East Bound by Nana Malone (big ebook reader txt) 📕

When reached my townhouse, I started to honestly think that my wishful thinking had manifested shadows of him following me. In my relief, or perhaps my disappointment, I said aloud, “You really are losing your shit, aren't you?”

There was a low rumble that was almost a coherent sentence in the hallway behind me. “What the fuck do you think you're doing walking home alone from the tube?”

Panic seized and squeezed my heart, and I whirled around in shock. “Jesus fucking Christ, East. You scared me half to death. I knew I felt you. I couldn't explain it, but I knew you were following me.”

“Are we going to go inside?”

My gaze flickered to my door. “I'm not sure that's a good idea.”

“Nyla, we need to talk. And you know we need to talk.”

I slid my key into the lock, then opened my door. Maybe if I rushed to close it, I could close him out of my heart. No such luck. He was right behind me.

Come on in why don’t you?

I dropped my keys onto the table in the vestibule and turned to face him. “I have said everything I intend to say to you. I have no words left, East.”

“Fine. Then I have some words for you.”

I lifted a brow. “You have something to say to me? What could you possibly have to say that can be any worse than what you already said and thought about me? There’s a thing called death by a thousand cuts. You have cut me infinite times in the last two weeks. I can't take much more.”

His next words were so rushed I wasn't sure I'd heard them correctly. “Nyla, I can't do this anymore.”

“What?” I asked as he stepped further out of the shadows, letting the light illuminate his gorgeous face.

“This,” he said as he waved his fingers between the two of us, pointing back and forth. “I don't want to do this anymore. But I can't stay away from you.”

“Can't or won't?”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, fine. Won't.”

“That's not how this works. You think I betrayed you. You think I looked you in the eyes and lied. That's what you think. You have zero faith in me, but I'm supposed to throw caution to the wind and have all kinds of faith in you?”

He shifted on his feet. “Nyla, try to understand. What I saw in that flat… I couldn't let that go.”

“We're back to the same thing East. Instead of talking to me, trying to see what the hell had gone wrong, you assumed that I could do such a thing because that's what you think I'm capable of. What kind of person do you think that makes me?”

He ran his hands through his hair. “I don't know what the fuck to think. I wanted you so badly, and to think that I'd been wrong about you, about everything, I just couldn't take it. All I knew was I had to get away from you as fast as humanly possible. I had to cut you out. I had to perform surgery on my heart with no field dressing, just bleeding out everywhere. I had to in order to protect my team.”

“Jesus Christ, you still don't get it. You didn't have to do that; you chose to do that. I let you get closer to me than anyone else in the world. I opened my heart to you. And you trampled on it, because God help you if you had to have an actual conversation with me. No, it was easier if I fit into some mold you imagined. Unfortunately, East, it’s not easy for me to forgive that, and you lost that chance when you just deliberately set to cut me out knowing everything you know about me and my family. You broke my heart.”

“I didn't know it then, but I was breaking my own heart too. I didn't know at the time that you were in my bones. In my blood. I thought I could protect myself. Protect the team. The only thing I was doing was fighting myself. All I really wanted to do was find you, wrap you in my arms, and shake you until I forced you to tell me what the fuck was going on.”

“Then why didn't you do that? Why was your solution to freeze me out?”

“I've never let anyone close before, Nyla. Sure. I've thought I had, but it wasn’t anything like this. I've never felt this shattered about a betrayal. You broke me.”

I couldn't help it; I shoved at his chest, but the arsehole didn't move. “I never betrayed you. From the moment I saw what Amelia had planned, what she was looking for, I've been trying to deter her by my damn self. All because you can't see past your own obtuseness to see me. To believe me.”

He stepped closer. “I see you. I've always seen you. Even when I was so busy running away from you, I couldn't fathom you doing this to me, but it still hurt. And it hurts only because I care so fucking much, and I don't want to. But you're here, and you're not leaving. And I can't fucking stay away from you. So stop asking me to.”

I threw my hands up. “I never asked you to stay away from me. That was your choice. I only asked you to stop hurting me.”

And then he did the thing that I didn't know he could. I watched him forgive me, and let go. There was nothing to forgive of course. But his mind had still been holding on to that piece of Nyla he thought could do something like that to him. He had to reconcile her with reality and the truth. And only when he did that would he be able to see where we were. It happened in front of my eyes as he watched me, as the full acceptance sunk