Page 91 of Savagely Yours
I tore off a piece of bread with my teeth and damn near swallowed the piece whole. “It’s an automatic weapon, isn’t it? What, did she come a lot? Like a machine gun? Is that why you gave it her name?”
His brows came together, wrinkling in the middle. “Um, no. Not even close. But even if that was the case, do you think I’d actually say that to you?”
“So why?”
“Because she was chatty.”
“I’m chatty.”
“No, baby. You,” the side of his mouth curved into a tiny grin, “are adorable.”
The stinging in my eyes returned.
I gnawed on more bread.
“You said you loved her.”
“The gun,” he clarified. “I love the gun.”
“Tell me about her. Tell me about Bethany. For starters, what’d she look like?”
“Dark hair,” he answered. “Freckles. She liked big earrings, tight jeans, and Pink Floyd T-shirts. David Gilmour, mostly. Then she had these big hazel eyes that said more than she did, which was a massive feat in and of itself. I met her during my first long-term overseas deployment. She was a civilian contractor. I needed someone, and she was there.”
“She sounds pretty.”
“She was.”
I cleared my throat. “So, why didn’t it work out?”
“She needed more than I could give her,” he said. “Connection. Emotion. She would always say that it was like I was in her presence, but the rest of me was somewhere else. Somewhere far away. I never let her in, and she needed that.”
“Why didn’t you give it to her?”
He shrugged and polished off his piece of bread. “I don’t know. I used to think it was because I couldn’t. And, possibly, that played a role, but I think part of me didn’t feel safe enough.”
“Did you love her?”
“Nah. Love didn’t hit me until I met you.”
I stuffed my face with the rest of my roll.
“Honestly, I like it, but I’m not sure why. I like the way it hurts. Even now, sitting across from you…pain. Right here.” He rubbed his knuckles over his sternum. “It even burns sometimes. And it’s always there. It makes me want to touch you when I know that’ll make it worse. It makes me want to make you smile, to keep you safe. To keep you happy. I only own about thirty percent of my thoughts. The rest, you’re part of: what’s Larke doing? Is she okay? Is she thinking about me? Is she thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about her? Stuff like that.”
He retrieved a container from the hamper, opened it, and offered me an elongated miniature cube of what looked like Pecorino Romano cheese.
I dropped a few cubes onto my palm. “I was engaged once.”
Dez rolled one of his shoulders and stretched the muscles in his neck. “Yeah, I know. His name was Travis Brunson. You met him during law school. He was a decent-looking, clean-cut guy who was one year ahead of you.”
“Bethany gets to be pretty, but Travis was decent-looking?”
“I have insecurities.”
“Whatever, Dez.”
Smiling, he continued, “Brunson proposed to you in front of the Howard University School of Law building, but it ultimately didn’t work out because the two of you wanted different things. He preferred systems. You preferred people. This is where you clashed, and over time, you realized it wasn’t just ideological. It was a fundamental difference in how you two saw the world.Plus, your family wasn’t too fond of him. They didn’t like the way you were changing to accommodate the image he wanted, and he always seemed uncomfortable with giving you space to talk about Raven.”
I raised both eyebrows. “Holy shit. All of that was in my file? I guess, if the assignment was coming from the White House, they had to be thorough.”
