Page 108 of Temptation
He’s walking away. “Preston…”
“I told you before, I don’t deserve you. You should never have let me fuck you. I’m tainted, Sloane. Damned. I am?—”
“Oh, cut the bullshit.” Now she was mad. “Don’t you dare talk that way about the man I—” Love. She’d almost done it again. What was with her? Why could she not control herself? “Don’t talk that way about yourself.”
“You don’t know me. We just met days ago.”
“I knew you before I met you.” A roll of her shoulders. “You aren’t your parents. You help people. You don’t hurt them.”
He stared at her. Took another step back. “How did Mary Jean die?”
Her eyelids flickered. “A drug overdose.”
“When?”
“Shortly after I found Mitchell’s remains.” This gutted her. Because…I think bringing those remains back pushed her over the edge.
Did Preston suspect the same thing? Was he going to blame her? She spun away and stared out at the mountains. All of that light. All of that land. All of that freedom.
“They knew what I’d done.” Preston’s voice. So low and deep. Dark.
She wanted to look back at him.
But…
She stared at the light.
“My adoptive parents. They knew that I’d gone out. That I’d left the hotel room. That I’d stolen the car and driven away. They found me when I was trying to slip back into the hotel. I was covered in dirt. Bloody. Beaten. Broken rib. A kneecap that had been busted. They looked at me, and my adoptive mother—my mother—she started crying. She rushed to me, and she hugged me and she said that it was all right. She knew, and she accepted what I’d done. My father got us the hell out of there. Told the cops that I was traumatized. He got me patched up in secret. He flew us across the country, and then he started paying everyone to protect me. To guard me. To watch me. Because I think, not so deep down, he was worried that I might kill again. That I might have changed in the coffin and become someone new.”
Her eyes closed as she shut out the light. “We all change. No one ever stays the same in this world.”
“Noble knew what I was. He knew that my parents were paying my way, bribing the whole town to accept me, giving me flashy cars, pushing me through life. Oh, fuck.” He heaved out a breath. “I sound just like that prick Cody Crenshaw, don’t I? A family, tossing around money.”
She whirled as her eyes opened. Locked on him. “You are nothing like Cody Crenshaw.” She knew that deep inside. In her heart. The heart that he’d claimed.
“Sloane…”
“You are nothing like him. I know you. You don’t hurt people who are weaker than you. You don’t target innocent people sleeping in their beds. You are no monster, Preston. Cody is a monster, straight to his core.” She wet her lips. “That’s not the approved psychological term, of course. But he’s a fucking monster.”
He held her stare.
“Tell me the rest.” She wanted him to share everything with her. Couldn’t he see that?
He swallowed. Twice. “Noble…”
“Yes. Tell me about Noble. About how the two of you wound up connected.”
“Noble was a kid I met when they moved me here. I got his spot on the football team because my dad thought I needed to work out my aggression. Coach put me in the same day he got a new pickup truck. Connect the dots, right? Meanwhile, Noble was benched. The guy freaking hated me when he was benched. He hated me when I scored higher than him in class. He hated me when I fucked his girlfriend.”
“You did what?” Okay, now he’d surprised her, and was that jealousy flaring?
“I did not know at the time!” He put his hands up. “I swear. I was a teenage idiot.” He crept closer to her. His hands fell. “Noble and I fought. A lot. At school. At random gas stations. We were always giving each other shit. One time, we totally destroyed a diner in town. Debra got called in. She yelled at our asses for hours, then she made the whole thing vanish.”
Because Debra had been watching out for him a very long time.
“Despite all of that, despite the havoc that Noble and I caused when we were together, I actually respected the guy. Everyone else fell in line. They bought the hype. The smoke and mirrors that my dad sold. He didn’t.” Preston’s voice dropped. “He knew I was trouble from the first moment. Noble couldn’t be bribed. He wouldn’t pretend I was something I wasn’t.”
So how did he come to work for you?
