Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I needed some space.
Stepping inside, I walked to the living room. Its brightness, high ceiling, tall windows overlooking the back patio, and sparkling blue pool—it was all so at odds with the heaviness in my chest.
I had already started to wonder. Question things. This wasn’t the shock I was sure he thought it might be. It was that I needed a moment to digest it. See if there was any answer to how I was going to move forward now that I knew.
I was going to talk to him about my needing to serve dinner at the homeless shelter tomorrow night. I’d missed the last week and first of this week. They needed me there. There weren’t enough volunteers. I hadn’t been at the nursing home on Saturday to read to them either. I didn’t like letting them down. I would need to go this week.
I was in deep.
I was in love with a man involved in the Mafia. Southern Mafia. I hadn’t known this existed. What did it mean exactly?
“Capri,” he said, snapping me out of my thoughts.
I looked up at him. I’d sat down on the sofa without speaking.
“You had to have suspected.”
There was a pleading to his voice. He wasn’t keeping that mask of indifference in place. Not here with me. He was vulnerable, and he was allowing me to see it. That made my chest tighten. Had he done this for anyone? Ever?
“Why me?” I asked.
There were so many things I needed to ask. That I should know. But that was the first thing that had come out. Because it was the one thing I couldn’t understand. Why was it me that reached him? What had I done to get this man’s trust? He treated me like he required me to breathe deeply, but why?
“You’re mine.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t what I was asking. Why was I his?
“But why me? What did I do that made me different for you? Why let me inside when you don’t let anyone else?”
He sank down onto the big square marble and stone coffee table in front of me and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes locked on mine.
“You give me peace.”
I let out a breath and wished my heart weren’t trying to get all fluttery right now. We had real problems here. Life or death.
“How do I give you peace? What is it I do?”
He licked his bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth. I tried not to be fascinated by that, but he was stunning. Crazy or not. Murderous or not. He was hard not to stare at.
“Breathe.”
Jesus! He had to give me more than that, although I was feeling it. All over. I loved him, and hearing these answers, as short and not enough as they were, was getting to me.
“Thatcher, I need to understand. You hurt a woman today because she was being catty with me. I was handling it. You didn’t have to slap her down. Her nose was bleeding, but even if it wasn’t, you can’t hit females. And you can’t kill men who upset me. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
The tortured look in his eyes was about to rip my heart out. He was struggling, and I couldn’t help him. This had to all be said. He had to accept what he’d done and how messed up it was.
“You’re my sanctuary. When I get locked in a place inside, you are what brings me out. If I’ve felt joy, then it was only with you. I can’t see someone hurt you. I need you happy. I’m not a happy person, but having you happy fills a void that’s always been there.”
Nothing in life had prepared me for this man. I was struggling with trying to remember what he’d done to a woman who had been a little nasty with me and wanting to curl up in his lap and promise to never leave.
“I’m in love with you,” I admitted. He needed to hear it. I needed to say it. “And I want to be with you. You make me happy. Being near you, seeing you, even smelling you—it makes my heart full. But this life of yours, where you can just kill a man and get away with it or beat a woman and have no consequences, I don’t know how to accept that. I can’t be the reason you do that. It will eventually eat me alive inside.”
His eyes flared, and he stood. I waited for him to say more as he began to pace in front of the windows. He ran his hand through his hair, and his face was pinched, looking like he was fighting something inside that I couldn’t see.
“This isn’t something I have control over,” he ground out, stopping to look at me. “I’ve been doing things to protect you, things you wouldn’t want, for years. I can’t help it. I need to do it. There is a demand that takes over, and I can’t stop it. I just react. You being with me now, you just see it. You’re there to witness it. I’m not standing in the shadows on the edge of your life, watching. My actions aren’t new, and even if you walked out that door right now, I’d continue to do it. Protect you.”