“Not a guy,” he corrects, his finger pressing my cheeks.
“What?”
“Three fucking guys,” he keeps growling. “Because somehow you don’t attract just one dog, you’re a fucking magnet for the entire pack of them.”
I clench my teeth. “They’re your teammates, Shepard. And as I said they didn’t do anything. They?—”
“They fucking talked to you, didn’t they,” he snaps, his jaw ticking. “They fucking looked at you. No one is supposed to look at you. No one is?—”
I put a hand on his lips then. To make him shut up and listen. Which doesn’t sit very well with him but again, fuck it. He needs to listen to me before he makes everything worse for himself and loses one of the most important things in his life.
“Okay, first,” I begin, and I can feel his jaw pulse under my palm. “You have to calm down. You have to take a breath for me. Can you do that?” He keeps looking at me, his brows furrowed, his hair grazing the indentation, his body all hard against mine. But then after a few seconds, he does what I tell him to do. He takes a breath that warms my palm. Thank God. “Good.”
He narrows his eyes at me when I say that, and I blush. I know he’s the one who’s always doing that to me, calling me his good girl and telling me to do things. But it’s my turn now. It’s my turn to calm him down before his jealousy and possessiveness, his sheer dark obsession with me, takes him over.
Then, licking my lips, “Second, nothing happened. It wasn’t like that night at the club where I was actually afraid.” He tenses at the mention of that night, but I keep going, “Or any number of nights when all those men looked at me. I was safe. I promise. I was more worried about you. Of what you might do just because of how you get. You get so crazy, Shepard. You get so insane. You’re always ready to burn everything down when there’s no reason to. When?—”
He takes my hand away then. He grabs my wrist, takes my hand off his mouth without so much as a crease in his brows and rasps, “There’s a reason.”
My heart takes flight in my chest. “Shepard?—”
His eyes are flashing. “You.”
Oh God. He needs to stop. He needs to just… stop and let me breathe. Because I’m suffocating. I really am. With all these feelings and emotions and all this fucking love for him. If he doesn’t stop, I’m going to lose it and won’t be able to tell him that I’m his. That I don’t care about anything right now. Just him. The rest, I’ll figure it out.
I blink my stinging eyes. “And third, this is the most important part, okay? I can save myself…” I trail off because his hard body grows harder, and I know for sure this is his least favorite part in all this. But I have to forge on. “I know you don’t like to hear it, but it’s true. I’m not completely helpless, okay? You have to believe that. There are some things that I can do for myself. I cansavemyself. Did you know I learned how to punch when I was only ten? I did. I taught myself. And that I slept with a baseball bat under my bed even though I kept my door locked but I didn’t trust it to protect me? And then I slept on the floor in my sister’s bedroom with the same bat when I was worried about her and her door not being able to keep her safe. It wasn’t ideal but I did it. So I know how. Especially in times like these. Where you have so much to lose, okay? You have. You love soccer. You’re trying to make a comeback after everything. You’re trying to convince your stupid management to not bench you and so you need to be smart. You need?—"
“You slept with a baseball bat under your bed,” he rasps, his eyes strangely alert.
“What?”
“Who were you trying to protect yourself from?”
Shit.
Shit, shit,shit.Did I just tell him that? Did I really,reallyjust spill the baseball bat secret? Not that I was actively trying to hide it. I just… didn’t want it ever to be brought into any conversations with him or his family. Not to mention, I nevertold him when he asked me about whether or not his father had ever hurt me. Point blank.
So yeah, fuck. Fuck, fuck,fuck.
I can’t believe I let it out just like that. I not only let it out, but he caught it.Not onlyhas he caught it but he’s coming to a completely different conclusion. I can see it in his face. I can see the darkening of his expression and a shadow that has fallen over his eyes. I can feel it in the way he’s holding me now. All tight and harsh. His thumb mashing the pulse of my wrist. His fingers on my face flexing and vibrating.
“Shepard—”
“Did you…” His chest goes up and down, really slowly and in a way that I can only describe as menacing. “Did youlieto me when I?—”
I shake my head and tell him quickly. “No. No, I d-didn’t.”
“So then,” he says, his voice rough and low, dark, much like every other inch of his face, his body even, “explain to me, very clearly, why you’d need a baseball bat with a locked door to sleep at night, when you said my waste of space father never hurt you.”
Oh God, oh God,oh my God.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this afraid. Not even when I came to his house to tell the truth. Not even when it was all happening in real time, and I was scared his father would break into my room and do bad things to me.
I can’t tell him the truth, can I? But I also can’t lie. I don’t think I can ever lie to him again. But if I tell him the truth, I know he’llloseit. I know that. He already is losing it and?—”
He squeezes his grip on me. “Jupiter.”
Fuck. He won’t let this go. There’s no way. So I tighten my thigh around his waist as much as I can, my heel digging into his thigh. I also twist and twist my grip in his jacket. I do everything I can to hold him to me, to keep him close before I give him what he wants.
