Florrie and I rode back with Cap in silence. She wouldn’t even fucking look at me. When we got back, I got cleared by Rocco, while Hunter set Florrie’s shoulder. She tried to sneak away from me, but I snatched her hand and yanked her with me down the hall to an empty room.
I shoved her up against the wall and molded my body to hers. “You can be pissed all you want about the job, but I did what I had to. They were hurting you.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“I fucking know that, but you’re mine and seeing those men hurting you tore my fucking heart to shreds.”
“They did worse to you.”
I breathed in her scent, running my nose along hers. God, I needed her, but not for sex. I just needed to hold her in my arms and know that she was mine. Even if it was only for a short time. I couldn’t let her go yet.
“I can handle a lot of shit, but I can’t handle watching you get hurt. It fucking scared the shit out of me to see you in pain. Please, just stay with me. I need you right now.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Florrie
I let him lead me over to the couch. This room was a sort of lounge area, so there were no beds. This couch was the most comfort we would be getting anytime soon. I was still pissed at Alec for putting his gun down. He did that for me and he shouldn’t have. It went against everything we were supposed to be doing, protecting the client. And now she was dead.
“Alec, this is over. We both fucked up tonight. We should have been-”
“Don’t even fucking tell me that we weren’t doing our jobs. We were outnumbered. We did everything right.”
“Except that you tried to save me. What good did that do?”
“Florrie, look at this from another angle, the one where we aren’t a couple.”
“I thought that was what I was doing,” I snapped.
“Really?” He hiked his knee up on the couch and turned to face me. “So, tell me how the fuck I was supposed to defend our client if you were dead? It was fucking twelve men against the two of us. If they killed you, it would just be me. I fought to get to you and they still overpowered me. I didn’t stand a fucking chance. So, you tell me how you being dead would have helped anything.”
I sat there for a moment, because he was right. He was trying to save his teammate, and romantic relationship or not, it wouldn’t have done any good for me to be dead right now. Morgan would have still burned in that house and Alec would have been dead. I knew that for a fact, because if they had killed me, Alec would have gone insane, trying to kill anyone in his path.
“You’re right.”
“I don’t understand why the fuck they left us alive. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It was Wes,” I said quietly. “He knew that he could walk right up to the door and get Morgan. He was trying to send a message, that he could get to her no matter what, that he didn’t even have to kill anyone to get past us.”
I could tell that I should have kept my mouth shut. Alec’s face turned hard and cold. No man wanted to be told that he was let go because he wasn’t a threat. And Alec was a proud man. He was a protector. Knowing that he had been beaten was bad enough, but to be told you weren’t even worth killing was so much worse.
He leaned back against the couch and shut his eyes. I could tell he was in pain. The lines around his face were drawn tight and he was squeezing his eyes shut in pain. I wanted to comfort him, but I knew there was something else I had to do. I had to end things. This had gone on long enough. And no matter what Alec said, I saw the way he looked at me when those men had me. We couldn’t afford for him to think of me in that way.
“Alec.”
He looked at me, his eyes sad. He knew it was true as much as I did.
“Don’t. Not tonight.”
“We both know we can’t do this anymore. Who’s it going to be next time? Maybe tonight was inevitable and us not being together wouldn’t have changed anything, but what about next time? We can’t afford for you to be thinking about me on a job.”
“And what about you?” he said angrily. “Do I really mean so little to you that you don’t worry about me?”
“I do, but the difference is that I trust your abilities.”
“I trust-”
“No, you don’t,” I said matter of factly. “You used to, but everything’s changed. You worry about me in ways that you never have before. You used to think of me as one of the team, but now you think of me as your girlfriend first and your teammate second.”
He stared at me for a moment, then lifted his hand and ran it across my cheek. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve referred to yourself as my girlfriend.”
His touch was so gentle that I wanted to curl up next to him and just be his, but there were too many things against us right now. I had led him on for two years, making him believe that the only thing holding me back was us working together. And while tonight proved that it could be a huge issue, deep down, I knew that wasn’t the only problem. We could work out the issue of being on the same team with one sit down talk with Cap. It would be hard, but we could make it work.
But if we did that, I wouldn’t be able to hide my real reasons for pushing him away anymore. He would see through me and know that I was hiding something much bigger. Something that would make him look at me completely different. Better to be looked at as a heartless bitch that cared more about her job than to be looked at with pity. As the incomplete woman that failed at the simplest things human nature had made me for.
So, instead of telling him any of the things that I felt deep inside, I curled into him and let him hold me. If only for tonight. We could deal with the rest in the morning, but for now, I wanted to enjoy the feel of his arms around me one last time. In the morning, I would have to make sure he knew this was over.
Alec Page 11