Page 33 of On the Brink of Bliss
What was he in?
I could almost see them—the secrets that whirled around his being.
A storm of anarchy.
The demand was already grinding off his tongue as he pulled out his phone. “What’s your number?”
My mind couldn’t keep up with the sudden shift, and I fumbled over the number as if he’d plucked it right out of me.
He tapped it out before he tucked his phone into his back pocket. “I have a friend on the way to keep an extra eye. No one is getting in here. No one is going to touch you. You can rest and get some sleep.”
I gaped as he strode for the front door.
He was like a falling star that blinked out too soon. So bright and blinding in my life before he faded away.
And here I was the fool who wanted to stand in the remnants of his glow.
“Don’t open the door for anyone,” he grunted before he stepped out into the night and pulled the door shut behind him. A panel on the wall beeped as a security system was engaged before what sounded like three locks were latched into place.
Ensuring that we were secure.
It did give me a fragment of comfort, but still, that hole inside me expanded as he left.
In the distance, I could hear a motorcycle approaching. The powerful engine grew louder and louder with each second that passed before I saw the glow of a headlight come up the lane.
I eased up to the window and peeked out the side of the drape, spying Cash talking in hushed tones to a brown-haired man who swung off a bike. Tattooed and hard and every bit as intimidating as Cash.
The man nodded and shook his head before Cash turned and strode for a huge, detached garage about a hundred feet to the right of the house. A big rolling door opened, and a blaze of white light spilled out.
Cash went straight for a motorcycle that was parked inside.
He swung his leg over the metal.
So powerful as he gripped the handlebars and kicked over the engine.
He was so different than the man I used to know. Covered in ink and written in shadows.
Dangerous in a way that was so foreign.
He pulled out of the garage and took off down the worn path that led through the forest in the direction of the main road. The single red taillight disappeared almost immediately, and the man who’d come lit a cigarette as he leaned against the seat of his bike.
Something that almost appeared to be a smirk hitched on his face when he noticed me peering out at him.
Or maybe he knew I’d been there all along.
Crap.
Embarrassed, I dropped the curtain, chewed at a hangnail on my thumb, and wondered if I made a mistake coming here.
Cash’s life was obviously something that I didn’t understand. Something that oozed with the same kind of warnings that he’d given me.
The bare threat of what he was capable of when he made the promise that he would take care of Ethan.
I was almost terrified to contemplate the way he mighttake careof him.
My spirit thrashed.
No.
