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“That’s not what you are,” I tell her, the heat pressing against the back of my neck going cold. “Sun—”
“I also came up here to tell you that you need to leave.” Turning away from me, she shrugs the towel I wrapped her in off her shoulders while she digs through her pile of clothes. Finding her bra, she puts it on.
Even though leaving is exactly what I planned on doing, hearing her say it makes me angry. “Why the fuck would I need to leave?”
“Because—” Panties in hand, Kait stands up. “Brock was at the house when I got home.” Stooping she steps into them before straightening to pull them. “He saw me come down the mountain. He knows I was up here.” Finding her shirt—my shirt—she gathers it up before dropping it over her head. “And he knows I wasn’t alone.”
Hearing her say it, something washes over me. Something dark and heavy. Something that’ll drive me crazy if I let it. I recognize it for what it is now—have felt it plenty since the day I met her.
Jealousy.
Possessiveness.
“Good.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I shake my head even though I know that what I did to him the night he attacked Kait could spell disaster for us both. “I hope he—”
“Not good.” She shakes her head at me. “He doesn’t know you’re here.” Pants in hand, Kait sits on the edge of the bed to pull them on. “But he saw Damien coming down the mountain about fifteen minutes after I did.”
She doesn’t have to say anything else. Doesn’t have to give me any more of an explanation than that.
Brock thinks it’s my brother Kait’s been sneaking off to see—probably even that it was Damien in the woods that night who beat the shit out of him and took Kait away before he could hurt her.
Pants on, Kait stands on a sigh. “So, it actually works out that you’re leaving early because—”
“You’re right.” Advancing on her, I stop less than a foot from where she’s standing. “I am leaving early—as a matter of fact, I should already be gone.” Reaching for her, I wrap a hand around the back of her neck. Pressing the pad of my thumb into the underside of her chin, I tilt her face up so I can see it when I say what comes next. “We should already be gone.”
She jerks back like I took a swing at her when I say it. “Excuse me?”
“You really think I’m leaving here without you?” tightening my grip, I glare down at her, suddenly angry because I’m sure she’s going to tell me yes. That she fully expected me to sling my duffle over my shoulder and say so long, Sunshine without so much as a backward glance. “The only way I’m leaving is if you leave with me, so, actually what works out is that you showed up here when you did because it saved me the trouble of hiking down the mountain in the dark to bang on your front door.”
“You’re leaving.” She says it carefully like I might not understand what I’m saying. “And you want me to come with you?”
“That’s what I said.”
I can see it on her face before she even opens her mouth—no. She can’t leave. Can’t defy her father. Can’t walk away from her life, even if it’s a life she hates.
Not for me.
“I can’t—” Blue eyes yanked wide by the shock of the sudden turn of events. “I can’t just leave. I can’t—”
“Why?” Dropping my hand away from her face on a sigh, I shake my head. “Why can’t you?”
“Because…” Still shellshocked, she stares up at me. “Because my father—”
“Fuck your father.” I bite each word in half and spit them at her.
“You don’t understand…” Still shaking her head, Kait presses a hand to her stomach. “He’ll come for me. He won’t just let me go. He’ll find a way to make me come back.”
I don’t know which he she’s talking about—Brock or her father—but it doesn’t matter. “You don’t have to marry him, Sunshine. Not if you marry me first.”
“Marry you?” She stands there, mouth slightly open like she can’t catch her breath, staring at me like she has no idea what I’m saying. “I—”
“If you marry me, there’s nothing either one of them can do about it,” I reason with her. When she doesn’t answer me, I shake my head. “Your father can’t force you to get married twice—it’ll be done before he even knows you’re gone.”
“Went—”
“You’ll be free. Hell—you don’t even have to stay married to me if you don’t want to. We can just get a divorce.” Saying it out loud nearly kills me because it’s not what I want but I say it anyway because this isn’t about me. It’s about Kait. What she wants.
“Went—”