Cinnamon & Nutmeg Volume 2: Where I Want To Be

13: Dom

Why do you go
where I can't follow?
I hate to watch you fall apart

Can't make you choose
Between your heart and your head
But I'll walk you through
The parts I understand

~Amy Kuney "Where I Can't Follow"

I was all mixed up. Chest hurt, eyes burned. And I was sick of not being told the truth. I understood why, but it still hurt. Hurt as fresh as it had five years ago, staring across two hundred feet of dry scrub dusty in chopper wash. Mixed emotions, rage and betrayal, shock and trust.

Brian lied to me then, and yet I still trusted enough to let this cop hold a gun at my back without concern. Lie by simple omission this time, and yet I still held to Brian as though he were the only lifeline I had left. Even with my sister in the house.

I wouldn't burden her with any of this; she didn't deserve it. But Brian – he was the one person left in my ever-shrinking circle that could take the weight of all this on his shoulders and remain steady. My anchor, My rock.

Mine.

"Always," I repeated, tightening my grip a fraction. Was there anything Brian could do that I wouldn't forgive? Because from that first moment, exchanging the look across the diner, I'd known Brian was mine.

Just a shame it took five years to come full circle.

I didn't want to waste any more time. One thing Letty's death showed me – didn't matter what you thought, there was never enough of it. One finger through a belt loop, I tugged Brian's hips closer. Ground forward, just to feel. Not sexual, just sensual. Tactile, hungry, bared down to the soul, desperate for a shield. Protection Brian could give me, and offered freely.

Understanding. It ran deep and pure and true, effortlessly. Brian leaned into my pressure, loose-limbed and gangly, hard angles and dense muscle, nothing soft on him anywhere. Except right there left of center in his chest, I thought with a fraction of a grin. He had a spot with the Toretto crest on it, gooey and mushy and malleable. And that, I decided, was just as worthy of being protected, defended to the last breath, as any other crusade I could take up.

We each had a piece of this we did in Letty's memory: Fenix, and Braga. And after that? All I really knew was I didn't want to run anymore, not unless Brian went with me.

And I couldn't ask that sort of sacrifice from him, not twice in one lifetime. God, it was more than anyone could be worthy of once – forget twice. Brian deserved better, but he was mine now. We were stuck with each other. So many times, when I'd been working on old muscle cars over the past few years, I talked through what I was doing as though Brian was there in the garage with me. And the sensation when he reached for a tool he needed only to discover it wasn't there waiting for him. And the clench in his chest.

"Your place, now." I muttered the words in a soft rumble, felt Brian twitch and squirm in my embrace. I chafed my thumb along the side of Brian's scruffy jaw as I pulled back. "You got stuff?"

Brian took a step back and flashed that childish, million-watt smile. "Worried about the lubrication on your piston? I got you covered, Toro." Hands crammed into his pockets. Gangly and lean and beautiful like a flash of vivid color at sunset. Had to watch and wait and be patient, but eventually you got what you wanted. The blond moved toward the door like he was ensuring my escape route was clear of hazards or something.

"Toro?" I pushed off the passenger door of the Charger, trailed in his wake. "What the hell, Bri?"

"You've never been on the receiving end of your assault." Brian's tone was wry and tinged with humor. We strode down the drive toward the curb where Brian's newly acquired ten-second car sat. It looked like something out of that Transformers movie. "I figure I can sympathize with toreadors that get gored by an enraged bull, after that."