least I won’t have to worry that someone took you from me!”
“I don’t care about me,” I yell back at him, my face flush. I don’t care what happens to me, so long as I get to see Donna before she dies.
“I know that too, but I care. I care. Do you still not get it? You’re everything to me. If something happened to you, I’d kill myself. You are the only person that matters to me, and if you die, I die with you.”
Tears fill my eyes, and my lungs burn. “Zane, I have to see her. I know that I’m the most important person to you, but Donna is important to me, and she’s dying right now. I need to be there with her. I need to say goodbye.”
His jaw turns to steel, and he lets out a growl that’s more animal than human. “Fuck, Dove, if something happens to you. They’re looking for you. For both of us. I can’t protect you out there. I can’t make sure nothing happens to you out there.” For the first time ever, I see panic fill his eyes. I see fear, real fear, and it sinks in just how much I mean to him.
I thought it was just an obsession, but it’s clear it’s more, deeper.
“You have to let me do this. I know you’re scared. I am too, and I don’t even know who it is that’s trying to hurt me, but I’d rather die than not be there when she takes her last breath. Please, Zane. Please do this for me. I won’t fight you anymore. I won’t try to escape, just, please… Please, give me this last moment with her.”
Zane looks like a statue, his entire body is rigid, every muscle clenched. Terror is all I see when I look at him. A man terrified of what may happen. If he lets me go, and if he doesn’t.
Like lightning striking, he snaps out of it. “We will go, but you will remain by my side the entire time. You will not go anywhere without me. If anything happens, we will leave and come back here. I will not risk your life. If it’s not safe, we won’t go inside.”
He’s barely finished laying down the ground rules, and I’m off the bed, running into the closet to get some clothes. I’m dressed in seconds and walk back out into the bedroom to find Zane standing in the same spot. He looks to be lost in thought, and my heart sinks into my stomach. Has he changed his mind?
When he sees me, his gaze flicks over my dressed form. “Ready to go?”
“Yes, are you?”
Crossing the space separating us, he takes my cheeks into his hands and leans down, so his lips are a centimeter away from my own. “I’m ready, but I’ve never been more scared of something happening to you than I am right now.”
“Nothing will happen,” I assure him even though I don’t know anything about who is after us, or why they would want to hurt us.
“You’re so naive and so good. I wouldn’t expect you to understand how dangerous this is. I just want you to know that if something happens to you, anything at all, I will blame myself forever, and I’ll gladly put a bullet between my own eyes. You’re my world, and if you’re not in it, then there is nothing left for me to live for.”
I feel each word slicing through my skin and piercing my heart. This man is consuming me, and while I know I shouldn’t feel a single thing for him, my emotions are twisting, becoming more confusing with each day I’m here. I shouldn’t want Zane, but a part of me is drawn to him, to his darkness.
“Everything is going to be okay,” I say before gently pressing my lips to his. I don’t know what is going to happen. What I do know is that I have to get to Donna before it’s too late.
The sunlight feels good against my skin after not seeing it for a while. I won’t lie, I hate the reason we are leaving, but I’m happy to get some fresh air and leave the confines of that place. As it turns out, we are in the middle of nowhere, miles from the city, so even if I had escaped, it wouldn’t have mattered much. The entire drive Zane white knuckles the steering wheel, his eyes darting between the rearview mirror and