Page 38 of Nightmare’s Playground

I’d done that, and I had to undo it.

Before I could think better of it, I closed the distance between us and lifted my hand, dragging one finger across her cheek. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Her eyes searched mine for a long second, gold and hurt and tired, then she stepped back, turned on those sexy shoes, and went down the stairs.

I stood there like a fool, listening to every step that carried her away from me.

What the fuck was wrong with me? Why hadn’t I demanded she not go?

“Fuck.”

As I watched her waltz across the gravel lot like she wasn’t wearing high heels but was in fact wearing sneakers, my mind was screaming at me to stop her, but I couldn’t. All the reasons I was a bad bet were still true.

A silver truck pulled in, ripping me from my thoughts.

I stared with my heart in my stomach as the driver’s door opened, and a man climbed out in a Zorro costume.

Joy’s face lit up.

And just like that, I wanted to stab him in the heart.

“Fuck.”

Going back into my apartment, I started to pace.

When that didn’t work, I dropped and did fifty push-ups, trying to relieve whatever the fuck it was that I was feeling.

Then I did another fifty. And another, until I quit counting altogether and went until my arms were shaking, my shoulders were on fire, and sweat was pouring off the end of my nose onto my clean floor.

“Fuck!” I roared.

For ten years I’d been able to block everything out, but now, whatever the fuck Joy had done to me was bleeding out into everything.

She was all I could think about. Her smile, her laugh, the way she moved, how she always smelled like cinnamon and sugar.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe when she wasn’t near me. I had this irrational fear that someone would take her again.

Goddamn it. She had consumed me somehow, and I never even saw it fucking coming.

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

Fuck me. I felt like the walls were closing in.

Pushing to my feet, I grabbed my smokes off the counter and went out the sliding door onto the balcony we shared.

Her side and my side.

One long stretch of wrought iron we were supposed to share and never had, because I’d made damn sure of it.

Dropping onto her wicker sofa with the pink cushions, I heaved out a breath as I recalled all the reasons she was better off.

For starters, I was a decade older than her. She’d want shit I couldn’t give her, like kids. I wasn’t a man who could be a father. A good uncle; yes. A father; no fucking way.

Then there was the fact that she never stopped talking. Never-fucking-ever.

Lighting my cigarette, I shook my head. Joy deserved a better man than me. A man who could give her the perfect life. A man like Zoro.