Page 76 of Faded Gray Lines

She lifted her chin and bit her bottom lip, a small cut in the middle opening up and blooming red. “Do you promise? I need to believe in something, Matty.”

I kissed her again. “Believe in us, Star. Believe in me. Tomorrow we’ll leave this place behind, and it’ll be you and me against the world.”

* * *

Present Day

But it wasn’t. She faced the world alone while I rotted behind steel bars.

Blowing out a frustrated breath, I opened the door to find her pacing like a caged lion, holding her ripped dress together like a shield. I’d barely taken a step into the townhouse when she froze mid-stride and raised her chin, her matted blonde hair stuck to her cheeks. The primal ache from earlier subsided as the sad young girl I once knew gazed up at me with widened eyes. The earlier tepidness was gone and a flicker of something brand new lit behind the familiar flatness.

“We have to talk.” Closing the door behind me, I avoided her stare as I dropped my phone on a side table.

“He told you I’m hiding something, didn’t he?”

Although every emotion I had was tied up in fucking knots, a slight smirk still tugged at the corner of my mouth. In one five-minute phone call, my dimming star had exploded. I just wasn’t sure if her explosion would light up the sky or incinerate everyone around her.

With what I’d just learned, my money was on the latter.

“Why do you assume he’d say that?”

“Why not? Every man in my life has betrayed me.”

Pissed off at being included in that group, I turned. “I’ve never betrayed you.”

I hadn’t. Although I’d done a hell of a lot of immoral and evil things, I’d never once betrayed her. I couldn’t. Hell, she may have been the only person in my whole life who’d looked past thesicarioand seen the man behind the gun.

“Are you sure about that, Matty?” She stared at me without blinking. It was as if she were afraid the moment she closed her eyes my mask would slip.

“Are you, Star?” My counter hit a nerve. Her battle-ready stance shifted, and her whole demeanor changed. Shoulders that moments earlier had tensed and drawn upward sagged and she finally blinked. A few seconds of silence stretched into a minute. Then another minute. Then another. Leighton and I weren’t compatible in any way that counted, but I loathed the silence between us. Emilio’s words had rattled me, but I was more concerned with reaching behind the wall she’d just fallen over and pulling her back.

It wasn’t because she needed me. I could pump myself full of all the chivalrous, white-knight bullshit I wanted, but that wasn’t my style. Growing up cartel had made me a realist, and a realist always knew who he was and the reasons behind his actions. At my very core, I was a selfish son of a bitch who needed her more than she needed me.

I also needed answers—ones she probably never intended on giving, but I was past the point of giving a shit. Wondering had robbed me of four years of sleep, but I now wasn’t sure I was prepared to hear the truth. Not only because I didn’t want my suspicions validated, but I feared the monster she would unleash by doing so.

“Why did you ask me to run away with you that night?”

Holding her dress with one hand, Leighton shifted away from me. “I told you already. I needed to get away from home.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“For God’s sake, I just couldn’t take it anymore!”

For the second time in less than five minutes, we stared at each other in silence. I fucking hated it. I was a Carrera. I demanded respect, but the blank look in her eyes, and a past I’d never been able to let go of afforded her a courtesy anyone else would’ve taken a fist for.

My patience.

“Leighton…” I moved toward her cautiously as if she were a caged animal. “What happened to you in that house? What haven’t you told me?”

For a moment, the slight quiver of her lip and dampness pooling in the corner of her eyes made me think I’d finally get the truth out of her. As much as I didn’t want Emilio’s words validated, I needed her confession or her denial. Even after everything I’d learned about her, time had done nothing to tame my need to protect her.

Depending on her answer, a man would die tonight. Slowly, painfully, and with the mercy of a thousand demons.

Leighton’s honey-brown eyes darkened as horrors replayed behind them I couldn’t see. She shook her head, her lashes fluttering closed and her hands fisting by her sides. I counted the seconds until she finally opened them.

Six.

Six seconds for her to one-eighty on me again. Whatever rage had just swelled inside her was gone, leaving a forced smile plastered across her face.