Mine to Protect by Jen Talty

Author:Jen Talty [Talty, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781648181405
Publisher: Lady Boss Press, Inc.

Rhett tried Chris four times on the ride to the police station, and it went straight to voicemail each time. That concerned him for two different reasons.

The first one could be because Chris had played Rhett—which he’d considered the second he’d agreed to have Chris come to the house. It had been something in the back of his mind immediately.

However, Rhett didn’t believe that Chris had stood him up. Not in that moment. And not now. Something else had happened. Either Chris got spooked or…something worse.

He pulled into his brother Nathan’s parking spot. It annoyed some of the other officers, but it was a perk of being the chief of police’s son. If one of his brothers or even his mom were off duty, and he knew, he could use the spot if—and only if—he was there on police business.

Or to visit family, which was kind of the same thing.

He turned his Jeep off and took Shelby’s hand. “Are you okay? You haven’t said a word the entire ride.”

She shifted in her seat and stared at him with an intense glare. Her eyes were wide with thick emotion.

Things he hadn’t seen before rose to the surface. She’d been broken when he first met her, and he knew it. It was something that’d bonded them in a weird way, but it was also the thing that had driven them apart. He couldn’t give himself until he fixed the things inside him that had his gut and heart twisted.

What he failed to understand then was that he’d been his own worst enemy, and all he needed was to let go of the toxicity and open his mind to reality.

But when reality walked in, he was blind to her, and she wasn’t ready to let go of the pains of the past.

“I’ve spent my entire life taking care of everyone in my family. I did it because I thought that was what family did. I thought that was what loyalty and love were all about.”

He squeezed her hand and smiled. “It is,” he said. “However, and please don’t take this the wrong way, you had to grow up too quickly. You were forced to take on a mothering role when you should have been playing dress-up with your friends. You never got a chance to be a kid, so you really take it to heart when your only living relative hurts. Or worse, disappears.” Rhett wanted her to understand that this wasn’t a typical situation. And that while what she was feeling wasn’t abnormal, perhaps her responses to her brother over the years had been overprotective and a bit overbearing.

Much like how Rhett had closed himself off to protecting his heart from being hurt. It was a defense mechanism, and all it did was hurt him in the long run. Where he thought he was living life in a way that gave him freedom, all he was doing was living in a cage.

She’d been doing the same thing. She wanted to take care of her family.

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