“I don’t think he’ll know she’s gone until it’s too late. She knows he wouldn’t let her leave and she would let him convince her to stay. She needs to see what it’s like out there. She needs to see that nowhere is like the Point, and that isn’t always a good thing.”
He reached out a hand and settled it on my thigh. Again it was the normality, the simple gestures between us that were tearing me apart and making me crave more. I took my index finger and traced the heavy veins on the back of his hand around the clean bandage I had wrapped around it after our sexual acrobatics on the bed earlier. He was lucky the stitches hadn’t pulled open, as aggressive and handsy as he tended to get when he let loose.
“Is that what you figured out in WITSEC? The grass isn’t always greener?”
I gave a bitter laugh and rubbed my finger across his cut-up knuckles. “I had never even seen grass until WITSEC. I wasn’t one of those girls that chased boys on the Hill. I wasn’t trying to date outside my class. I had no desire to be some Point trash that got used and abused. I was always the one that was doing the using. I learned grass is hard to keep green and you need a lot of idle time and disposable income to even try and grow it. I’m not comfortable with either of those things, so I’ll take the concrete and the asphalt any day. You don’t have to keep it alive, you just have to hose it off.”
He let out a low whistle between his teeth and turned his head to look at me. His eyes were that oh so pretty blue that I could just stare at all day. Keelyn might want Denver for a breath of fresh air, mine was right there in those penetrating orbs.
“That’s a pretty bleak view on life, Reeve.”
I just shrugged. “It’s the way it is. I think it’s important to make the most of what you have. Before you know it, all of it can be gone and then all you’re left with is regret.”
“Are we talking about your sister?” His tone was soft but his fingers tightened on my leg.
“We could be, but we could be talking about anything really. Why did you leave Bax when you were younger, Titus? Was it because you wanted more instead of appreciating what you had? What did it leave you with? Regret that your brother fell in with a bad crowd? Regret you weren’t there for him? Is that why you’re saddled with the overwhelming desire to protect everyone innocent and unassuming, because you couldn’t do that for the person that mattered most? I’m not judging you; I’m just saying that not accepting where you’re from and how that shapes you isn’t good.”
He lifted his hand off my leg and I immediately felt the loss of his touch. His hands curled around the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white. I had struck a chord with him, but I wasn’t going to apologize. I had stopped apologizing for myself a long time ago.
“I know exactly where I come from and how that plays into who I am now. It was why I left in the first place.” He growled out the words in such a rough way I practically felt them scrape across my skin.
“And where is that? Where do you come from?” I knew the answer was more than the Point or the Hill, but I didn’t know if he was going to share it with me.
I held my breath to see what he would do, and felt crushing disappointment when he looked away from me and muttered, “That falls into the more category, Reeve.” Effectively shutting me down and out with minimal effort. I wished it didn’t feel like he was reaching inside of my chest and squeezing my heart with his fist every time he did it.
“It doesn’t matter to me, you know? I don’t care where you come from. I care about who you are now. I see it in you, Detective. I see the parts you try and lock away and keep hidden. The parts that make you wild and rough. I see them and I don’t care because they’re part of the entire package.”
That’s what I had been searching out when I fell prey to Conner. Someone that would see all the parts of me, all the things that made me who I was and love me anyways.
“You see too much.” He was gruff.
“Only because I’m looking.”
We hit an impasse and the rest of the ride passed in heavy silence. I thought when we got back to the condo we would each take a separate corner of the loft and take a time-out. The tension was thick and rolling between the two of us and I hated it.
Apparently Titus hated it too because before the front door was even closed behind us he had his hands all over me, his mouth over mine, and he was efficiently stripping both of us and headed toward the bed. It wasn’t talking. It wasn’t letting me in. It wasn’t giving me more, but it was something, and the something it was felt so good, felt so right, I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to, which I absolutely didn’t.
Only an idiot would say no to those melted silver eyes, that talented mouth, those impatient and heavy hands, that body made to punish and please, and I was a lot of things, most of them pretty unpleasant, but an idiot wasn’t one of them.
Chapter 12