Page 76 of Caught Up

My heart sank. “Councilwoman Blackwell?”

His expression turned grim, and he nodded again.

I dropped my head into my hands. “Oh, god. I’m going to end up in jail.”

He rubbed my back. “No one can connect you to any of it. I made sure of that. And Blackwell had it coming after how long she led you on.”

I wrenched my head back up. “What did you do to her?”

“Relax,” he said. “Everyone still has all their fingers and toes. Let’s just say I got ahold of an interesting video of her son.”

I felt like crying. “I’ve been working my ass off to get these politicians to come around, and if you’re telling me they all had to be threatened or bribed, I’m going to lose what little faith I have left in humanity.”

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Don’t. You did all of the hard work yourself. I only gave one or two of them a nudge.”

Oh, no. Patrick McKinney. I’d spilled my guts to Junior about him at Velvet. Was he about to be next?

Do you really care if he is?a small voice asked. The man was a complete bastard and we had nowhere else to go.Yet. But we were working on it. My roommates and I were looking at two more buildings tomorrow, and one of the owners seemed really promising. And in the meantime, we had found the money to make rent and buy ourselves another month.

We were going to do this the legal way. Therightway. Junior was trying to get out of the criminal world, and the last thing I wanted was for him to dig himself deeper on my behalf.

“Please stop interfering in my life,” I said.

Hisone-wordresponse was clipped. “No.”

I blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m serious. I hate the fact that my achievements aren’t my own. That any of them could have come from coercion or blackmail or violence.”

“Look at this place,” he said, thumbing behind us. “You did this on your own. You’re building your empire brick by brick with your own two hands. It’s not like I held a gun to every one of your subs and forced them to follow you. They chose to do it because you’re damn good at your job. You make people feel seen and accepted, no matter who they are or what kind of hell they’re stuck in.”

My heart softened. Was he talking about himself?

“So what if I tried to make your life easier where I could?” he said. “So what if I pushed a couple of politicians into doing the right thing? You shouldn’t feel bad for those snakes. Not after the way they lied to your face and the public about supporting your cause.”

I shook my head. “I don’t feel bad for them. It’s not them I care about in this situation.”

His laugh was humorless. “Don’t feel bad for me, Lo. You don’t know what I’ve done in my life.”

“So?” I said. “Just because you’ve done bad things doesn’t mean you’re not worthy of my empathy.”

He reached over and dragged me into his lap, and I let him, something in his expression telling me he needed this.

Behind us, the door cracked open, Taylor waving the dildo over her head like she was getting ready to lead Ryan and Walter into battle.

I quickly shook my head to stop her.

You sure?she mouthed.

I nodded, and she closed the door again, giving one last shake of the sex toy to remind me to behave.

Junior buried his face against my neck, breathing deeply. This was the problem with us. He could stalk me, interfere with my life, and put up more red flags than an entire circus, and I would still look at him and remember the boy I’d grown up with. The fear, the vulnerability. I knew they were still there, buried deep. I knew he was hurting, that he didn’t want to do the things he did. The fact that he was trying to get out was proof enough of that.

It made me want to pull him close and protect him from the world. Which was ridiculous. Despite my lingering memories, he wasn’t a boy anymore; he was a grown man, a criminal. I’d seen his temper, how prone he was to violence. And yet, I still felt like there was hope for him. That he wasn’t too far gone yet. That I could save him.

Taylor was wrong. Junior didn’t have the white knight kink. I did.

“I’m not ashamed of you,” he spoke into my skin. “And your work doesn’t bother me. You can post whatever you like, and I’ll never try to tell you otherwise. I don’t want to clip your wings, Lo. I want to see you fly.”

Warmth bloomed in my belly that had nothing to do with lust. That was the most affirming, romantic thing anyone had ever said to me, and as his hands stroked up my back and he pulled me closer, I felt the last of my resistance to him melting away. Yes, he’d stalked me, and yes, he’d done other terrible things, but if he was being honest, and I believed he was, then none of it was about control. He’d done it all to protect me, to make my life easier, better, and I wasn’t in danger of falling into the same trap my mother had.

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