Steal Me by Layla Valentine

Author:Layla Valentine [Valentine, Layla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Owen

The car ride passed in relative silence, and I struggled to keep my eyes off of Emily for the duration. I couldn’t deny that her every sniffle cracked my heart closer and closer to utter disrepair.

I clenched my hands on the steering wheel, trying to tell myself I was doing the right thing. If it was so right, though, why did it feel so awful? Surely I hadn’t needed to be so cruel to her, but I was afraid that if I allowed myself the slightest bit of kindness, I would lose my resolve. I couldn’t afford to compromise the mission; I would effectively be ruining myself in the process.

As I peered over at her, my heart gave a painful throb. She was so damn beautiful, in spite of her state of disarray. That damn gaudy necklace didn’t even look half bad in that moment.

Maybe I really was losing it. It seemed more likely that I’d already gone insane, had given myself to the craziness from the moment I made love to Emily.

As much as I wanted to believe the contrary, I had no doubt that what I felt for her was more than lust or even a simple crush. So much had happened over the course of our time together, and though it hadn’t been all that long, it still felt as if we’d known each other for an eternity.

Could I really betray her like this? Moreover, would I allow myself to betray my own feelings by turning her into the feds without knowing what would happen to her? There was no telling what they would do with her, though she hadn’t committed any crimes.

She had been held prisoner by her father; it wasn’t as if she’d willingly gone along with him. She hadn’t agreed to hold tight to his secrets; she had been forced. As much as I wanted to blame Randy Madden for what he had put his daughter through, I couldn’t shoulder my own mistakes off on him. I was wounding her more deeply than he ever had.

Thinking I held some sort of power over Emily may have seemed self-absorbed, but the girl wasn’t exactly a closed book when it came to her feelings. I had no doubt in my heart that she loved me—or had, before I’d dragged her into that damn car that morning.

It took all of my self-restraint not to make a U-turn in the middle of the road, take off down the street and…and…

Where would we go from there? The military was all I had ever known. It had given me the freedom I’d never known as a teenager. It gave me the family I’d longed for, the kind that would accept me without forcing me into some tiny box in the middle of nowhere.

Yet, wasn’t that what I was doing to Emily in the very act of turning her in? Stealing her freedom, shoving her back into a prison that I had more or less vowed to help her escape? She bore the title of my captive, but it had never felt quite that way.

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