Rough Around the Edges by Stephanie Laurens

Author:Stephanie Laurens [Laurens, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

The Porsche handled beautifully, even on wet roads. When Damon took the last turn before the intersection at a speed he had no business hitting, though, the car fish-tailed.

He corrected automatically. Driving fast, like living fast, came all too. easily to him.

Ahead of him lay three miles of a straight, downhill stretch veiled in the deepening dusk of storm. He pressed on the accelerator, knowing it wouldn't help. No matter how fast he drove, the woman he was trying his damnedest to leave stayed with him, lodged solidly somewhere near his heart. He saw her eyes again, angel-pure eyes the color of hope and redemption—eyes filled with hurt and fear.

Because of him.

Didn't that prove how right he was to leave? If he'd stayed another day, another damned hour, he'd have told her the truth—and truth, like love, wasn't always a good thing. He knew that. His childhood had proved it. His grandmother had loved her daughter, but it hadn't been healthy for either of them. No, the old woman's obsessive love, her inability to let go, had been both the cause and the means of destroying what she cared most about.

And he was like her. Felicity didn't want to see that, but it was true. He'd grown up strong in that house, but not straight. From the moment when, at five, he decided his grandmother was his enemy, he'd been unable to compromise. He'd fought her at every turn, in every way—and his mother had suffered the consequences. Like his grandmother, he'd never been able to give in—like her, he was selfish in his strength.

He couldn't take the chance of what the love of a man like him might do to a woman like Felicity in the long run. But he hadn't been able to just walk away. So he'd asked her to come with him. He'd pushed her, pressed her, refused to give her what he knew damned well she needed—some kind of assurance that he cared. This way, they could both tell themselves it was her choice when he walked out.

He'd committed any number of sins in his life, but he hadn't numbered hypocrisy among them. Until now.

The intersection was coming up on him fast now. Too fast. He realized he'd waited almost too late to start slowing, considering the condition of the road and the river that lay just the other side of the intersection—bloated and brown now from runoff. It flashed through his mind that he didn't have to slow down. He could just keep going—and if he wiped himself right off this earth, who would care?

Felicity would.

Fear touched him, clammy and as livid as the lightning that chained across the sky behind him, lighting up his rear-view mirror for one blinding moment. If anything happened to him, Felicity would mourn. No matter whether he deserved it or not. Felicity would grieve for him.

What the hell was he doing?

Self-disgust and determination flooded him in equal parts. He didn't want to die—and he didn't want to be on this damned road, racing away from the best reason he'd ever found for staying alive.

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