Page 57 of Fear Me Not

He glares at me. “I’m still here, aren’t I? A less brave man would have fled years ago.”

“And why haven’t you?” I ask.

“Because I knew this was the right place for Dov and Levi. If they were anywhere else, they’d have both been behind bars by now.”

I bite my tongue, preventing myself from retorting with ‘perhaps they should be?’ I don’t want to see Dov behind bars. He’d never cope. Yes, he has a violent streak, but mostly I see him as protective, intense, introverted. He’d never survive around truly violent, criminal men. And Levi needs space. He needs to be able to roam the grounds, to breathe mountain air, and work his muscles. He’d go crazy cooped up in a cell and only allowed to see the sky for one hour a day.

“You love your sons.” It’s a simple statement.

“Yes,” Blake ducks his head, his long hair hanging around his face, “and I’ll sacrifice everything for the people I love.”

32

BLAKE

I wish I could make her understand that I include her in that group of people, but actions mean more than words, and she has every reason to hate me. I used her and lied to her and manipulated her, and those aren’t the actions of someone who loves another person.

The way she’s standing there now, challenging me, her red hair tossed over one shoulder in a ripple of flames, her hand propped on her slender hip, her pale blue eyes alight with tension, it just makes me want to put her over my knee and spank her until she submits.

A charge simmers between us. It’s always there. A sexual attraction so strong that I feel it must be visible to anyone else. When I’m with her, I can’t take my eyes off her; they’re constantly on her lips, on that pink, pouty flesh, begging me to bite down on it and suck it onto my mouth.

“Life isn’t always black and white, Pen. Decisions and choices aren’t always easy. Maybe you’ll understand that more when you’re a little older.”

Fuck, wrong thing to say.

Her jaw tenses, her lips thinning. “Don’t bring my age into this. It’s like you’ll always use it to get the upper hand, and it’s the one thing I can never change. I’ve been through more shit in my lifetime than most people go through in the entirety of theirs.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

I never claimed to be a good man. Not even a halfway decent one, for that matter. The moment I locked eyes on her at her father’s funeral—the funeral of my ex-best friend—I knew I wanted her. She’d looked so beautiful, her face pale, her hands shaking as she fumbled her way through his eulogy. In the church filled with old, musty people and ancient furniture, she’d been like a shining light.

We keep going back and forth, but the fact is that nothing is going to change what I did, and if I had to go back, I wouldn’t make a different choice. I’d needed to protect Dov at that point. If Aspen had acted rashly upon hearing the truth, she could have left and contacted the police. If I’d thought she was going to do that, I’d have needed to make an even harder choice, that of restraining her to prevent her from leaving. If I’d locked her in her room until the snow fell, would she have hated me even more?

Dov’s brain injury isn’t his fault. I still see the young man he was before it. That person still exists. It’s his inability to exist in the world like everyone else that’s been taken from him.

She throws a hand up at me. “You can’t treat me like an adult on one hand, and then make out like I’m too immature on another. It doesn’t work both ways, Blake.”

I’m tired of having this argument.

“You know what, Pen, do whatever you want. Believe whatever you want. I can’t keep saying the same things over and over. You say you’re an adult, well fucking act like one. Being grown means understanding that people are human and we make mistakes and hard choices, and either you deal with that and get over it, or you cut that person off. If you want the second option, just let me know and I’ll stay the hell out of your way until winter ends.”

It cuts me to the core to say that to her, but it’s what she needs to hear. I won’t keep begging.

She lets out a sigh, her shoulders slumping. “Let’s not spoil this. You’re right. We’re stuck here, and we might as well make the best of it. I don’t want us to fight. Can we just keep looking for the decorations?”

I watch her closely. Does that mean she’s choosing the first option? That she’s going to deal with what I did and get over it? I want that. I want things to go back to how they were before the snow fell. Yes, she’s allowed me into her bed since then, but it doesn’t feel the same. Not only is a part of me holding myself back because of the things I’ve seen and experienced, but I know she’s holding her heart back, too.

Now I’ve had more than a taste of her, it’s killing me to have her so close and not be able to touch her with ease. I’ve memorized the velvet softness of her skin, the taste of her tongue, the feel of her tight, young pussy when it clamps around my cock. I’ve jerked off to my memory of the sounds she makes when she comes. She wanted me so badly, she fucking begged for me to take her, but now there is this cold distance between us, and it’s killing me.

I offer her a smile. We need a truce. “Yeah, of course we can.”

She seems to accept that, and we return to digging our way through the boxes. I find a fancy hat box filled with glass ornaments wrapped in old newspaper and another filled with ribbons and tinsel. There’s one thing in particular I’m looking out for, though, and a few minutes later, I spot it, lying on its side behind another wooden chest.

“Here it is.”

The Christmas tree is fake and old-fashioned, and still in its box. I have no idea which decade it comes from, but it definitely isn’t recent. With it is a box of lights.

“Let’s take this stuff upstairs,” I suggest to Aspen.