Page 40 of Late Nights & Love Lines
“Good girl,” I shoot back when I’m mostly convinced that I have control of my traitorous vagina. “I told you, Sebastian Walker, that you are not the boss of me. I’m not a child in need of saving. I don’t need rescuing or any other bullshit princess constructs that are constantly shoved down our throats.”
“And I told you, Rowan Ellis, that sometimes you have to let down your guard and count on someone else.”
“You never said that.”
“Maybe not, but I’m telling you now. Sometimes you have to trust me.” He opens the door and fires off his glare to the left, then the right, and I hear Pappy laugh. “I’m taking her to the infirmary. We’ll be back.”
Slowly, he turns his head. Our cheeks are too close for this conversation and I’m far too naked. My lips are pressed into a thin line, and my jaw is clenched so tightly it clicks in my ears.
He shakes his head, but I don’t miss the sadness in his features.
“I don’t need your pity either,” I say haughtily.
“Trust me, pity is the last thing I’m feeling.” The way the words rumble in his chest knocks loose something in mine, and I chew on my lips to keep every catastrophic idea from escaping my mouth.
He stomps through the night, holding me up by the backs of my thighs as carefully as he can. He can’t help himself, he’s a natural-born caretaker. His kids are very lucky to have him.
“Who do you trust?” he asks quietly, so quietly he’s almost drowned out by the crickets and frogs.
That’s too broad a question for me to ever answer. “Trust with what?”
“I don’t know, Rowan. Who’s your emergency contact?”
“I’m not ten. I don’t have school forms my mom is supposed to fill out anymore. What the hell would I need an emergency contact for?”
He stops walking, cranes his neck, and forces me to look at him in the moonlight.
“If you were in an accident, who would the hospital call?”
“Who knows. If I’m dead, it doesn’t matter, right? And if I’m not, I’ll take care of myself again as soon as I get out.”
The man growls. Actually growls as though he’s calling his wolfpack to meet us out here in the dark.
“And you don’t think it would absolutely crush Pappy if he suddenly never heard from you again?”
Shit. He had to play the Pappy card.
“Well, there are only two numbers in my phone. They’d either call him or Lottie.”
“And if your phone was submerged in a lake or thrown from the car?”
I don’t answer, and eventually, he starts walking again.
“You need a damn emergency contact. Who do you call if your car breaks down?”
“AAA.”
“What if you’re sick?” he shoots back.
“Then I would have some freaking chicken noodle soup delivered. Listen, I get that you’ve spent the last twelve years in dad-mode, but I had one of those and I’m not looking for another. When I say I can handle my shit, I mean it.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you’re infuriating.”
He grins back at me with a wolfish gleam that has me loosening my arms around his neck to create space.
“You like me,” he says, and I swear to God he adds a sexy swagger to his gait as he jogs up the steps to the camp infirmary while wearing a smirk that shows off dimples I’ve just now noticed. Dimples I want to lick.
