Confusion crossed Samson’s face as he took in Peter’s presence. “Excuse me. I didn’t realize something was—” Then his gaze fell on Rhiannon’s face, and he stopped and shoved the door wider, stepping over the threshold. “Is everything okay in here?”
“Everything’s fine,” Peter snapped.
“Peter was just leaving,” she said, with as much calm as she could muster.
“I was not.”
“I want you to leave,” she insisted, dropping all pretense.
“But you want him here? I see what’s going on.” That familiar cold fury was in Peter’s voice, the fury she’d always shrank away from toward the end of their relationship. “Fuck you, you bitch—” He strangled on the last word because Samson strangled him.
It took a blink. That was all. The same fraction of a second it might take someone to swipe right or left on a photo.
Samson pinned her ex against the wall with his arm across Peter’s throat. “If I hit you,” Samson said, in a calm, quiet tone, the same chilling tone he’d used when the drunk on the rooftop had called him the Curse, “I could kill you. Do you see how that’s possible?”
Peter gave a short nod, his range of motion limited by Samson’s grip.
“I don’t care what your relationship with Rhiannon was, but if you ever speak to her like that again, if you ever ignore her request to leave her alone, I will find you. One hit is all it would take. Understand?”
“Yes,” Peter choked out.
Samson waited a beat, then stepped back, releasing him. “Leave,” he said, and Peter bolted like his feet were on fire.
Samson closed the door and looked at Rhiannon. “You okay?”
She should say yes. She should nod and grab her sweatshirt and put it on. Layers on layers. No vulnerabilities.
But instead, she sank to the side of the bed and dropped her head into her shaking hands. The bed depressed next to her, and a big hand rubbed up and down her back in a soothing motion.
This wasn’t so much a reaction to Peter scaring her, though that was part of it. No, this was about Samson.
He’d come, right when she’d asked him to. She hadn’t really even doubted that he’d come, not if he got her text. When had she decided to trust him like that? When was the last time she’d dared to trust a man like that?
Hope, her enemy. It had crept in and taken root.
The remnants of fear and anxiety twisted her up inside. He scooted closer and she pressed herself against him, pathetically grateful for his warmth. “I’m scared of the dark.”
“What?”
Her words spilled over each other. “It’s me. Not Peter. My little brother went missing one day during a game of hide-and-seek. I went looking for him and got locked in a shed. They didn’t find me for almost nine hours.” Her mom’s employer had taken an ax to the door, because no one had had a key to the old shed. She could still recall the smell of her mother’s sweat when they’d gotten her out. “I’m not claustrophobic, but I can’t stand the dark.”
He seemed to know exactly what she needed and when, because he shifted and drew her into his lap. He squeezed her so hard, she made a noise. He loosened his grip immediately, but she rested her hand on his arm. “No, you know I like being held like that. Can you do it again?”
He squinted at her, but obliged. “You’ll have to tell me if I hurt you.”
“Tighter,” she said instead, and murmured happily when he complied. Her own little head-to-toe compression force.
“You two had a personal relationship? You and Peter?”
She was held so snug, it was like she was in her own world of comfort, a world where she could confess anything. “Peter and I dated when I was at Swype. He had pursued me for years, and it was flattering. He was a great boyfriend at first. Then he stopped being a great boyfriend. He started to make me feel . . . small. I hated it. It took me a couple months, but I ended things.”
“And you left Swype?”
“I didn’t want to, but I had to. Because I stopped sleeping with him.” She hadn’t realized her hands had tightened into fists until her nails cut into her skin. “He couldn’t fire me because of my contract. So he set out to tell everyone I was a gold-digging whore who was terrible at my job. People in the company, people out of it. He harassed me