Page 17 of True Fate

Sensing his withdrawal, she tugged the sheet higher, past anything he might still want to see. The slight collapse of his smile gave her just enough courage. “You’ll think I’m crazy, and I probably am, but I almost like your anger. It’s the only time I believe you still care.”

Without a word, Justin dropped the sketchpad to the floor and stood, bracing both arms against the window ledge. The tattoo on his forearm shifted with the movement, and the urge to trace the tail with her tongue was almost overwhelming.

Lainey tucked the rumpled edge of the sheet between her breasts, her voice thankfully steady. “Why do I feel like I’m not going to like what you have to say?”

He shook his head, laughing softly. “Because you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

She wondered where the hell her clothes were, knowing she’d soon have to make the walk of shame home. Her body was deliciously spent—tender, supple, relaxed—but her mind was snapping like a rubber band. “You may as well get it over with.”

After a charged silence, Justin rubbed a spot on the windowpane with his thumb.

Her pulse thrummed, pleasure rippling through her, settling low between her thighs. He’d driven her wild with that hand. “If I asked you to, would you forget about last night?”

She kicked a pillow out of her path and reached for his T-shirt. Anything but nudity would do for now. “Will you be able to forget it?”

His shoulders lifted and fell on a sigh. “Even if I want to”—he nudged the curtain aside, and a narrow strip of sunlight slid across his shoulder, spilling to the floor—“no. Who am I kidding? I’llneverforget it.”

“I’m not asking for promises, Justin,” she said, shrugging into his shirt and letting the sheet fall to the floor. “Just a crack in the wall you’ve built, one I’m struggling to break through.”

“Promises in Promise. Funny as hell, right?” He tapped the windowpane once, twice. The shifting muscles in his shoulders and along the broad line of his back sparked a quiet fire inside her. “I seem to recall giving those before—and being cleanly rejected.”

“You were headed to Dartmouth, onscholarship, while I was lucky to get into a shitty community college two counties over. You know how many classes I missed senior year bailing my father out of one mess after another? Medical, financial, criminal. My permanent record, as they called it, wasn’t stellar. Nothing like yours. The day you offered to stay was the day I knew I had to let you go.”

“Let me go,” he whispered, the weight of those three words hanging in the air.

An empty condom wrapper lay on the floor. Lainey nudged it aside with her toe as a cold knot settled in her stomach. She wasn’t supposed to feel this deeply about a dalliance headed where others had—ending with a veiled smile and a tentative mental handshake.

“I’m not telling you this to shift blame, but your father came to see me three days before you were set to leave for college, and he asked me?—”

She slowed to a halt as Justin gave the pane a hard knock, though his gaze stayed fixed outside.

“He told me to leave you alone. That you had a bright future, something I would only screw up for you. I thought a lot about it, Just, the long-distance relationship we had planned.” She pinched the hem of his T-shirt, twisting it between her fingers. “The truth was, you and I had as much chance of making it as my father did of quitting the horses.”

“So you ran.”

She curled her toes into the heart pine planks and admitted it for the first time out loud. “So I ran.”

“I get it. You were setting me free. How noble. Though I would have appreciated being asked what I was sacrificing.” He let the curtain fall as he turned, plunging the room into muted darkness. “My father had no idea. Not one day in his life did he understand a damn thing about me.”

Either Justin couldn’t help it, or he wanted her to finally understand what he was feeling—but his gaze was no longer unreadable. Fury, passion, and bewilderment raced across the distance, striking her like an electric shock. “I’m a little upset, because we’ve spent all these years consoling ourselves with someoneelse.”

“We were kids, Just. Naïve, stupid kids.”

Perching a hip on the window ledge, he crossed his arms over his chest, unwilling to come one step closer. Like he’d made a vow not to touch her. “Want to be honest about why you’re here, Lainey? It’s not to make goddamned repairs to your dad’s house. I get that, too.”

She frowned, pressing her fingers to her suddenly aching temple.

“Because I know you,” he said without missing a beat, answering her unspoken question. “And I also know something is wrong.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, gathered her breath—and let it all come out.

About trying to save a young man from an appalling future, only to be forced to watch him spiral toward hell, just like her father. About the helplessness she couldn’t shake, the guilt and fury over a world she couldn’t fix, no matter how much she wanted to.

“After his trial, this emptiness crept in, like I was looking out a window and seeing nothing but fog. Oblivion. In my professional world, pinning your hope on saving someone who can’t be saved destroys you.” She folded her arms across her stomach, as if she could hold herself together by force. “When the last renter left my father’s house, I thought, maybe the timing wasn’t a coincidence. Then, my first night home, I see you.”

She fidgeted with the tattered hem of his T-shirt, smoothing it over her thigh. “Is that fate, or just a meaningless flicker in the dark?”

Justin crossed the room and dropped to his knees before her. His presence steadied her, but she didn’t dare meet his eyes, terrified she’d come undone by whatever waited there.

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