Page 45 of Property of Prowler

Fact - He was cozy with his ex earlier.

Fact - I wanted to rip her hair out for touching him.

Fact - I wanted to rip his hair out for touching her.

Fact - You have to trust those you love.

She stared at the last sentence followed by the flashing cursor, taunting her to write another sentence. One she found almost impossible to write.

The people she’d loved and trusted most in her life had done their fucking best to destroy her. For a long time, they’d succeeded, or rather she’d let them succeed. Once she broke the cycle, she’d sworn to herself never again.

Never fucking again.

If she never trusted, then no one on God’s green earth could destroy her like that.

Never trusting meant never loving again.

It wasn’t like Dr. Fayne hadn’t told her that a thousand different times and a thousand different ways, but she just refused to take it to heart. Refused to make herself vulnerable to that kind of pain … until Prowler.

Letting him into her bed and her heart was the best and worst thing to ever happen to her.

Best because she had so much to gain, and worst because she could lose even more.

If Prowler broke that trust—not just her suspicions and jealousy, but truly broke it—she would lose herself. All that she’d rebuilt after every man in her life had tried, Prowler would most certainly succeed.

That thought put the whole shifter thing into perspective.

With the willing suspension of disbelief, the shifter thing didn’t bother her. In fact, if it were true, and if they existed, that made everything better actually. If the romance books and movies are to be believed, shifters are faithful. In most cases she’d watched or read, they were physically incapable of hurting their mates. No cheating, no beatings, no violence directed at their mates.

In one book she’d read, it made them physically ill to touch another or hurt their partner.

Successful relationships, at least the ones she’d read about because the good Lord knew she hadn’t seen one up close and personal, started with honesty.

Prowler had secrets, and he’d have to share them with her, but that meant she had to share hers too.

No one knew all of her story, not even Dr. Fayne. Sure, some people knew some, others knew more. Obviously, the perpetrators knew some, but no one knew it all.