Drowning to Breathe by A. L. Jackson Page A

to where the Suburban was parked. Running lights flashed as we neared it, the locks disarming, and Sebastian yanked open the passenger door, quick to help me inside.
    He slammed the door shut behind me.
    I watched as he fought back through the reporters, as he rounded the front, this time not quite as amicably as he’d been with me at his side. Three seconds later, his door flung open and he jumped in. Immediately he slammed it closed, cutting off the frenzy of voices.
    Panting, my breaths wheezed from my too-tight lungs, and I tried to calm my thundering pulse.
    From across the space, Sebastian searched me for injuries he knew would not be visible.
    “Those bastards.” His rugged face winced, his voice a hard rumble. More regret.
    “This is exactly what I was trying to protect you from all along. Never wanted to drag you and Kallie into this kind of life. It’s no good, Shea. No fucking good.”
    I stared at him and my head tilted to the side. My voice was soft but packed with emphasis. “Life with you is good , Sebastian. As long as we make it that way. I don’t care what lies they tell or what they believe. Just as long as it means I get to spend my life with you.”
    He exhaled and shook his head, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his pretty, pretty mouth. “Where’d you come from, baby?”
    “I’ve been right here all along, waiting for you.”
    Outside, we were surrounded.
    But here?
    It was just the two of us.
    That strange energy still intense and profound.
    But different.
    Maybe it was the overwhelming relief, the weight that had been lifted, but the air had shifted. A glimmer of sweet. A suggestion of desire. Sebastian slanted me a smile—all flirty and sexy—gaze brazen, as he looked me up and down where I sat in the passenger seat while he readjusted his tie. His gray fitted suit only amplified the bulk of his stunning presence.
    “So fucking beautiful,” he moved in to murmur near my face, “still can’t believe I get to call you my girl.”
    Heat climbed my neck and I could feel it radiating from my cheeks.
    God.
    One thing about Sebastian?
    He never balked at finding comfort in the other’s touch, and over the last two days, he’d sought me out time and time again. Taking me. Soothing me. For a few blissful moments, lifting me to a place where I was detached from everything in this world.
    Except for him.
    A place where we existed only in the other.
    Tied.
    Tethered.
    Bound.
    Hearts and minds and bodies and souls.
    After everything that had happened, it seemed impossible only four days had passed since he’d come back to me.
    Since he’d torn all those barriers down and chosen to stay.
    Even though deep down, in the places we didn’t want to acknowledge, we both knew he would eventually have to go.
    This life would take him places where I couldn’t always physically follow, whether standing up for his little brother would land him back behind bars, or if the call of his spirit would take him back on the road.
    At the thought, my heart thrashed a severe beat of defiance, and I flinched as I attempted to block the injustice of it all.
    Sebastian frowned when he noticed the shift in me, his touch gentle as he hooked his index finger under my chin.
    A simple promise.
    You belong to me.
    It didn’t matter where the road took him. How much time or distance existed between us.
    It didn’t hold the power to erase what that promise meant.
    “You did it,” he finally whispered just above our slowed breaths, and he reached out and cupped the side of my face.
    “She’s really coming home.”
    But what would be Martin’s next step?
    I forced off the grim thought.
    “Yeah, Shea, she’s really coming home.” Sebastian started the truck and put it in gear. “Think it’s about damned time we go and get her.”
    He jerked the long black Suburban out onto the road. Paparazzi scattered. A tumble of bodies rushed to get out of Sebastian’s way as he gunned it onto the one-way street and