44. Blake
BLAKE
I can’t do it.
I can’t tell her that I love her, no matter how much I might want to. Because Levi is right. She’s here for all of us, and we need her, but if I make her my own, it changes things.
“You’re young,” I tell her instead. “You’ve got so much of your life ahead of you. You’re going to have so many different people come in and out of your life, and so many of them will love you.”
She visibly flinches.
Her pretty face is still streaked with tears, and I want to plunge my hand into her hair and kiss the salt from her cheeks.
But we crossed a boundary yesterday, and, until the first snow falls, I can’t let it happen again. Fuck, I want to, though. I can still taste her pussy on my tongue, and if Levi hadn’t interrupted, I’d have learned how she’d have felt around my cock, too.
“Right,” she says abruptly, turning her face away. “I think I need to be on my own for a while.”
“Take all the time you need. I know this has been… a lot.”
She gives a strange kind of snort laugh at that. “Finding out I murdered a man and you’ve disposed of the body to protect me, you mean?”
“Yeah, that, but also dealing with what that man did to you. Just because you’d had a relationship with him doesn’t mean it’s okay, Pen.”
She lifts her gaze to hold my eye again. Hers are dry now.
“Men take what they want, don’t they? Girls like me are just pawns in your games.”
She’s painfully close to the truth, and I hope she doesn’t see it in my eyes.
“We only want to protect you.”
She gives that same snort-laugh. “By ‘we’ you mean Levi as well? The last thing Levi wants to do is protect me.”
“In his own way, he does.”
She shakes her head at that. “Sure, sure.”
I need to tell my son that Aspen knows the truth about Tobias, or at least a part of it. I’m not sure how he’s going to react. Trying to predict his moods or reactions is nearly impossible.
“I’m going to my room now,” she says, turning away from me. “I need some space. Please leave me alone.”
I want to reach for her, to pull her back into my arms, but I keep my hands firmly at my sides.
I hate constantly thinking Levi is right, but I do have feelings for this girl.
Is it only because of our shared history?
Or if she’d been a stranger when she came to Windridge Hall, would I still be feeling the same way?