Page 49 of This Life of Mine

I’ll still finish the job. I’ll find the threat and end it.

But if it comes down to our rules or her safety? The choice is already settled in my mind. And that scares the fuck out of me.

I see it all once as my adrenaline starts to ebb.

The cuts. The scrapes. Blood smeared along her palms, her knees, the backs of her legs where skin met concrete.

Her hair is tangled at the nape of her neck, matted where he grabbed it.

Evidence, clear and unforgiving, of how close he came to hurting her much worse.

My jaw tightens.

An EMT kneels in front of her, calm and efficient, cleaning her scrapes with practiced care.

Lina winces but doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t cry. She steadies her breathing and lets them work

Anger burns hot and steady in my chest.

Not reckless. Controlled. Focused.

Anger that remembers faces—makes promises.

I turn my head slightly, watching Cole being loaded into the cruiser, and briefly, I imagine how easily I could have done worse. How thin the line was between restraint and ruin.

I didn’t cross it but there’s still fucking time.

“She fought,” the EMT says to me. “You can tell.”

I’m aware.

I saw it as I ran toward them, the way she moved, the way she resisted, the way she refused to go limp or compliant. She didn’t freeze. She didn’t fold. She fought him with everything she had.

That says everything.

It takes a particular kind of strength to fight back when fear is screaming at you to disappear. To refuse to be reduced again. To decide, on concrete, in pain, with the weight of the past crashing down, that this ends here.

I’m furious that she was hurt. But I’m proud of her to a degree that surprises me with its intensity.

She catches me watching her and lifts her chin slightly, defiant even now. There’s fire in her eyes. Not bravado. Resolve.

Damn. That defiance is sexy.

She did more than survive him. She stood her ground against that prick. I guarantee that if she were better prepared, maybe after a gym session, she would have laid that fucker out.

Her courage doesn’t fade when the lights go out, or the uniforms leave. It’s built in. Bone-deep. And seeing it up close does something to me I don’t have a clean name for.

Respect. Perhaps admiration? Something harder at the edges.

I step closer, careful not to crowd her, lowering my voice so only she can hear. “You fought him,” I say. “You didn’t freeze. You didn’t give up. Now you know you have the power to do it again if you have to.”

She exhales gradually, her shoulders relaxing a bit. Good. She’s letting the truth of that land.

“I did,” she says. “But I still needed saving in the end.” Her gaze flicks toward the cruiser where Cole sits restrained.

“He’s bigger than me. Stronger. And when he’s drunk…,” she inclines her head. “There’s no inhibition holding him back.”

My jaw tightens.