She was enjoying it. She was. But she wouldn’t hide much longer. There were practical things to think about, like how much this was costing.
“I need to get back to the real world, get a new job.” She fretted about the cost now that she was thinking about it. “I’ll want to pay you back and then there’s fixing my apartment back up.”
And when they returned, would this thing between them still be real?
“Sophie. I want you to listen and not answer right away. Just think about what I’m about to ask you.” Brandon released her and gently grasped her upper arms instead. “This might not end. You might have to start over. Would you consider the pros and cons of disappearing, letting the world think you are dead?”
The concept shocked her.
“You mean you might not catch the person trying to kill me.” She forced the thought out.
“Or you might have to testify against your employer and go into protective custody.” Brandon’s tone was gentle. “There are a lot of reasons to be legally dead. It’s a lot better than letting someone actually kill you.”
No! She didn’t want to disappear. “My family.”
“Would be hurt. They couldn’t know.”
“My friends.” Hot tears burned as they fell down her cheeks.
“Not even Elisa or Lyn or Boom could know.” His tone was grim. “They’d be the first anyone would look at to try to find you.”
“What’s the point of living if everything you care about is gone?” She didn’t want to be practical or reasonable about this. Her heart was breaking into pieces and it wasn’t fair.
What was worse, she hated herself for indulging in being counterproductive.
Elisa had left everything behind, but that was because she’d hated the life she’d had and wanted to build herself a new one.
Sophie loved her life.
This was a completely different scenario. And she hadn’t made the choice to give up her life; she’d been chased out of it. Why? Because she was good at her job? Because she was friends with wonderful people?
“I’d go with you, Sophie. You wouldn’t be alone,” Brandon promised her.
She shook her head blindly. “The kennels. The dogs.”
He tugged her close, his strong arms wrapping around her. “I’d start over again with you.”
How could her heart expand so much to hear those words and break at the same time?
She melted into him, pressing her face into the hard planes of his chest and leaning into his strength. Extending her arms around his waist, she held him to her every bit as much as he crushed her to him.
“Sophie.” He whispered her name into her hair, and the darkness in his voice sent delicious shivers over her skin.
She tilted her face upward, and his mouth covered hers. His kiss was hungry, demanding. But she had some demands of her own to make, and she nipped at the corner of his mouth until he paused.
“Haydn’s still here.” First order of business. No watchers. Even in the woods.
Brandon’s eyes were stormy, but he gave her a squeeze and let her go. “Haydn, hier.”
The two of them crossed the creek bed and disappeared. Brandon returned alone a minute later. “He’ll stand guard at a distance. No one will sneak up on us.”
She laughed, half full of nerves and half eager. “You said that the first time, out in the woods behind our houses.”
His gaze was steady on hers. “Yeah, and no one did.”
The first time. Their first.
Her first.
It’d been the week of graduation, only a few days before they’d finished high school.
He was so many firsts for her, she didn’t want to think anymore. She closed the distance between them and gripped the hem of his shirt. “Off.”
It was her second demand. Because this time, she wanted to take the lead.
Brandon complied, wordless, with the sexiest hint of a smile playing over those incredibly kissable lips of his. He didn’t just drop his shirt, though; he knelt and spread it out on the forest floor at the foot of the big tree next to her.
Still kneeling, he ran his hands up the sides of her legs. “Do you want the boot off?”
“Yes.” Staring down at him, everything inside her burned hotter. She placed her hands on his shoulders as he helped her out of her medical boot, then her other normal shoe.
He gripped her thighs then, looking up at her. “Do you want to walk back with no pants, or do we take these off carefully?”
Another choice. The first option tempted her far more than she’d anticipated. But…
“Pants. I want pants when we walk back.” That was about the end of her capacity for rational thought at the moment.
He slid her pants down her legs, pressing a trail of searing kisses along her bare skin as he revealed it. Once she stepped out of them, she decided to push again. “Yours, too.”