Page 30 of Point of No Return

Crew sits up, stretching out the back of his neck as he grins over at me. “Is Charlotte the one that has you so on edge?”

I say nothing, dragging a hand through my hair, shaking off my sweat. It’s been a week since the magazine interview… and I’ve spent too much goddamn time thinking about her. What I said scared her-or maybe it angered her. I couldn’t tell. But it had definitely gotten a reaction.

She’d all but run off in the middle of it, and when she’d come back, she was gorgeous, smiling perfection. Every touch fucking killed me. I was so close to kissing that smart mouth, to tasting that red lipstick, to closing the distance between us completely. Touching her is becoming far too easy. If I’m not careful, I’ll screw everything up.

“She’s in your head,” Crew says, standing and offering his hand to pull me up.

“She’s infuriating,” I groan at the bruises starting to form along my ribs and shoulders.

Today’s session was a beating, but looking at the sweat still pouring off Crew, I know I’m not the only one who got their ass handed to them.

“You’ve been awfully quiet about your opinion of her.”

“I haven’t actually met her,” he reasons.

We both know that hasn’t mattered before. Crew knows more about a person before meeting them than any person I’ve ever met. It’s part of why I hired him in the first place. He trusts his gut- and he’s damn good at feeling someone out. He’s even better at digging up someone’s past and finding secrets most people would rather have buried.

“So you don’t think she’s hiding something?”

“You want the truth?” he asks, and I gauge the look on his face carefully before nodding. “I don’t know.”

Somehow, the answer does nothing to tame the riot in my gut. If anything, it worries me more. I roll my shoulders again before strolling toward the old fridge in the corner, the fan coughing and sputtering as I pop its door open.

“The rehearsal’s later this week,” he says as I snatch a bottle of water from the fridge.

“I know.”

“The wedding is this weekend,” he continues.

“I know.” I cast a dark look his way, and he shrugs as I toss a bottle at him.

He catches it easily, downing the entire bottle in one gulp. He, like me, is usually quiet. Which is probably why I’ve tolerated him these past six years. But for some reason, today he won’t shut his mouth.

“Does it bother you more that she’s ignoring you or that you don’t know how to feel about her?”

“Why do you give a damn?” I growl, and he smirks at my reaction. We both know that normally things roll right off my shoulders.

But not her.

Crew lifts his hands in defeat. “You’re in for an eventful wedding night.”

I scoff at that, rolling my shoulders. “Maybe you should worry about your own balls. How long has it been? Three years?”

His smile falls for an instant, but he recovers quickly, steeling his face. “Good one, Benenati. Is that the fourth time you’ve used that dig or the fifth?”

I may tease him about it, but the truth is that three years ago, we both got fucked over. This was before he was hired as the head of security at Viserion, and it was the reason we both got into sparring in the first place. One drunken night at a bar gone south and we’d both been beaten to hell. All it had taken was a whisper about someone having a gun for it to cause a shoot-out.

We both still sport the scars, but I hadn’t been the one to lose someone I love that night. At the thought, I feel a phantom touch across the scar, the ghost of a hand pressing into the bullet wound in my shoulder.

I shake it off, but when I don’t say anything, Crew grits his teeth. “You’re different with her, and you fucking know it.”

My jaw clenches to the point of pain. “It can never happen.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

I’m so tempted to start a fight, to shove him back and tell him to lay off, but that would just prove his point further. She’s the enemy. The face of everything I fight. Not only that but she- like every other damn person alive- is likely going to be in Tyson’s pocket sooner or later. If she isn’t already. But Crew’s right.

It doesn’t change the fact that something burns in me when she flinches away from my touch. Or that when she mouths off, all I want to do is bend her over and make her regret it. And if that doesn’t push me over the edge, seeing my ring on her damn finger everyday might.

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