Page 44 of Don't Trust Him

He catches me.

He’s saying things, half starts and mumbles.

This wasn’t he kind of kill he stages for Bonita Muerte. This wasn’t even an I Want To Feel You Suffer kill. It was a quick killing, leaving me thinking, what the fuck just happened?

I’m thinking about what it means.

In some strange, sick way that I totally understand, Grayson was doing this for me in the most selfless way possible.

I get that. But I’m having a hard as fuck time dialing back the rage within me that wanted vengeance against my mother, justice for my father.

That was a girl who until very recently mourned her mother.

It makes me want to fucking hurl, well, that, and the recent torture both have me ready to throw up.

Everything around me seems blurry. I’m off-kilter. Weak.

Finally I realize that Grayson is actually talking to me.

He’s shouting now, desperate to break through my reverie, and now, he’s successful. I’m over my little bitch fit. I’m glad I didn’t kill my own mother, if I’m honest. I would have done it. But I am glad I didn’t have to. I still taste in the air what happened to my father, so I’m glad she’s dead.

But not killing her freed me of some demon within me I didn’t know I was summoning, and now I can hear Grayson Teague, the only person in the world to me in an instant.

“Baby!” Grayson yells and the stern sound of his voice makes me pause and stop to really listen to him. “I couldn’t let you kill your mother. I know if ever there was a woman who can take care of herself, it’s you. I know you think darkness has consumed you. But I also know that you’re still a heart full of need and love. This was something you didn’t need to do. You don’t need vengeance, you need freedom and love, Eliza, and it isn’t goddamn fair how bad you’ve been hurt and I’m sorry but I am doing whatever the fuck I can to take care of you. You’re mine.”

Whoa.

Everything he’s said starts to sink in. I know that all our dreams about endless shoes. Endless paradise. They kin

d of don’t seem so far away. Sure, they’re hard fought to be earned, but at the same time, they’re fucking possible.

But I look at him and I know he’s worried.

Grayson stops because he knows he’s said so much…I can tell by the look on his face, he thinks he’s said too much.

But he hasn’t. He fucking hasn’t. How can anyone know me so well that they know that I couldn’t have done this? I couldn’t have killed my mother. No matter what has happened, this would have turned me into her, and I see, because Grayson sees, I’m not like her. I am fucking better.

And with him to protect me, I know that I’m okay.

Eliza fucking Lang needs no man to protect her. That hasn’t changed. But I want him. I need him. I fucking love him, even if I can’t tell him.

I grab him, jump on top of him, straddle him, even though I’m weak. He kisses me but maneuvers me into his arms, holding me. When I press my head against his chest I realize just how dizzy I really am. I need to take a break, I need to let him take care of me right now. Things go black and I realize I’m passing out…did I tell him I love him?

Did I hold him?

Does he know that I trust him? That my heart is protected with him and I know it?

I can’t trust him.

Don’t, my brain tells me.

But my heart trusts him.

“I love you, too, Eliza,” I hear Grayson say.

Fuck.

I love Grayson Teague. I fade out and my head is swimming with images of my burning father, my laughing mother, little children with skull-covered arms, of Juan with a dick hanging out of his throat (even though that didn’t happen) and with the piles of bodies I’ve seen the cartels pile up.

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