“Landon, I know he was a jerk, but-“
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I wasn’t even close to him. You know that.”
But he wasn’t fine. There was so little emotion in his words, it rang false. He had to feel something.
“Landon-“
“Did you call for a reason?” He asked, cutting me off. “Because I have things to do.”
“I-“ My voice caught. I didn’t know how to navigate this call. Landon was acting like a robot, when he should’ve been hurt or pissed or maybe both.
I rubbed my lips together, weighing my options. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” he said, but his words had sharp edges, betraying his real emotions. Betraying the anger beneath his words.
“Annie said his wake was tomorrow,” I said.
“I’m not going,” he snapped, his fragile hold collapsing. “To the wake or the funeral. I’m in no mood for that.” And there it was. The anger, the bitterness, the darker side of him, born years ago out of the toxic sickness in his family, much of which I still didn’t understand.
“I thought you said you were fine.”
“I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m attending the wake. That man has been dead to me for years; This changes nothing.”
But he was wrong. It changed everything. Landon’s flat voice had given away to his real emotion, doing little to hide the rage boiling under his words.
“Talk to me,” I said, quietly. “What’s wrong?”
“Why do you care?” he snapped, as if he really didn’t know. As if I’d called him just to rub it in, mock him for grieving his abusive father. He didn’t understand that I just wanted to be there for him.
“Because I care about you,” I finally said. “I want to know that you’re okay.”
“We ended things. You ended things.”
“I came home for you,” I said, my voice turning soft. Almost pleading. I wanted to get through to him. To break past the hard edge of his grieving. He needed to remember this was me. The girl he’d flown to Texas for only a few days ago. The girl who had sat on his lap in that bathtub, our skin hot and wet against each other.
I rested my forehead on the steering wheel. “I’m in your driveway right now.”
He went silent, the phone rustling. I looked up at his bedroom window as the curtains fluttered open, and then he was looking down at me. His broad shoulders filled the window frame. He said nothing as several beats of silence passed. I felt like a goldfish in a little bowl, as the cat watched. Waited.
“You need to leave.”
I swallowed at the warning in his voice. “Let me in.”
“Trust me,” he said, his voice low and lethal. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Come on,” I said. “Just come to the door. Talk to me for a little bit. If you don’t want me to stay, then fine.”
“You don’t want to come in,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. Firm. “I’m not in the mood for talking.”
My pulse leapt in my throat. At the darkness to his voice, at the insinuation that he was in the mood for something else.
“Whatever mood you’re in—I can take it.”
“You don’t want to see me like this.”
“Landon,” I said.
“Taryn,” he ground out. “The door is unlocked. But if you walk through that door…”
His voice trailed off. I could swear he growled under his breath, but it was impossible to know for sure. There was something feral, something dangerously sexy about the sound.
I waited, but he didn’t finish his sentence. “If I walk through the door… what?”
“I can’t be held responsible for what I do to you. I’m telling you now, you need to go.”
I swallowed, heat rushing through me. His voice was rough and angry. It made me picture him shoving me down into his bed, fucking me harder than ever before. Biting at my skin, possessing me in a way I wanted. In a way I craved.
I knew now why he hadn’t called me to talk about his father. Because what he needed from me-what I could give him—wasn’t a conversation. It was an outlet. It was… a way to drive away the dark thoughts and lose himself in something else.
Logic said I should leave. Logic said I should listen to the warning in his voice. But no matter what he said, I knew he’d never truly hurt me.
I climbed out of the car, standing next to the driver’s door and looking up at him. He was framed by the curtains, his face dark in the moonlight.
In a long, deliberate action, I tossed the phone back into my car and stared up at him. Accepting his conditions. Knowing that when I walked through that front door, it was to a man boiling over with hurt and anger and the need to possess me, to take back control. If not in his life, in his bed.
And I would let him do that.
He stepped away from the window as I walked to the front door, ascending the steps of his porch.