Believe (True Believers #3)(60)
Author: Erin McCarthy

I was never brave.

For once I needed to be brave.

If I expected Phoenix to have my back, I had to have his, right?

But this was illegal. So wrong. Phoenix wouldn’t want me to do this. “What if I say no?”

He shook his head slowly. “You don’t want to say no, trust me.”

My heart was racing, and I felt sick to my stomach, but I knew this was too risky. Either way it was risky, so it was better to take the legal risky route. “Yes,” I told him. “Yes, I do.”

He took a step forward, the knife in his hand, and I was pulling out my phone, dialing 911 already when the front door opened.

It was Tyler, Phoenix, Riley, and Rory. It took the guys all of three seconds to assess the situation.

“Go,” Tyler said to Rory, shoving her back out the front door while shielding her with his body. “Lock the car until Robin comes out, then go.”

I was already bolting toward the kitchen, knowing full well Davis would reach for me, which he did. But I was fast, or maybe too scrawny, because only his fingertips touched my arm. Or maybe Phoenix or Riley pulled him backward. I didn’t turn around to look, I just ran.

But I did hear Phoenix say to him, “If you ever come near my girlfriend I will f**king kill you with my bare hands, you know I will.”

A shiver slipped up my spine. Once I was in the driveway, I finally let out the breath I was holding and got in the car with Rory. “Who was that?” she asked, looking scared.

“Drug dealer. Drive around the block. Do you think we should call the cops?”

“I don’t think the guys would like that. Easton, you know, the custody. Did he have a gun?”

“Not that I saw.” Rory cruised down the street, but she was already using voice command to call Tyler. He didn’t answer.

Suddenly feeling like I was going to throw up, I stuck my head between my legs. “I don’t think I handled that very well,” I told her, my words muffled from the fabric of my dress.

“I think you handled it better than I would have. I would have peed my pants.” Her phone rang, and she answered it. “Are you all okay?” Relief crossed her face. “Okay, good. We’ll be back in a minute.”

She hung up. “Everything is okay. They’re all fine and Davis left. He knew he was outnumbered. Phoenix wants you to meet him at the park in half an hour.”

***

I expected it to be awkward when I saw Phoenix. I had been shut down physically and emotionally when he left my parents’, and we hadn’t exactly had the best conversation. I also knew he would be feeling guilty about Davis.

But when I pulled into the parking lot at the park, he was sitting on a bench already waiting for me, hair in his eyes, arm tossed carelessly over the back. His eyes were closed, like he was enjoying the sun, and any nerves I had evaporated.

God, I loved him. I looked at him, and it just made my heart ache.

When I stepped out of the car, he was already standing, and he came toward me, steady, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. He was wearing one of the band shirts I had given him for his birthday.

Without saying a word to me, he just cupped my face with his hands and kissed me. It was a deep, intense kiss, his tongue sliding across my bottom lip, his breath hot and sweet. His fingers were rough and callused on my skin, but his touch was gentle, worshipful, his kiss everything I could have hoped for and more.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said in echo. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I was an ass**le.”

“I shouldn’t have screamed at you. You’re right, I was shutting down.” I snaked my arms around his waist and leaned into the familiar feel of him, taking in his masculine scent, the warmth of his shirt from the sun, the muscles in his thighs against me.

“Come here,” he said, pulling me to the bench, and onto his lap. “God, when I saw you with Davis . . . I’m sorry. I never thought that he would find you.”

“I know, it’s not your fault.” I perched there, fingers clenching his T-shirt, kissing him again, and sucking lightly on his lower lip, relieved that he didn’t seem furious with me. I started crying, I couldn’t help it. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.

“Thank you for the card.”

He smiled. “You make me sappy.”

“I like sappy.”

His thumb rubbed over my hand and his expression grew serious. “Robin, you know that I’ve always been someone who lived in the now, who dealt with the now. But for the first time ever, you made me believe in a future. You made me want a future. You made me believe in you and me. And when I saw Davis with you . . . I thought, how can I drag you into my shit like that? I can’t ever walk away from the past. It’s always going to be with me.”

“I know that.”

He nodded. “And I also realized that it’s not up to me to protect you or save you from being with me. That you’re smart and you know what you want and I trust that.”

That meant more to me than anything else could have. “I know that what I want is you. I believe in you and me, too. And when I was there in the house with Davis, I realized what it must have been like for you to find me passed out, and I never want to hurt you like that again.”

He didn’t say anything. He just kissed me, a deep, tender kiss that made my whole body tingle.

“Phoenix, what happened to your hands?” I had looked down and realized his knuckles were bruised and scabbed, and his hands were actually swollen. “Is that from your fight with Nathan? It looks too old for what happened today.”

But he shook his head. “No. I have to tell you that you were right—I can’t react to every crisis with anger. That’s my problem that I have to deal with. When I was a kid I was diagnosed as having intermittent explosive disorder. It means I lose my shit uncontrollably. I always think I can control it, which is dumb considering the very definition means I lose it. So I have no right to criticize you for slipping and drinking. I went off on that car, and I would have preferred to go off on Nathan.”

It wasn’t surprising to me. I knew his anger was different, deeper. “I start alcohol counseling next week, just so you know. What scares me is how I sat there with that bottle and knew that it would make feel better, short term, but worse long term. Yet I couldn’t resist it. Not really.”

“My rage is alive . . . it’s like it’s moving cell by cell through my body. I should probably take the medication.” He gave me a small smile, brushing my hair back. “If you can deal with your stuff, I can deal with my stuff, and we’ll deal together. Fair?”