Page 46 of Savage Protector

“But why? I don’t mean the money,” I added, waving a hand. Not that it didn’t matter, but right now, it didn’t matter as much as other things. The pain threatening to shred my heart was more important. “I mean, why are you going away?”

“Scarlet, how many times do I have to tell you?” he asked with a sigh. At least he looked a little more human now like he could feel something. “I am not the man⁠—”

“You’re not the kind of man I need in my life, right?” I asked. Bitter disappointment surged in my veins and made tears well in my eyes. “You’re making the decision for me. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t want to argue about this.”

“Oh, because it’s that easy.” My voice trembled with emotion, but I pushed through. “You can just decide you don’t feel like dealing with something, and that’s it. It’s gone. Very convenient, very easy for you. What about me? I don’t get a say?”

“Right now?” There was the stern, sharp, cold Grayson. I would have sworn the temperature in the room dropped when he hit me with an icy stare. “No. You don’t. Because I know what’s right.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “You know what’s safe. You know what’s going to get you out of this feeling like a good guy like you’re doing me a favor. Well, you’re not, because I… I feel…” There was too much threatening to come out of me all at once—anger, disappointment, frustration, and loneliness all swirling around and fighting for dominance.

His jaw ticked, and his throat worked when he swallowed. “Don’t.”

That single word popped the bubble of my indecision, and let anger rush to the surface. “Oh! I’m not even allowed to say how I feel. You really should have written down all these rules for me so I wouldn’t accidentally break any.”

“You don’t feel anything for me…” he replied, walking out of the room without warning,

“… because I don’t deserve for you to feel anything for me.”

Following him, I demanded, “Who says?”

“I do because there are things I know that would change your opinion of me permanently.”

“Like what? No, I want to know!” I shouted when he only shook his head on reaching the suite door, where he’d left his gun on the table. My already sinking heart dropped like a rock when he tucked it into his waistband before straightening his jacket and checking out his reflection in the mirror over the table. I might as well have been talking to myself. “Goddammit! Tell me! Why can’t I care about you? Why can’t I love you?”

Desperation made me reach up and take his face in my hand, turning it until he was looking at me again. Why wouldn’t he let himself hear what I was trying to tell him? “I love you. I see who you are. You’ve risked everything for me because you’re good. I believe you are.”

He winced like he was in pain, and there was a moment when I wished I could take it back. But no. I didn’t want to. I wanted him to hear it because it was true, and despite everything, I did love him. I couldn’t let him walk away like none of this ever happened.

His hand covered mine, and for one cruel moment, his face softened, and I knew I got through to him until he removed my hand from his cheek, letting it drop. “This is who I’m always going to be, Scarlet. I tried telling myself for years I could be better, do better, but at the end of the day, we can’t change the foundations of who we are. You’ve seen the darkness in me.”

“No,” I choked out.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Like last night. And that was when I was trying to hold it back. What happens when I can’t hold on anymore? I will never be anything but wrong for you.”

“That’s not true!” Was it pathetic, begging like this? Maybe. Did it matter when he was trying to walk away? “Please, can we talk about this? Why can’t I have a say? I know you fight against what’s inside you, and I want to help. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Just let me go,” he muttered, his voice as flat as his gaze. He was pulling away, shutting me out. “Please.”

“Tell me you don’t feel anything for me.” He scoffed, looking at the floor. “Grayson, look at me. Tell me there’s nothing between us.”

Instead, he dropped another bomb. “I know who your mom was with the night she died.”

It was so sudden, so totally out of the blue, that it took me a second to recover. “What?” I whispered, reeling. “How could you? And what does it have to do with anything?”

When he lifted his gaze, dread made me fall back, instinctively putting space between us. There was the monster he tried to warn me about. Murderous, maybe enraged, and now he was walking toward me, making me back away blindly from what was written across his face. “I know what happened to her. I know who she was with. Dominic’s father. Paul Garibaldi. I watched it happen.”

No. It wasn’t possible. “You’re only saying that,” I protested, only coming to a stop once he had me backed up against the sofa.

“I followed my dad that night.” The words came out rapidly, like gunfire. “I watched him come out of that house with a gas can in his hand. Paul’s car was outside. He must’ve used it as a place to take his girlfriends. Whether or not Dad knew Paul wasn’t alone, I have no idea. But I was there, and I watched him throw the match without saying a word. Do you hear me? I let him kill your mother.”

Dropping to the sofa, I shook my head, my throat too tight for words.

I refused to believe it.

Standing over me, he snarled, “At the end of the day, I was too stupid and cowardly to tell him to stop. By the time we met up in the street, it was too late. I ended up with this,” he explained, running a finger along the thin scar running from his temple down his jaw. “A piece of glass sliced my face open when the gas line exploded.”