Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Fury sweeps through me so blisteringly hot, I think I might black out. I’ve been weighted by fear of this man but the moment he grabbed me, all sense of self-preservation and trying to talk him off the ledge dissipates. Left behind is an unnerving need for me to not only defend myself, but to hurt him so he knows not to fuck with me again.
“You son of a bitch,” I scream and with my free hand, launch a round house slap to the side of his head. It catches Grant off guard and he curses, but his grip doesn’t loosen. He starts to drag me deeper into the parking lot and I dig my heels down into the asphalt, leaning all my weight back from him.
And then I hear footsteps… someone running toward us… and I have enough time to register Van Turner yelling sharp but undistinguishable words.
I twist around and see Locke and Van barreling at us.
Grant sees them too, eyes almost bugging out of his head and he releases me. I careen into a car just as Locke drives his shoulder into Grant’s stomach. The force of the hit lifts him clean off his feet and he slams backward into the front of a big truck.
Then Locke pulls him up, and his fist connects with Grant’s jaw. Van is at my side, taking my arm and pulling me back so I don’t get hit.
Locke punches Grant again and the crack of it echoes through the parking lot.
Grant goes down but not gracefully. His legs give way and he’s a crumpled, unconscious heap on the pavement.
Locke stands over him, chest heaving, jaw tight, fists still closed. He nudges Grant with his toe but he’s motionless, and then he turns to me. “Are you hurt?”
I stare at him agog, but the question registers and I shake my head. The adrenaline is whipping violence into my blood and although my wrist throbs where Grant grabbed it, I’m okay.
I hear Van on his phone behind us, steady as he gives the address to what I can only assume is a 911 dispatcher.
Locke reaches out, taking my wrist to examine. I can see there’s blood on his knuckles. “You’re bruising,” he murmurs.
I step back, tugging my wrist from his hand, and his eyes sadden.
“Don’t.” It comes out harshly. The adrenaline is still pumping through me and underneath it, a low buzz of annoyance. “Don’t do that.”
He frowns.
“You don’t get to show up,” I say, my words shaking now from both fear and anger. “You walked out of my office and closed the door, then looked at me in that weight room like I was nobody, and now you’re here, and you’re—” I stop, heaving in a breath. “You don’t have the right to be my rescuer, Locke. You don’t have the right to show up and be the hero when you’ve made me feel like I don’t exist.”
To his credit, he winces, and I see the pain in his expression. I ignore it.
“You want to know what trust looks like?” The words are coming now and I can’t reel them back in. “It looks like standing in my office and telling you that I was with you and meaning every word of it. It looks like trying to reach you and being shut out and still showing up in that weight room because I wasn’t ready to give up on you.” My voice drops. “It doesn’t look like this. Coming in at the last second and landing a punch and thinking that makes us square.”
He absorbs that and his jaw tightens. “I know.”
Behind him Van is still on the phone, one eye on Grant’s unconscious form, the other on us, and I wonder what he makes of all this.
It’s a tomorrow problem though.
“Until you figure out what you actually want,” I say, “until you can let go of whatever Adam did to you enough to see me clearly and not as another person waiting to betray you, stay out of my life.”
Chapter 29
Locke
This morning I’m walking down the corridor of the west wing toward Patrick Rowe’s office, and I am aware that in nine years of professional hockey, I’ve never done what I’m about to do. I’m about to walk into an owner’s office voluntarily and divulge personal information about myself.
I’m about to be vulnerable.
I stop at Janine’s desk. “Is he in?”
She checks her screen. “He has fifteen minutes until his next appointment. Let me go ask.”
She disappears down the corridor to Patrick’s office and I pace back and forth. I think about the first time I walked into this building, when Portland was a question mark and Patrick Rowe was just the latest in a series of owners who’d decided I was worth the risk. I think about the months since and everything that has happened inside this building. I think about Livia Cross standing in a dark parking lot last night, refusing to look at me and telling me she can’t keep doing this.