Page 93 of Swerve (Boosted Hearts 1)

“If I hadn’t done something Harry would be dead by now. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. How could I? Could you?”

“What I would or wouldn’t do isn’t the issue here,” he gritted out.

I stared at his profile. “I assume you saw me?”

“I saw,” he rumbled.

“So you know I can take care of myself.”

He cursed under his breath. “That’s not the fucking point! You lied to me, you fucking lied right to my face. Jesus, Ruby. Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?”

“Neco . . .”

“So why did you do it? To prove something to me?”

I sucked in an unsteady breath. “To prove something to myself,” I admitted. “Partly at least . . .”

“I fucking backed off, I gave you what I thought you needed.” He shook his head. “Of all the selfish, stupid fucking reckless things you could do . . .”

His words were like a knife being plunged into my chest. “That’s not fair,” I whispered.

“What’s not fair is my woman lying to me. Going behind my back . . .”

“Neco . . .”

“Save it.”

“We need to talk about this . . .”

“Don’t, Ruby. Not another fucking word.”

I snapped my mouth shut, glancing over at him. He had a point. I knew keeping this from him was a bad idea, but I’d done it anyway. He wouldn’t look at me and stayed quiet the rest of the drive. I didn’t know what to say to fix this. All I could do was hope he’d be willing to talk once he’d had time to cool down.

We arrived at his apartment a little while later, and he went straight to the bathroom and shut himself in. The shower came on. I followed him, and stared at the door. I didn’t want walls between us and, despite thinking he needed time, I couldn’t bear being parted from him. What if time to think just made things worse? I reached for the door handle and twisted.

He’d locked it.

I bit my lip.

He never locked it. Never locked me out. The knife in my chest twisted.

I went to the bedroom and hung around, blindly picking up laundry, and tidying . . . waiting for him. He ignored me when he walked into the bedroom, dried off, and got dressed. I wanted to talk this out, but he wasn’t going to give me that, so I had a shower as well, taking my time. I left the door unlocked.

He never came.

I towel dried my hair, slid on my glasses, and pulled on one of Neco’s shirts, then I headed to the living room. Neco was on the couch. He sat back, a beer in his hand, legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankle. His eyes didn’t leave the TV, and stayed there when I walked in. If he wanted to lock me out, fine, but we were going to talk first. I walked in front of the flat screen and planted my hands on my hips.

His eyes slid up to mine.

“We need to talk about this.”

He shrugged. “What’s the point? You’ll do whatever the fuck you want anyway, right?”

Another twist of the knife. “I know I shouldn’t have lied to you . . . but I needed to do this . . . I needed to do it for myself.”

“Yeah, and what about me, what about what I needed?”

I stared across at him. “You can’t see me as anything but helpless, can you?” I let out a rough breath. “You won’t even try . . .”