“While you might be able to guarantee your feelings, you can’t guarantee hers.”
“She won’t fall in love with me.” I bowed my head and pinched the tension in the back of my neck. “She can barely stomach looking at me.”
He didn’t know the full extent of our arrangement, and it was better that way. His conscience wouldn’t allow him to stand by while I went about things the way I chose.
“Your presence in her life can only be a temporary one,” Cristian noted. “You think you are saving her, but how can you be certain you might not equally devastate her?”
“It won’t happen. I won’t allow her feelings to grow roots.”
“You wouldn’t be here talking to me if you didn’t have your doubts,” Cristian argued. “Tell me what it is you want to hear from me?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I can’t give you my approval.”
“I know.”
We were both quiet then. He took it upon himself to redirect the conversation. “How is your health?”
“It’s fine.” My fingers bounced against my thigh, a nervous pattern that I couldn’t recall making before. “I’m tired. But fine.”
“And you are still certain of your course with that matter?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can offer you only this,” he said. “Do what good you can while there is time.”
“I’m trying.”
“God will light your way.”
I smiled into the darkness. “I hope for your sake, Father, he will light yours as well.”
“IHAVE TO PEE.”
Ace gave me a bored expression as he uncuffed me from the desk. I was free, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long. While I went to the bathroom, I contemplated my potential escape options, but they were limited to spraying him with water or throwing a bar of soap at his head. Nothing in this bathroom would be useful, and the man was a tank.
“You might as well just suck it up and do it,” Ace told me when I came back out. “You’re only delaying the inevitable. He won’t let you go until it’s done.”
“You sound like you know from personal experience.”
“That’s because I do.”
I arched a brow at him. “Did he make you write lines?”
“No, worse. He made me go to school.”
He locked me back to the desk, but my curiosity wouldn’t let him go. “What could he possibly have over you?”
“He saved my life,” Ace said. “I owe him more than I could ever pay him. The least I could do was get my shit together if that made him happy.”
I looked up at the beefy man who sounded mild as a kitten whenever he talked about Lucian. “So you finished high school?”
“College,” he corrected.
That information shocked me. Maybe it was a stereotype, but I’d just assumed the huge biker dude probably didn’t have much going on in that head of his other than beer and broads.
“What’s your degree?”