My chest was squeezing. A whole knot was sitting in my throat.

I was getting choked up, because, my God, he’d been the idea that got me through all the bad shit with my family. But that wasn’t real. I was walking away from it. I had all these walls put in place. Those walls kept me going. They kept me enduring, and he’d been so many of the walls. Protecting me from the outside world. The idea of him had been the foundation holding those walls up, and now it was gone.

And shortly, so would he.

Because I knocked all of them over in one swift move.

I felt bereft, and a whole feeling of doom was settling in my chest. Pressing in, pressing down. It was spreading through me, and I was fucked. I was so fucked.

Grabbing my purse, checking that my phone was inside, I had to go.

I had to go now before I changed my mind.

I was at the door, my hand on the doorknob, when he said, “Never took you for a coward.”

Oh. Oh no.

I swung around. “Don’t even go there.” My head was up, eyes wide, and I was breathing in fire. “Do not even go there, to that place where you think you can goad me for what? Running away? I live with this. You just got a visitor’s pass, but trust me, you don’t want a permanent residency. You train for your job but imagine if that same amount of work was what you needed every hour of every day just to keep breathing. Don’t call me a coward, dude.”

“Dude?!” His nostrils flared. His eyes turned smoldering, even more heated. “I hate that word from you.”

“Yeah. Well.” I so didn’t care. “Don’t call me a coward, and no, it doesn’t compare.”

I had to get out of there. It was imperative. I saw the fight rallying in him.

Seriously. My mouth was going dry just looking at him. His hair was all messed up, but it was in the hot, messy, sexed-up kind of way, and I know he hadn’t done anything with it. That was all natural, and he’d pulled on some sweats. They rode low on his hips. That V on a hockey player. Damn. That V.

But it wasn’t how he looked.

It was how he just was.

Because he was good, and kind, and he was humble. And he didn’t take shit from my Not-Brother. And he fought for me. And he sat by the pool for thirty minutes being terrified, but still stayed.

He stayed, and he was still standing here. He was still staying.

What was I doing?

I was walking away, feeling like I was ripping myself in half here, but it was needed. It was so needed.

“I have to go.”

“Wait.” It took him two steps.

I opened the door, he slammed it shut, then he was stepping up behind me. His body pressed against mine.

It felt right.

If this felt right why was I doing this? I’d asked myself that before and still didn’t have an answer.

I wanted someone to love me.

My mother never had. I had no dad, then I had a dad, but I still didn’t have a dad. I had no one, so I created him in my head. He got me through until I found Sasha, then we found Melanie and it’s been us three since. Only us three.

But damn, I just wanted to be loved.

And he was here.

And he had stayed.

But I felt the ache low in my body because whether he knew it or not, he was out of his depth. They never knew, until they knew and then they wanted to be gone.

“Let me go, Cut.”

He’d be just like them, but I would tear through him like a tornado and I’d only leave behind debris. I would damage him, and I couldn’t do that because if I did love him after all, if I was falling in love, or always had been—it was enough not to do that to him.

His hand flexed against the door.

I felt how tense he was. It was bouncing off of him in waves, sucking me in, making the room stifling, but after a second flex, he stepped back. His hand lowered, but he said, his voice almost pinning me in place, “I heard what your friend said. I don’t know what’s in your head, what you’re thinking, but whatever this is, you’re going to regret it.” He pressed up against me again, his head lowering.

I felt every inch of him.

And I shivered.

He felt that.

I couldn’t suppress it, and his head dropped.

I felt his lips graze my shoulder.

Another shudder.

God.

I wanted to let him sweep me up in his arms.

I wanted him to carry me back to his bed. I wanted to feel him inside of me.

But it was that look. That look.

He would walk. They always walked.