Page 27 of Possessed By Knox
“Right.” He chuckles. “My point is, a woman who looks at a man the way she was looking at you doesn’t up and leave unless she’s been chased.”
“I didn’t do—”
“Maybe not, but you’d have found out why she left if you weren’t wasting time cracking your knuckles open on punching bags.”
The thought snaps into my head and I scramble to my feet just as it locks in. “Fuck!”
“Aah, it’s coming to you, isn’t it?”
The phone call.
Fuck…why didn’t I think about the call she received earlier? She came back all smiles but there was something under that smile that I didn’t pay much attention to. I didn’t look, and she was careful to hide it. Goddamnit!
“Thanks, man, I owe you one,” I say as I rush to the entrance, grabbing my jacket, but I bump into Ransom on the way out.
“What the hell, man? I’ve been looking all over for you,” he says, grabbing my arm before I can shoulder my way past him. “I think I know why Ruth left.”
That stops me. “Tell me.”
“When you left the apartment, Abby got a notification that her tuition had been cleared,” he says, and my heart sinks.“So she called her mother, who kept going on and on about Ruth coming to her senses. Basically Abby thinks that Ruth just traded her freedom for hers.”[KB38]
“I won’t fucking allow it!” I roar.
“Neither will Abby,” Ransom says firmly. “She doesn’t need her parents’ support, and even if she needed it, she’s not going to sacrifice her sister for it. We’re going to see her parents.”
“I’m coming too,” I say. “Don’t even think of stopping me.”
“Why do you think I came here?” He stares at me and I know what he sees. Trigger wasn’t exactly nice with his punches, so I imagine I have bruises all over my face. But then again, ifI’m about to meet my future estranged mother-in-law, then it’s best she knows who it is she’ll be messing with. It seems Ransom agrees with that as well, as he nods. “The blood will probably scare her.”
“I don’t have time to change, let’s go.”
We walk down the corridor when he suddenly stops. “Wait, does this make us brothers-in-law?”
“Really, that’s what you’re thinking about right now?”
He laughs as we walk to the elevator. I needed a good punch in the head to get my feelings in order, but now I won’t stop until I get Ruth back.
My flighty little bird lost the bet, and I intend to collect my reward.
Chapter Nine
Ruth
I bite my nails as I stare at my cell phone, afraid to touch it and dial the number I’ve been thinking about for a better part of two days. Days I should have spent working on my project, but instead, I locked myself in my dorm room and I’ve just been moping over a man I’ll probably never see again.
I jump off the bed and start pacing around the room, twirling my fingers anxiously. I’ve managed to hold it together for two days, almost had myself convinced that I could forget him, but…Christ, it’s been two freaking days without so much as hearing his voice or seeing that handsome face of his. I should have taken a picture, recorded his voice, or taken something to keep with me, but I have nothing.
Nothing but the hoodie I grabbed from his closet, and now even his scent has started to fade.
Maybe that’s what kept me sane these last couple of days. I could bury my face in Knox’s hoodie and allow myself to dream of a life where I didn’t have to choose between him and a million other things.
My eyes shift back to my phone, but it remains quiet. He stopped calling and messaging after the first day, and I convinced myself…well, I tried to convince myself that it was agood thing he stopped calling me. It’s only fair that he moves on with his life and finds a woman who isn’t as annoying and stubborn as I am.
“It had to be done,” I sniff, crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over my head. “There was no other way around it. I had to…oh God!”
The tears come again. They’ve been falling a lot more often now. There’s nothing as painful as finding love and having no time to let it grow. And soon, I’ll be tied to someone my parents choose for me. Given their track record, the man will probably be an abusive jerk with little respect for women. He won’t touch me the way Knox did.
He won’t smell or taste like him.
