Page 68 of Dearest Protector

Fuck!For a man like me who hated uncertainty and liked to know exactly what odds he was facing going into any situation, the thought of jumping in completely blind was torture.

This isn’t a goddamn business deal.

I could afford to lose a few of those business ventures if the odds weren’t in my favor.

But Ariel?

Fuck, no!

Losing her was unfathomable now and pulling her closer to me by telling her everything was going to be the biggest risk I’d ever taken.

Maybe the odds weren’t in my favor, but I’d jump in anyway, headfirst if necessary.

There were no other alternatives for me.

Chapter 17

Ariel

Iyawned as I closed my laptop and put it on the bedside table.

I’d gotten a lot of work done on a commissioned piece I was doing for a large company, but it was after two in the morning now, and I was exhausted.

It was weird how time could fly by when I was working on something.

Ben had turned in a long time ago, but I hadn’t been able to sleep, so I’d opened my laptop. What seemed like a few minutes had actually turned into two hours.

While commissioned works weren’t my favorite thing to do, they brought in a lot of income for me. And even though I knew what theme I was working on for a requested image, it still took a lot of creativity to reimagine those pieces.

I glanced down at my legs and smiled when I finally got to the painted toenails I’d polished earlier this evening.

I flexed my right foot without a single twinge of pain.

The incision where they’d removed the hardware was just one more scar that was a little angrier than the rest of them, but I’d accepted the fact that they were never going away completely.

That scar would fade just like every other scar on my body.

When I looked at my foot now, I no longer saw the shattered dreams that had haunted me before, so it wasn’t nearly as unsightly as it had been.

It’s just…a previous injury. Not ugly. Definitely not a reason to sweat my feet with socks all the time just because I hate looking at it.

Maybe my change in attitude had to do with the fact that I didn’t see myself as a loser or a failure anymore.

Did I occasionally doubt myself still?

I did, but those thoughts were getting less and less frequent.

I was happy with my life, probably happier than I’d ever been before. I had a new career that I loved, and the circle of people who truly cared about me was getting larger. I also had people to care about in return.

No one who really cared about me gave a damn about those scars, so why should I?

I’d still have to keep doing the physical therapy I’d started about a week ago, but I was walking, which was all that really mattered to me.

Yeah, I still had to baby that foot until it was stronger, but any discomfort I’d felt with the hardware in was now gone.

Now, if I could just figure out what in the hell is wrong with Ben, my life would be nearly perfect.

He’d insisted that everything was fine, but it wasn’t.