17
Not going anywhere
The desk lamp turned her hair into burnished copper, its soft waves spilling around her face while the blue glow from the monitor caressed her sun-kissed skin.
Her lips moved in a silent murmur, syncing with the rhythm of her typing, and her tongue slipped out and traced their shape, leaving behind a glistening sheen.
Rafferty’s hands clenched at his sides, aching to touch her, to slide into that curtain of copper and tilt her face up to his. He knew he shouldn’t — fuck, he knew better — but wanting her had never felt like a choice.
And then, as if she sensed the heat of his gaze, her fingers stilled. Slowly, deliberately, she looked up, eyes finding his with unerring accuracy, lips parting slightly as if she'd heard every hungry thought in his head.
Brandy-Lyn didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. The air between them pulsed, thick with something electric and dangerously close to surrender.
He swallowed hard, remembering why he’d come. “About earlier,” he began, voice low. “I hate that you saw me like that.” Breaking down like a weakling , he silently added. A chickenshit coward.
She stood and slowly walked over to him.
His breath caught. She was close now — too close — and every instinct screamed at him to claim the inches that kept them apart, to pull her in and lose himself in the soft swells of her body, the quiet steadiness of her presence.
To bury himself in her warmth and shut out the cold press of memory for just a little while.
But he didn’t move.
He stayed rooted, every muscle locked against the pull of want.
Because beneath the hunger, beneath the ache, there was fear — not the trembling kind, but the kind that knew he was damaged, plain and simple.
Darkness lurked just beneath his skin, ready to surge forward and wreck whatever fragile good he’d managed to hold on to.
And Brandy-Lyn Powers was nothing but goodness.
Coming here tonight had felt right at first — necessary.
It had taken a long run to clear his head and figure out a way forward.
But now, standing in the thick silence between them, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he’d made a mistake, showing up while the aftershocks of his breakdown still rattled inside, making him unpredictable as hell.
It wasn’t just his own emotional instability he had to reckon with — it was the physical threat looming over everyone he cared about. Kamila was still at large. Until that threat was neutralized, he couldn’t even think about dragging Brandy-Lyn into his volatile world.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty — he wouldn’t sleep tonight until he’d faced the shame clawing at his insides and said what needed to be said.
Once he admitted his greatest shame, she’d recoil in disgust.
And that’s what he wanted. Shock her into sending him packing.
Make her retract those words that had echoed in his soul all afternoon.
I’m not going anywhere.
She reached for his hands, fingers brushing lightly against his. “You never have to hide your pain from me,” she murmured.
Pain. Shame. Guilt.
They folded into each other — pain bleeding into shame, shame curdling into guilt — he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. He sidestepped and laughed, but there was no humor in it — just bitterness and exhaustion. “You say that now. But you don’t know all of it.”
She turned with him, refusing to let him escape into deflection. “Then tell me.”
His throat worked around the words, dry and raw. “I destroy the women near me,” he said, barely above a whisper. “First, my wife. Then her .”
He met her gaze then, steady and unflinching, like he needed her to see the truth. “Now you.”
Those two words landed between them like a warning.
Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t flinch. “What happened with your wife wasn’t on you.”
He shook his head slowly, the movement tight with guilt.
He’d let his guard down. Let himself believe he could have a life with Charlie, something peaceful and loving, something easy.
But easy had no place in his world. Complacency had killed his wife — that was the truth he carried like a stone in his chest.
“My mistake cost Charlie her life,” he said, voice flat with self-loathing.
Silence spread between them, dense and expectant.
“And… her ?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
His jaw tightened. “Kamila.” Her name burned his tongue. “I approached her with good intentions. I was going to infiltrate, gather intel, feed it back to the DEA. But once I was inside …”
He paused, breath catching. “I didn’t have to fake it anymore. I found I liked cartel life. The structure. The power. The violence. It was clean, in its own way.”
He glanced at her, eyes hooded. “I fit there. No pretending, no guilt. Just action. Just survival. They didn’t ask me to be anything other than what I was — brutal, ruthless, effective. A killer.”
She didn’t move, didn’t speak — just watched him with those steady eyes that made him feel more seen than he wanted.
“We became lovers,” he said, the words tasting like ash. “Not out of necessity. Out of choice.” He flexed his hands, fingers curling, the memories still vivid. “When the truth came out …”
His throat worked. “In a way, I broke her. Just as much as she broke me. She had to save face in front of her men. And so, she picked up the knout. But it cost her. Twisted her.” He looked away, fighting the flood rising in his chest. The scars Kamila had left were more than physical — they were stitched into his psyche, his sense of self.
Not just the pain, but the betrayal.
The way she’d looked at him that last time, as if he’d carved out her heart with his own hands. “ That’ s who I am,” he said finally. “A man who ends up ruining every woman who gets close.”
He braced for rejection, for the quiet dismissal he knew was coming.
But instead, she stepped closer. “You won’t ruin me.”
He looked at her like he couldn’t quite believe she was real. “You don’t get it,” he said, his voice rough, frayed at the edges. “I will ruin you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow — but I will. It’s what I do.” He dropped his gaze. “I don’t want to pull you into this mess called my life.”
“Too late,” she said simply. “I’m already here.”
“Red,” he groaned, like her name was both a prayer and a warning.
His hands hovered at his sides, fists clenched as if holding back a tide. She stood there — calm, grounded, but with fire in her eyes. And God help him, she wasn’t backing down.
He took a half step forward, chest heaving with the pressure of everything he wanted and everything he didn’t deserve. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do,” she said, voice low. “I’ve seen the wreckage. And I’m still here.”
Her words undid him.
He reached for her — slowly, reverently — his palm cupping her jaw, his thumb brushing the softness of her cheek. Her breath caught, but she didn’t move away. Didn’t flinch.
Instead, her fingers curled into the front of his shirt, pulling him until their foreheads touched. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
That was it — the last thread of control snapped.
He kissed her like a man starved, like he’d been drowning in silence and shame for years and she was the first breath of clean air. It wasn’t gentle. It was raw and hungry, all the pain and longing and guilt crashing into that single point of contact.
And when she kissed him back, not tentatively, but sure, something in him finally gave way.
She was choosing him — broken and ugly. Choosing all his stained pieces.
His hands threaded into her hair — that glorious, glorious copper waterfall — pulling her closer as if proximity could silence the ache inside him. When her body pressed to his, soft curves against the hard planes of muscle wound tight with guilt and longing, something inside him cracked wide open.
She was warmth.
Steady.
Solid.
Here .
And he felt like a live wire, every nerve-ending sizzling, barely holding together.
He pulled back just enough to look at her — eyes searching, hungry, uncertain. “Tell me to stop,” he said hoarsely. “Red … if you don’t mean this—”
She silenced him with a kiss, slower this time, more deliberate. “Don’t stop,” she whispered against his lips.
A door clanged. Laughter drew nearer.
They both stilled. Her breath was still warm on his lips, her hand still curled against his chest.
But the world had shifted. The spell was broken.
He stepped back, fast, as if burned — reality slamming into him like a fist to the ribs.
What the hell am I doing?
Shame washed over him.
Shame for letting her in.
Shame for wanting her.
Shame for proving, once again, that the damage inside him wasn’t buried.
No sirree, it was just waiting to spill out and ruin the one good thing he hadn’t already destroyed.
“Fuck,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. His pulse was still racing, but now for all the wrong reasons.
“You okay?” she asked, voice gentle. Too gentle.
He laughed — a low, bitter sound that scraped at his throat. “No. Not even close.”
She took a cautious step toward him, but he backed up again.
He needed to get away from her intoxicating presence.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he said, hating how raw his voice sounded. “And I damn sure shouldn’t have touched you.”
“Don’t say that,” she said.
“Our kiss — that was me, needing something I don’t deserve. Reaching for comfort I had no right to take.”
Her brow knit, confusion and hurt flickering in her eyes, and that gutted him more than anything. “I asked you to kiss me.”
He dragged in a breath, trying to steady the chaos inside. “And I lost control. I let myself forget, just for a second. But forgetting …” His throat closed around the words. “Forgetting is how people get hurt. And, Red, I have already hurt you. This needs to stop. Now.”
He turned away, jaw clenched so hard it ached, fists balled like he could physically hold the guilt inside.
She stepped around him, into his space, forcing him to look at her. “You’re scared,” she said simply. “That’s what this is. You think pushing me away will protect me. But it won’t. There’s something here.” She flicked her hands between them. “Something neither of us asked for, yet here we are.”
He swallowed hard. “You should be running in the other direction.”
Her hand came up, fingers brushing lightly against his chest — right over the heart he wasn’t sure still worked the way it should.
“I’m not,” she said. “Because I see you. I see all of you, Rafferty Lawson. The past, the pain, the mess. I’m not pretending it doesn’t exist. But you’re not ready. Maybe in time, once you’re acclimated to being back on the ranch, to being safe , we can explore … this again.”
He couldn’t breathe.
Didn’t trust himself to speak.
“But always remember, I’m not going anywhere.”
Her words were spoken like a vow.
Soft but unshakable.
And maybe that was what undid him the most — not the kiss, not the way she looked at him like he was still worth something, but the unwavering steadiness in her voice.
He met her gaze one final time, as if clinging to the goodness he didn’t believe he deserved, then turned and walked out.
No goodbye.
No excuse.
The door clicked softly behind him, a sound that echoed louder in his chest than he expected.
Outside, the night air hit like a slap. Cold and damp.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking. No direction, no plan. Every step scraped raw against his nerves. Guilt tangled with longing. With regret.
He replayed the way she’d looked at him — not with pity, not with fear.
But with acceptance.
That was the part that scared him most.
Because that’s where hope lived.