Free SOULLESS (Black Thorns, #2) by Franca Storm Page B

it’s my fault. I up and left her right after we almost fucking died in that car accident, right after we’d lost our baby. What did I expect? That she’d be the same person through and through; that all that hell weren’t gonna impact her?
    It’s killing me seeing her like this. And the worst part is, I got no idea how to bring her back and how to find my Rox buried down deep inside there somewhere.
    “I’m sorry ‘bout the way I handled shit at the bar, Rox. I just—”
    “It’s okay,” she says, cutting me off. “I get it.”
    “You do?”
    “If any of the women you’d fucked were suddenly thrown in my face like that, I’d be beyond pissed as well.”
    I can’t help laughing at that.
    “How’s it work, Rox? Having two people with raging bad tempers and both stubborn as fuck in a relationship?”
    A small giggle escapes her. “I don’t know. It just does.” Her body tenses up in my arms as she adds, “Or, it did .”
    An awkward silence falls between us.
    And then she says, “What Malcolm did to you…I’m—”
    “Didn’t come here to talk ‘bout me and him, Rox.”
    “We weren’t engaged, Neil. We weren’t even dating. I told you before that you’re my first relationship. We were just screwing around. It was mostly just business mixed with a little bit of…you know? He proposed out of the blue one day, a little while after I’d told him I was going to walk away. He did it to try to keep me, I guess. It was also around the same time that Skinner hurt me, so he always thought it was about that.”
    I can’t believe what a goddamn relief it is to hear that it weren’t fuck all between ‘em. Sure, I don’t like hearing ‘bout another man getting anywhere near her—fucking her—but ‘em being all serious and shit woulda been way worse. Cuz she’s mine . I was a first for her, just like she was for me. Before we got together the two of us never got involved with nobody—no emotions. And thinking she’d had that with another man, especially that sick fuck, was eating away at me.
    “How’d you even cross paths with a man like him?”
    “Power. Connections.”
    And then it all falls into place. “He helped you get your start in Brockford?”
    “Yeah. But once I was in a better position, I cut all ties to him. Ralph and I went it alone then.”
    “Ruthless,” I say, stroking her hair.
    “That’s me.”
    “ Was you.”
    She tenses in my arms again. “Don’t,” she murmurs.
    “We gotta talk ‘bout it, Rox.”
    “No, we don’t. I’m fine.”
    “You’re the farthest thing from fine. You’re drinking again. You’re…”
    “I’m what?”
    “Broken.”
    She lifts her head off my chest and pulls away, turning her back to me.
    “Babe, come back. We gotta deal with it and also what went down between us in that alley.”
    “We fucked. What’s there to talk about?”
    “You know what. Wouldn’t let me pull out, Rox.”
    “Just go, Neil. I’m tired.”
    “Ain’t going nowhere ‘til we talk.”
    A long silence falls between us. It’s like fucking torture. The room’s thick with all the unsaid shit between us. There’s so much of it that neither one of us knows where the hell to begin sorting through it. Her answering me ‘bout the alley situation will be a start.
    I gotta know.
    Cuz when she basically begged me to fill her sweet pussy earlier, a spark of hope lit inside me. It might be fucked up, cuz we ain’t even really together again yet, but the idea of getting a second chance here, putting my kid in her again—I can’t get it outta my head.
    I touch her shoulder, needing her to look at me, to give me something. Anything.
    But she shrugs outta my grip and mumbles into her pillow, “Go away, Neil. You’re going to anyway. When this threat is gone, I’ll leave here and we’ll be apart again. What’s the point in talking anything over if that’s our fate—you leaving me or me leaving you?”
    Fuck me. There it is.
    “I left to protect you. You know