Page 67 of The Retaliation You Deliver

“I’ll never lie to you again. Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

“Anything?” I ask, praying that he’s being honest with me because if I even consider trusting him with this and he ruins it again, it’s going to break me.

“Anything.”

“Fine. Your one hour starts now.”

Ripping my eyes away from his, I drop into the seat and fasten my seatbelt.

“Thank you,” he breathes, closing the door behind me and jogging around the hood to join me.

12

Leon

All week I’ve fought my need to see her. I’ve tracked her cell around campus, my muscles twitching to walk out of my own classes so I could go and join hers, wait for her when she was finished, or just pull out the seat beside her in the coffee shop and just be with her.

But I didn’t.

I stayed strong and gave her the space she needs after she walked away from me on Sunday night.

Watching her turn her back on me after I followed her there was brutal, but no less than I deserve.

But tonight when I saw that she was in the library again, probably suffering through another dull as fuck study session when she could be doing something much more fun, my restraint snapped.

I’ve spent all week drowning in my misery, trying to come up with how I can bring all of this to an end that doesn’t involve ruining my life in the process.

Everyone around me is right. It’s time to properly start dealing with all this shit and look forward, not back like I’ve done for the past decade.

Richard Fletcher has taken enough from me. My innocence, my childhood, I refuse to let him have my future or any more of my happiness.

He shouldn’t hold that power over me.

I breathe out a calming breath as I wrap my fingers around the door handle and pull it open, knowing that I’m about to get assaulted by her coconut scent and lose myself entirely to her presence.

She’s addictive.

She’s also mine, she just might not realize it yet.

She sits in silence, twisting her hands in her lap as I start the car and back out of the space.

A million and one questions dance on the tip of my tongue but I swallow them all down, not wanting to bombard her when she’s clearly already questioning her sanity by allowing this to happen.

The second I’m off campus, I floor the gas, speeding us toward a place I know that we can be alone to talk.

She’s given me an hour and like fuck am I wasting any of that time by driving like an old woman across town.

A little whimper rumbles up her throat as I take a corner a little too fast and I can’t help but smile. My innocent little Macie loves the thrill of a fast ride, even if she won’t admit it.

Images from Saturday night come back to me and my cock swells in my pants as I think about her hot little body pressed up against the hotel window.

The Macie I met that first night when I was with Charlie who looked like a rabbit caught in headlights never would have stood there like that thinking that everyone below could see her beautiful naked body.

But my Macie isn’t the shy one everyone else sees. She sheds her pretense, that mask that everyone sees when she’s with me and I get to experience the woman she’s forced into hiding all these years.

What I want to know is why. Why does she feel the need to hide the incredible woman that she is and what she really wants?

I mean, I know the answer.