Page 103 of Heart Strings & Hotlines
“Thane.”
He lifts his chin, and the intensity of his stare cuts me to the quick.
“You—you wouldn’t betray me, right? You wouldn’t work side deals or try to—to take my company from me. Would you?”
“Never.” The vehemence behind that one word has the muscles in my shoulders unlocking.
He’s shown me what a good and trustworthy person he is over these past few weeks.
But the sense of dread, like I’m missing something, still rests heavily on my chest.
“I would never betray you, Charlotte. I want what’s best for you, and I’ll always act to ensure you get everything you want and deserve.”
Those words feel like a Band-Aid for a bullet hole, but I have no idea where I was shot or who pulled the trigger.
He sips his coffee, then closes his notebook with a snap as the cover flips to the front again before he places it on the table between us.
Thane is not like our fathers.
If anything, he’s always been brutally honest with me. In this moment, I have a decision to make—trust Thane with my heart or allow my past to sully my future.
My past is always fucking up my life, but I can’t think with Thane sitting so close, so I force my unsettled emotions to the back of my mind and focus on the here and now. I’ll worry about what my gut is telling me when his presence isn’t commanding all my attention.
“What did you think of Riley’s?” I ask, steering us back to safer ground.
He scratches behind his ear without an ounce of recognition. His reaction is so perfectly Thane.
“The bar you went to with Boone.” I lift my brow, and the corner of my lip wants to follow, but I suppress my grin.
“Oh. I didn’t know it had a name.” He shrugs. “There was no sign out front.”
“Riley likes it better that way. He says it keeps the riffraff out.”
His fingers twitch against the small pencil that’s now tucked into the spiral of his notebook as if he wants to write something down. “That’s not a way to run a business either.”
“Maybe not in New York, but it works here.”
“Everything works here.” He’s intentional with his words as he stares deeply into my eyes, and his meaning hits me dead center in the chest. He sighs and pushes the notebook around the table. “Sitting with Rafe and Boone at the bar wasn’t entirely unpleasant. While they talked about their feelings, I was able to think.”
“Yeah?” My stomach tightens as I wait for more because my brain is fighting my heart. Hackers versus his declaration that I can’t get out of my head. Even if he was a little tipsy, he said he loved me with such conviction, it nearly knocked me over.
And that is why I should choose to believe that he’s on my side.
At the bar, I had forced myself to overlook his words. To ignore the entire fiancée comment too, because in every rule book of dating, this is too soon for that kind of talk.
But I’ve also learned that Thane plays by his own rules.
His gaze zeros in on my left hand, and I quickly slip it beneath my thighs. He’s been infatuated with my ring finger since I removed my grandmother’s ring.
I’ve never been a woman who relies on a man, but Thane is the first one to make me even consider it, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. Trusting blindly has ruined so many of my peers’ relationships. Marriages are weaponized, and women lose control of their own destiny.
That must be why I jumped to conclusions about his hacker comment.
And yet, sitting here, with a slightly tipsy Thane Wilder, I can’t help but acknowledge that my heart is already toeing the line of independence and dependency.
Depending on anyone else terrifies me into silence.
When he said he loved me, Ifeltit, all the way down to the soles of my feet. His words wrapped me in a hug so tight there was no room for my fears, and that’s how I know we need to put on the brakes here.
