Chapter 17 #2
“How?!” I fired back, annoyed at his brusque disregard for my job. “You want me to stay, but I can’t be here!”
He stepped closer. “You didn’t answer my first question. Do you want to leave?”
“No.” The word was out before I could stop it. And then I kept going. “No. I don’t want to leave. I love being here. I’ve never felt as safe as…” I blinked, then looked away and redirected my thoughts. “And I hate that I love it so much, because I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“Then stop trying to go. You’re such a drama queen. Stop making this all about yourself.”
“What?!” I exploded.
A smile hid in the corner of Tate’s mouth. I looked at him, confused about how he was holding back a laugh while we were fighting. At the same time, this terrible thing had just happened. But then he kept staring, and all of a sudden, I was still annoyed but also trying not to smile.
And for some reason, it centered me.
I turned to put some distance between us, but he caught my hand and pulled me back.
“Listen, Rawlins. We’re so close to getting this guy. He’s here. If you run away now, you start all over again. Always running. Always scared. Always alone. This is your chance to end it. With people who want to help you.”
My teeth skimmed my lower lip as I considered his words. His glorious, enticing, sweet, and tempting words. At my hesitation, he pulled on my hand, bringing me closer.
“I don’t want to be your problem,” I finally said.
He looked at me for a weighted moment, bending down slightly to meet me at eye level before saying in a sweet, low tone that almost broke me, “Olivia, I’ve already told you that you’re not.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Why what?”
“Why do you want me to stay?” It was a question he wasn’t expecting, and it threw him off balance. He broke eye contact and looked down as he considered his words. Had his eyelashes always been that long? Dark, long, and curled upward, they made such a rugged man seem softer up close.
Finally, his blue eyes met mine, and my heart promptly forgot how to do its job.
“Because I’ve spent the last month training you to fight, and your inability to successfully land a decent punch is something I can’t have on my conscience.”
Another smile. But this time, I shook my head, removed my hand from his, and stepped back, feeling out of sorts.
“No. Why?” I asked again.
He stared at me for a long time. I stared back. It was like he had so much he could tell me, but he needed to sort it out first. So I waited, feeling the air shift between us.
“You know when I told you about the shooting?” he said, his voice raspy.
“Yeah.”
“There’s something I can’t get over. It keeps correlating to you.”
“What?” I asked
“I knew something was wrong. I felt it. But I sat there and watched Coleson go in alone.”
“Tate,” I began, shaking my head.
“Do you know what kills me the most?” he went on, almost like he hadn’t heard me.
“What?”
“It was hearing the gunfire when I was still in my car. I was the guy who was supposed to watch his back, and I wasn’t there to stop it.”
I now knew where he was going, and I tried to cut him off.
“I’m not Coleson.”
His eyes flicked up to mine like I’d broken into his stride. “I know. You’re worse.”
We stared at each other for a long moment while I tried to ignore the tingles erupting down my spine.
He sucked in a breath before saying the thing that rocked me to my core. “I’ve been thinking about what Luke said.”
I stilled while I looked at him in surprise.
Whaaat?
“It would solve all our issues…” he trailed off as he ran a hand through his hair.
Our issues.
Ours. Like he considered my problems his problems too.
There was something so incredibly sweet about that, but my brain was already on a fast track to derailment for me to give it much more thought.
“You can’t be serious. We’re talking about marriage here,” I said slowly, like I was explaining an important detail he must have missed.
“Yeah. You’ve probably never thought you’d be so lucky,” he said, a light twinkle in his eyes.
“Will would kill you.”
He seemed amused by that statement. “I could take him.”
“This is crazy. You can’t get married to me.”
“Why not? You got another skeleton in your closet I don’t know about?”
“Because…you don’t like me like that.”
He hesitated, his eyes softening before he smiled.
“It’s not a real marriage.” At the look on my face, he held up his hands.
“It would be legal, but we wouldn’t treat it like it was real.
We’d get it annulled as soon as we catch this guy.
That is, if you’d be able to keep your hands to yourself.
I believe getting an annulment requires a pretty hands-off sort of marriage, if you catch my meaning. ”
I refused to be embarrassed. So I channeled all the electricity now flailing around my body into a glare, which coincidentally only made him smile wider.
“Have you gotten many annulments before?” I asked.
“You’d be my first.”
“We can’t,” I said, even as my mind was rapidly trying to decide if we actually could.
“Why not?” He looked genuinely curious, which I thought was strange, considering what we were so casually discussing.
“Because this is something I read in books or watched ten different times just this week in a cheesy romance movie. It doesn’t happen in real life.”
He shrugged. “If you can find a better way to solve all of our problems with the least amount of collateral damage, then I’m all ears.”
The least amount of collateral damage.
Somewhere deep inside of me, I had a hard time believing that a temporary marriage to Tate Walker would provide the least amount of collateral damage.
Nothing about that statement rang true. In going with our theme, there were red flags all over this discussion.
But, currently, my world was spinning too fast, and I knew that if I mentioned anything in that realm, he would never let me live it down.
With how dark my day had felt, this idea of attaching myself to Tate and his family seemed like candy being dangled in front of me.
It would be so easy to reach out and take a piece.