Page 104 of Hide From Me

She pulled away, but I held tighter.

“Rylee, what would you have wanted from me? You needed to fucking grow up. I didn’t know then why I felt this need to protect you. You were a fucking teenager.”

Something wet dropped to my arm and that’s when I heard a sniffle.

“Fuck. Please don’t cry.”

She turned around in my arms.

“I don’t know if I should hate you or love you right now. You’re telling me that you sent me away to what? Grow up? But then you watched me? You set my path. What in my life hasever been my choice? Certainly nothing with my mother. Not anything with my aunt. College?”

She started to pound at my chest with her fists, and I let her.

“Rylee, you can be mad, but you chose to come back here. That was your choice. I just made sure that when you did, you would have a job and a place to live that was worthy of you. I tried to let you live your life, but I couldn’t stay away.”

I grabbed her fists and stopped her from hurting herself.

“Let me go. You’ve lied to me my whole life. You’re like everyone else. And what does that make me? How fucked in the head am I that I just came running back into the arms of a-a…” her eyes were wild as she tried to think of whatever she could think to call me.

“What? A murderer? A known criminal? The leader of the most notorious gang?”

She paused.

“You are all of those things. Aren’t you? I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know. But you are. I don’t think you know how to love. You tell me you love me, but you can’t possibly when you don’t have a soul.”

She kept trying to pull away, and everything in me refused to allow her.

“You’re right, blossom.”

I held her hands as I stood to my towering height above her and started to back her away from the kitchen. Away from the door.

“I might not have a fucking soul anymore, but I sure as hell know that the only reason my heart beats is because of you. I might have killed more than I can possibly count, but it was always for you. Always for a better life, and if that meant I had to make sure that every fucking obstacle that stood in my way was taken care of? So fucking be it.”

Her hands clenched under my hold.

“Fuck you, Cas. Fuck you. Control isn’t love.”

She was probably right, but all I could do was sneer at her.

“Maybe it isn’t, but it’s all I know because the only thing I’ve ever loved was something I couldn’t have, and it drove me crazy.”

I had her pressed against the wall. Her arms held above her head.

“Tell me, Rylee. Would that sad, broken little girl have been able to handle watching me leave a trail of bodies? Would you have been able to watch Zeiden and Xander help me torture assholes in order to get them to give me information that allowed me to steal my way into the life you see around you?”

Fuck if her breasts weren’t rising and falling with each rapid breath, her nipples grazing over my bare chest.

“I wouldn’t know. Would I? You sent me to live with a whore that hated me.”

The hatred in her eyes was something I could work with. I could work with pure anger.

“I knew. I knew you needed to heal. But fuck if I didn’t regret it every fucking day. But, Rylee. Here you are.”

She tried to release her hands, and I just held tighter.

“Yeah. Here I am. Because I lost my fucking mind thinking you were some fucking Prince Charming. You were nothing but some toxic fantasy.”

I shifted closer because, god help me, I needed to just breathe her in.