house, dread curled through him, tightening his gut and sending goose bumps crawling across his skin.
That feeling increased as he mounted the stairs and then he looked inside her room.
For a hard, awful second, everything in the world stopped. Color drained, his heart ceased to beat, and everything just ended.
She lay on the bed, the bright banner of her hair spread around her like a cape. Her eyes were closed and her skin was unbelievably pale.
“Abby?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. The soft, dark brown eyes were dull. Lost.
Broken . . .
Then she closed her eyes. Not a single word was said.
Crossing the floor, he kicked off his boots and then settled on the bed behind her. He didn’t touch her, although everything inside him screamed for it. He wanted to wrap himself around her and rock her, hold her, stroke away the misery he knew was inside her. The raging beast of want that lived inside him wanted to strip her naked and fuck her, but that was something he’d lived with for a long while and he could deal with it.
Her pain was harder to handle and he didn’t know how to fix it and make it go away.
The misery he sensed inside her made him want to howl and break things but at the same time, he needed to comfort her and just find a way to make it all better.
But he didn’t touch her.
He could wait until she was ready.
* * *
The soft, sad little sniffles started about a minute after he lay down. Two minutes after that, she rolled toward him and squirmed closer until she could settle her head on his chest. Once she’d done that, he let himself wrap his arm around her and the soft, sweet warmth of her body against his was both agony and ecstasy, the best kind of pleasure and pain known to man.
He kept his other hand on his belly and a minute later, Abby reached out and started to trace the tip of one shell pink nail over the barbed wire design he had entwining his wrist. Now, if she’d just keep that up . . . he had tats going up his entire arm and she could stroke him all damn day—
“Roger left me,” she whispered.
Don’t say anything, he told himself.
Abby sniffled again and shifted her finger to the next tattoo, an eastern dragon that wrapped around most of his forearm. “He says he can’t marry me because I’m not being true to myself,” she said.
Zach closed his eyes. He never thought there would be a day when he actually agreed with that tightwad. Why in the hell did they have to agree on the one thing that would cause Abby pain? Turning his head, he rubbed his cheek against her soft, crazy curls. “Roger is an asshole,” he said.
“Yes. And he’s fucking wrong,” she said, heated fury slipping into her voice.
He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any point. It wasn’t up to him to tell Abby how to live her life. Even if she was stifling herself. Even if she was miserable half the time. Even if—
“He started rambling on about how I’m supposed to be an actress. I belong in that world and I’m denying myself and if I can’t be true to who I am, then he can’t expect me to be true to him,” she said.
Zach opened his eyes. “He what?”
She sat up and shoved her hair back from her face. The red curls tumbled right back into place and her dark brown eyes sparked with fury. “You heard me.” She pulled away from him and slipped off the bed. “That dipshit honestly thinks I miss that life.”
She started to pace, the slim-fitting skirt she wore clinging to a world-class ass. Mentally slapping himself, he drew one knee up to hide his hard-on. “Lots of idiots in this world can’t get the idea that we don’t miss that life.” He shrugged, not too worked up about the idea of that. What pissed him off was that Roger had hurt her. “That’s their problem. He actually called the wedding off over this?”
“Yes!” she wailed. Then she started to cry.
It was another punch to the heart. He went to her and she tried to push him away. “Damn it, I’m fine,” she said even as she tried to catch a breath. “I just . . . just need to . . .”
“You just need to get this out,” he said, swinging her