Maybe if she’s not with me, she won’t die for me.
The thought comes and goes quickly, but as I watched her walk down the porch steps, it was there for a moment.
That I could let her go to save her.
She can’t die for me, if I’m not with her.
The thought is only a small blip in my consciousness, but it keeps coming back. Even as Sebastian runs into the room to tell me she’s out front. I don’t have time to question fate and what I’ve done. I can’t leave her unprotected. That’s not an option. I won’t allow it.
“I know.” The words come out even but low, with a threatening menace I can’t hide.
“We’ve got an eye on her.” He’s catching his breath, his chest rising and falling with heavy pants, but his demeanor is calm. His words though, are prying. “Does she normally walk out past the gate?” He’s careful not to ask outright if she’s trying to escape, which is something I’m not used to from him. I can see the change in the way he looks at me. Time’s changed many things since the last time we’ve done something like this together.
It takes a moment, another moment before I can even breathe at the realization. A decade has passed, and I hate what I’ve become.
I didn’t want to be this man. I didn’t ask for this life.
As much as I wish I could, I can’t go back. My gaze centers on Sebastian, holding the authority I’ve fucking earned. “Lock her up.” Every syllable comes out hard, and each word is accompanied with a slamming in my chest.
She can’t die then. She’s safe here.
“Everything is barricaded, guarded and armed. No one is getting close and no one is going to hurt her.” The words echo in the room and Sebastian is silent. He already knows I’m merely reassuring myself.
“Just snatch her up?” Sebastian asks easily, as if there’s nothing at all wrong with what I’m doing. I nod, feeling a knot wind tighter in my stomach, twisting unforgivingly at the fact that she’s trying to leave me. Willing to leave me.
“I know she’s angry.” I try to justify the fact that she’s leaving, but I swallow my words. “I’ll make it right with her,” I say as I turn away from Sebastian and move to the window to see how much farther she’s gone. “Don’t let her get much farther than the gate.”
“You think she’ll go all the way down the drive?” Jase questions from behind me. There are men lining the estate, past the drive although it’s still not safe. I don’t bother to turn to him as the sun sets beyond the trees, where it’s least protected. The light blue in the sky instantly darkens as the auburn leaves weave patterns with the remaining light.
“Just get her.” The knot climbs up my stomach and twists and turns inside of me. It’s a pain I haven’t felt before.
Last night plays out as I look at myself in the reflection of the window. I love her. I love her completely and without hesitation. But the man I am is one who destroys.
The fact that some part of her loves me, only means she’s setting herself up to be ruined. Every piece of her broken… by me.
As I swallow down the thought, my hands move to my pockets and I vow to fix this between us. I don’t have another option. I won’t let her go.
“You all right?” Jase’s voice brings me back to the present and as I turn to him, I look back to the sofa. Empty. Just as the floor is in front of my desk. The visions of last night pass like another blip.
Sebastian’s gone, and Jase has taken his place. Time is moving like the flickering images of an old movie reel with some of the frames missing. I don’t know how long Sebastian’s been gone or when Jase came into my office.
“No,” I answer my brother honestly and my next words come out ragged. “I’ve never been like this. I’ve never,” I pause to pull my hands from my pockets and run them over my face. Staring at the drawer to my desk, I remember taking the sleep aid last night. It’s only a drug and it’s never affected me like this. It has to be the drug. The sweets. The last time I took it was years ago.
“She’s just angry,” Jase says then looks over his shoulder before shutting the office door and coming to take his seat opposite me.
“I don’t want to sit,” I tell him with agitation before he can sink into the chair.
I watch his knuckles tighten as he grips the back of the seat. “I want this over. We need to end it.” My words come out harder and faster as the desperation to move past this with Aria takes over.
“We’re letting Romano-”
“Fuck Romano!” I slam the back of my clenched hand against my chair, needing to feel something other than this pain that’s creeping inside of me. Needing to do something other than wait.
“We can’t do both, Carter.” Jase’s voice is calm, but full of reason. He doesn’t move from where he is, but his eyes watch me with increased interest. “We can’t guard the estate and also attack Talvery’s.” He finally moves, backing away from the chair although his hands still grip it. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Time marches on as I consider my brother. The one thing he’s always had is an opinion. Constant fucking ideas. Constant pushing. Yet as I lean forward, breathing in to steady myself, he’s quiet. He’s not pushing either way.
“What would you do?” I ask him, not looking at him, but instead staring at the closed door behind him.
“I can’t answer that,” he tells me and I fucking hate him for leaving me with nothing. The back of my jaw clenches as I peer down at the screen. She’s at the gate.
She’s leaving me.
It was never supposed to be me.
Her words from last night, words that wrecked me and caused all of this shit. Those words come back and as I watch her, I believe her.
“She told me,” I swallow before finishing my thought, questioning telling Jase any of this but deciding I need to tell someone, “She told me it wasn’t her all those years ago.”
It takes Jase a moment before his expression registers what I’m talking about. He knows about that night. As well as Declan and Daniel, Sebastian too. That night changed everything. For her to deny being a part of it… I can’t fucking stand it.
“Who else could it have been?”
“No one.” My answer is immediate and unforgiving, joined with a similar pain in my throat as it tightens. My eyes close as I think to myself, how would I know? How could I possibly know if another woman was there?
“Carter,” Jase’s voice cuts off the memory of that night. “What happened to her shoulder?”
“I cuffed her to the bed. Well, she did, because I told her to.” Jase doesn’t waver as I lick my lower lip, hiding the shame. “I told her she could stay there until it was over.” My eyes lift and I find his as I explain, “And then she ripped her arm away until it dislocated and I uncuffed her, but she…” I can’t even finish.
“She did it to herself?”
“Physically… yes.” It feels like a lie on my tongue. I’m the reason it happened. It’s my fault.
Jase’s nod of understanding is short and then he peers past me to the window. “Well, that explains why she ran.”
“She’ll always run,” I tell him as the knowing defeat gets the better of me.
“Stop lying to yourself.” Jase’s calm voice catches me off guard. “You love her. I know it. And she loves you. Don’t let anything come between you.”
Love isn’t always enough, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. Instead my gaze turns to the floor in front of my desk, last night still reeling in my mind. The image of her lying there comes and goes with the blinking of my eyes. “You need to help me keep her safe.” I don’t know how I even speak. My body is stiff and my limbs are frozen.
“You’re scaring me with the way you’ve been today.” Again Jase’s feet and posture shift, but his grip remains stiff, keeping him where he is.
I look back to the sofa while I tell him the one thing that’s responsible for how I’ve been today, “I don’t want her to die.”
“It’s not going to happen.” Jase’s answer is nothing but confident. I wish last night hadn’t stolen that same certainty from me. I almost tell him about the nightmare. About how real it was, and how it’s fucking with me.
“Whatever’s gotten into your head,” he starts to say, the concern etched in Jase’s words making me look back to him as he finishes his thought, “get it out.”
“I just didn’t sleep well.” I give him a half truth.
“Well tell Aria you love her, fuck her until she forgets why she’s angry and sleep. Both of you need to sleep.”
“Is that all I need to do?” I question him to lighten the tension, but it does just the opposite.
“You can start with showing her more respect than you have in the past. More love. Tell her you love her.”
“She’s not leaving because I don’t say it back to her.” I scoff at his suggestion.
“I think that’s exactly why she’s leaving. That, and the fact that you told her what to do.” His words register one by one. “I think she would let you destroy everything in her world but you, so long as you showed her how much you loved her and told her often.”
I don’t know when my brother became the voice of reason, but everything he’s saying sinks in deep and slow, numbing the anger, the need to fight. Numbing the guilt and the worries. It all seems to fade at the very thought that I can keep her. That it’s possible.
“If she felt the love you have for her, she wouldn’t leave. No one would give that up.” His dark eyes shine with a memory of something else. Something I know has nothing to do with me, but his next words are exactly what I need to hear at this moment. “She doesn’t feel loved, and I know you can make her feel it.”
How can she not feel everything I feel for her? How can she not feel this?
Just as the question consumes me, the phone rings and it’s the same number as before.
Marcus.
