“You have to stop thinking I’m a good man. I’m not.”
“You have to stop thinking you’re all bad. You’re not,” she countered.
“Damn it, Seychelle, has it occurred to you that maybe I’m trying to save your ass?”
Her eyebrow shot up. “Just how are you doing that? By coming here all the time and crawling into my bed? By showing me how sweet you are? How are you saving me? You’re seducing me, Savage, little by little. You know you are, so just own it.”
She ate the eggs because they were protein and they tasted so good she couldn’t help herself. She debated about the potatoes. Carbs. Calories. She had hips. A butt. Breasts. She wasn’t buying into his compliments. He might like her figure now, but a few more pounds and he’d be looking elsewhere. Who was she kidding? He might come to her every other night and crawl into her bed, but he wasn’t interested in having sex with her. What did that tell a woman?
He wasn’t attracted. He might have a permanent erection, because she could see it, but it wasn’t for her. It wasn’t about her. She hadn’t put it there in spite of the fact that she thought she had at first. He came to her because she did what no other woman could do—she took away the rage in him. She soothed him enough that he could sleep when nothing else could get him there. This was about something other than physical attraction, and she knew if she fell for this man, he would need someone else besides her—other women. There would always be other women.
“I know,” he said. “I’m always at war with myself. You’re so damn honest, Seychelle, and you don’t pull your punches. You tell the truth, and you make me face up to mine as well. That truth being, if I wasn’t trying to save you, I’d just move in.”
She laughed. “The house isn’t big enough, and I swear, Savage, I’d gain so much weight I’d have to take up running, and I’m just too lazy for that.”
“We’re not talking about your weight again. Eat the potatoes and we’ll go for a walk. You don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive and you walk all over town.”
That was true. She liked walking, and Sea Haven wasn’t that big, although it was sloped, so she always felt like she was walking uphill when she was visiting her ladies.
“When are you going to come to a Thursday-night jam with the brothers?”
He hadn’t asked her in a while. She sighed. “I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. I thought they might have found another singer by now.”
“They have their hearts set on you. You sing like a fuckin’ angel.”
“I don’t think you can say angel and fuck in the same sentence without some kind of repercussions, Savage.”
“Babe. Really? I’m going to hell, if that’s what you’re implying, so I can say or do any damn thing I want here on earth.”
“You could try not to go to hell,” she suggested, and took a cautious bite of the potatoes. It was a major mistake. She knew it would be. They tasted so good. Perfect. Of course they were perfect. He was leading her down a path she knew better than to take, and he was even getting her to eat food she knew better than to eat. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be going straight to hell with him.
He was giving her too much of himself—the real man, not the one that was steeped in violence. She had the one no one else knew. He was her best friend. They shared laughter and silly things. They shared truth, no matter how embarrassing or painful. They took care of the elderly and enjoyed their stories. Simple things mattered, like eating eggs and then walking together on the headlands with the wind blowing in their faces.
“You know I have no choice.”
There was so much sadness in his voice, she wanted to go to him and put her arms around him. It was all she could do to stay in the chair. It was definitely getting harder to keep herself from being all in with him. That deep well of self-loathing in him disturbed her. She knew he fought every day with himself just to stay alive. She tried to give him as much of herself as she could without compromising her heart, but she knew it wasn’t enough. On some level, he knew it too.
“You finished?” Savage stood up abruptly and took her plate, not even commenting on the fact that she hadn’t really eaten all the hash browns. Normally, he never would have let her get away with that. He put both plates in the sink, something else he never did, and he took her hand. “Let’s go. I need to get some fresh air.”
He didn’t say another word, just handed her a jacket, pulled on his own and shoved open the door before taking her hand again. She let him. She saw inside him now. It wasn’t a surprise to her that sex, violence and pain were all wrapped together in one terrible knot that was tight and bright red with blood dripping down flesh from stripes etched into skin. She absorbed it calmly, not shrinking away like she knew he expected her to do.