner.
Last night had been unlike anything I’d ever experienced. The way she’d made me lose control when the only thing I had going for me was self-discipline and restraint. Determination and grit and tenacity.
Nothing could touch me.
I consumed what I wanted without it even causing a spike in my pulse. With greedy hands and a black, barren heart.
No care.
No responsibility.
No attachments.
And there I fucking was, getting attached.
Attached to that feeling and that body and those eyes. Her spirit shimmering all around me, glowing into the darkest recesses of my spirit.
Had the sinking feeling she might be the angel that wielded the power to bust through the calloused shell and seat herself on a throne in the middle of it.
It was for the best. God, I should have been kissing the ground on which her pretty little feet had walked out on—without so much as a fucking note, mind you—saving me the grief.
But it was there.
A ball of unspent hurt. Exactly what I couldn’t afford. Exactly why I couldn’t do this.
I clung to it. The knowledge that I couldn’t let some girl get in my way.
Distract me.
Stray me from course.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t still feeling pissed and surly and bitter, either.
What better asshole to take it out on than Lawrence Bennet.
Bennet chuckled one of his dark laughs. “You’re my attorney. You represent me. It’s your job.”
“I also have an obligation to the state bar. To my firm.”
“Your obligation is to me.” He said it so hard and fast that I felt the impact of it through the phone.
I was firing right back. “You don’t own me. No one does. No one will.”
His short shot of laughter was deep. Ominous. Far too knowing.
That was what happened when you laid yourself at someone’s feet.
They walked all over you.
“Just because you say it, doesn’t make it true. I’m certain Kenneth would be crestfallen to hear I’d grown unhappy with my representation. He’d be downright brokenhearted if he learned his most promising protégé was nothing but a common criminal.”
Lawrence didn’t hesitate to throw out the loaded threat.
He knew my intentions.
Who I was going to be.
“Don’t fuck with me, Lawrence. Blackmail isn’t going to win you any favors. And anything you have over me was instigated by you in the first place.”
Asshole had been influencing every move I made from the get go.
All the way back to when I was just a kid. A fucking kid who didn’t know any better. A kid who was trying to survive.
He laughed a mocking sound. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Ian Jacobs. I picked you up off the ground and dried your tears when you were nothing but a sniveling, starving brat. Put shoes on your feet and a roof over your head. You’d be nothing without me.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart, right?” Bitterness bled free.
“Maybe I should have left you in the gutter where you belonged. Just like your whore mother. But I didn’t . . . because I saw something great in you. You’d do well not to forget it.”
My eyes slammed closed as visions assaulted me. A violent rage boiled in my blood. A seething anger that coiled my guts into a thousand knots.
Hate and grief and regret.
Everything whirled, walls spinning faster.
I struggled to breathe as I shot blisters of hatred from my tongue. “Something great in me? The only thing you saw in me was a scapegoat. The days of my doing your bidding are numbered.”
He laughed like everything I’d just said didn’t matter. Like I didn’t have a say.
We both knew I didn’t.
If he went down, I was going down with him.
“Have those documents on my desk by five.”
The line went dead, and I tossed my phone to my desk and propped my elbows on the wood. Digging my fingertips into my eyes, I tried to stop the visions.
The memories.
The smell.
“Wake up. Please, wake up.” Hands shaking. A cold sweat. Nausea rolling. Vomit on the floor.