“I normally look good. I normally look like I want a man to want me. I definitely don’t look like this . . . like I’m not even trying. Conner would never buy that you were suddenly infatuated with me if it doesn’t even look like I’m making an effort. How do you think I caught his attention so fast?”
Titus did that guy thing where his lashes lowered and his eyes started at the top of my head and skimmed all the way down to my toes in a way that I could almost feel. I saw his chest rise and fall and his pulse jump a little at the side of his neck.
“You look just fine the way you are. You look better like this than most women do when they put in the effort. You don’t need to try, and if a guy makes you think you do, then he’s a dipshit. Get whatever you need and let’s get out of here.”
I might have fallen over or stripped off all my clothes and thrown myself at him if I thought there was a chance he would catch me in either scenario. No one had ever said anything that nice to me in my life. Sure, I had heard I was pretty. I had heard I was more than pretty, but they were hollow words when they came from mouths that spewed lies fair easier than the truth. If Titus said it, then he believed it. There was no hidden agenda, no subterfuge, and there was just something so powerful and alluring about that raw honesty and the lack of artifice.
I gathered my composure and the few things I had left strewn around the apartment and followed him out into the hallway. I dropped my gaze to the gun he still wore clipped to his belt. It was a stark reminder that even when he was dressed down and off duty he was still one of the good guys and I was not. We could want each other all day long, but there was no bridge strong enough or long enough to cross that fundamental divide that kept us separated.
He was alert and stiff as we hit the front of the building. Even though I was facing his back, I could almost feel the way his gaze scanned every single shadow and hidden place that stretched out in front of us.
He stopped in front of a massive, sparkly blue-and-white car that looked just as big and badass as he did. The windows were tinted almost black and the tires didn’t look like anything I had ever seen on any other kind of car.
“This doesn’t look like any kind of car a cop should be driving.” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice as he pulled open the door for me.
“It’s not a cop’s car, it’s this cop’s car. When we were younger Bax and I couldn’t manage to spend five minutes in the same room without wanting to murder one another. Our mom had a guy that she saw on the side that owned the garage Bax is running now. Gus put a wrench in each of our hands and told us to figure our shit out. The only time we didn’t fight was when we were working under the hood. Bax was always better at it than I was, but I couldn’t let my little brother be the only one with a sick ride. I built the GTO after he got locked up. I think it was how I dealt with the fact that I was the one that put him behind bars.”
I gaped at him as he walked around the hood and then climbed in on the other side. Everything on the interior of the car was just as pristine as the outside. The gauges were all shiny with chrome inlays as they glowed to life when he cranked the motor on. The car made the entire block shake and I saw a bum startle awake when Titus put his foot on the gas and roared away from the curb.
“You felt guilty you had to arrest Shane?”
His eyes cut in my direction and I instinctively braced my hand on the dashboard as he whipped the monster of a car around a corner with the tires squealing.
“No. I didn’t feel guilty about locking him up. He broke the law, he was always breaking the law, and he didn’t care enough not to get caught. I felt guilty that I was the reason he didn’t care. I felt bad that I was the reason he was a criminal in the first place. I left Bax to fend for himself with a drunk mother and a mobster father. He never had a chance and I knew it, but I left him anyway. I think failing the one person I was supposed to keep safe was one of the driving factors in me deciding to go into law enforcement. I built the GTO to show him that it mattered . . . the time we spent together before he hated me, before I let him down. Bax is an action guy. The words wouldn’t get through, but I thought maybe the car would.”
“That’s why you paid his rent while he was locked up? You wanted to show him that you cared?”
Titus grunted in agreement and turned his eyes back to the road. I settled back in the bucket seat and watched him as he concentrated on the road. He was driving way faster than the speed limit, and I wondered if he even realized he was breaking one of the laws he was adamant about following. Titus was a complex man and there was a lot more to him than I had initially thought. I knew his relationship with Bax was complicated and that the brothers were polar opposites, but I hadn’t known that Titus had demons from his past and from the way he had pulled himself out of the Point that clung to him. It made him seem less infallible, more human. It made me want him even more, which I didn’t think was possible.
“Where are we going exactly?” We hadn’t left the Point. In fact we were going deeper into it, past the District and all the way out to the docks. No one went to the docks unless they wanted to make a body disappear or they were trying to send something illegal out or ship something illegal in.
“Race has a place on the docks. He’s turned it into his own little command center. He has his own muscle and his own security system set up around it since his lady and her sister live there with him. It’s almost as good as protective custody, but it’s still in the city and visible enough that should Conner want to make a move he’ll know where to find us.”
I fidgeted nervously. “It’s also where he left that girl that looked like me.”
Titus sighed. “I know. But it’s the best option for what we’re trying to accomplish. You’ll be safe while I work, and that means I won’t have my attention divided between my job and your safety.”
A trickle of warmth tried to work its way into the heart I had been trying to freeze up toward him. “I wouldn’t think you would care if I was safe or not. After all, I’m the one that got myself into this mess.”
I rolled my head to the side so I could look at him and noticed that the tick he got when he was trying to hold whatever he was feeling inside had started to work at his jaw. His big hands tightened on the steering wheel and he bit out, “We can’t always control what or whom we care about. Didn’t you learn that lesson the hard way with Roark?”