Lead Me Home (Fight for Me #3)(5)

He stepped away from his car and slammed the door shut.

“Where were you tonight?” he demanded. As if I’d done something wrong.

Every inch of him was rugged and rough and commanding, his body dripping sex from behind a closed-off exterior.

It was all mixed up with this troubled kindness that weighed heavily in the depths of his sapphire eyes, his soft lips always quick to tip into a gentle smile.

He was an enigma.

A veiled mystery.

A cliffhanger waiting to be written.

Who was I kidding?

He was a goddamned mindfuck, that was what he was.

And he’d broken my heart one too many times for me to fall into that trap again.

A resigned sigh pilfered free. “I was at the women’s support group. Remember? The internship I have. You know . . . to finish my courses to graduate?”

I didn’t mean for the sarcasm to drip out with it, but it did. Ollie had this way of getting under my skin.

“Of course, I remember. I just didn’t think that’d mean you’d be running around at all hours of the night.” His return came out just as harsh.

“People have lives, Ollie. Jobs and families. It only makes sense for these types of meetings to happen after normal work hours, don’t you think?”

“Suppose so. Guess that just means I’ll have to drive you.” He said it as if it made perfect sense.

Why did he have to constantly do this to me? Pulling and pulling and pulling me closer.

And every time we collided, I only crashed into a brick wall.

“No, thank you.”

“I wasn’t asking.” His voice was gruff.

Hard and demanding.

An extension of the man.

I exhaled heavily. “You have a bar to run. And I’m not a little girl, in case you hadn’t noticed. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“You know that’s impossible.”

The jab of a knife.

That was what it felt like when he said things like that. A million little cuts over the years that left me continuously bleeding out.

“You haven’t shown up here for a year. Why now?”

He flinched, a streak of vulnerability flashing through his face. “Lillith came into Olive’s earlier. She said you bailed on her for drinks the other night, and you haven’t been to the bar for, like, a week. Texted you to check up, and you didn’t text back. Like I said, I got worried.”

Shit.

The last thing I needed was this man melting me.

“I rescheduled on Lily because I had a test I needed to study for. She knew that. I turn my phone off during the meetings so it doesn’t cause a distraction, and I barely just turned it back on in the car. And it’s been three days since I’ve been in the bar. Three days.”

Exasperation filled the last.

And there he was showing up as if he missed me.

But the way that he was looking at me had me wondering if he might. And those were dangerous thoughts I had no business entertaining.

“I’m a big girl, Ollie. I’m home. Safe. You can go on your way.”

That intense gaze flashed, and his mouth pinched into some kind of unfound resentment.

“Yeah. You’re safe. This time. Thank God, considering you were walking around at this time of night with your face buried in your phone, paying zero attention to your surroundings. You should know better than that. Which is why I will drive you next week.”

Annoyance blew out on my breath. He was impossible. “I was paying attention. I already had my phone programmed to 9-1-1 and mace in my hand. You think I didn’t notice someone driving like a creeper into the lot?”

“Paying attention? Hardly. You could have been gagged and shoved in my trunk before you even realized what was happening.”

I cocked my head. “The gagging I might be up for . . . not so sure about the trunk.”

Sometimes I couldn’t help but toss his nonsense right back.

Ollie growled. Actually freaking growled, and chills were flashing across my flesh, a whirlwind of energy that skated my skin like a rough, demanding caress.

“Not a joking matter, Nikki,” he grated, taking a jolting step forward and getting right in my face.

No.

He was right.

It wasn’t. Not after Sydney had gone missing fourteen years ago.

She’d left a chasm right in the center of us.

A black hole in our bright, shining sky.

Gaping and bleeding and pleading.

She’d wandered out into the night and disappeared without a trace.

That night, I’d lost both of them. Sydney was gone and Ollie had all but turned to stone.

Yeah. We still ran in the same circle. A circle that was tight. As close as family, the bonds forged between us just as important. Maybe more so.

The thing was, Ollie and I were on the opposite sides of that circle, keeping each other at arm’s length and a world away.

Yet, somehow, after all this time, he continued to remain possessive of me. Keeping me under his guarded watch. As if I were a child he needed to protect. As if he’d forgotten everything we’d been through together.

What we’d almost been to each other.

I’d made the mistake of falling for him a long, long time ago.

When I was little more than a kid.

The problem was, he would never allow himself to fall for me.