Handcuffed by Her Hero by Angel Payne

she still wasn’t
tired enough for the TV lullaby that had saved her from returning to the
bedroom last night.
    As if fate still had it in for
her, she’d walked into the bedroom—and found the damn shirt like it was a
homing beacon. To compound the mistake of picking it up, she’d smelled it. In
an instant, he’d filled her senses again. She was meeting his brilliant hazel
gaze. Exploring his burnished skin. Letting him fill her body. Letting him see
more of her soul.
    Burning their friendship because
of her damn hormones.
     Twenty minutes after that, she’d
dialed Sally. Gotten desperate enough to call her therapist’s cell at eight
p.m. on a Saturday.
    “I would’ve been fine,” she
murmured, “after a little bit. I just needed to talk and—”
    “Rayna.”
    “What? I wasn’t in total crisis,
okay?”
    “ Rayna. ”
    “I was in a little rough spot.”
    “You were in tears.”
    “It was a bump.”
    “ A lot of tears.”
    “Okay, okay.” She started making
accordion folds in one of the T-shirt’s sleeves. Sally didn’t say anything for
a very long pause. Crap. The woman was watching her. Being watched was
intimidating. It meant she was a target. That any minute, three of King’s men
would swoop in, hold her down, spread her legs and—
    This jewel isn’t
your shame. This diamond is a symbol of your miracle. It’s your true medal of
honor…
    She forced down a shaking gulp.
Clung to the words, begging them to echo some more in her head, hating them
when they did. Her fingers hurt from gripping the beige cotton. Shit. She was stronger than this. He’d been the one to show her that. And he’d be the
first to tell her she had to do it without him, too…
    “Ugh. I’m a mess.” She fidgeted,
considering a get-me-out-of-here moment of her own. “Look, I’m sorry I bothered
you, Sal. I’ll call one of my brothers. This isn’t fair to you. You’re
gorgeous. You must’ve had a date lined up or something—”
    “Yep. A really good one.” Sally
chuckled. “He’s very adept at putting a movie on pause, keeping dinner warm and
understanding that when his woman is a shrink for MRW services, her hours
aren’t nine to five.”
    “Sounds like a keeper.”
    The woman’s face softened. Her
lips crinkled in that “I’ve got a delicious secret” way that only other women
understood. “We’ll see.”
    Rayna nodded at Sally’s shirt.
“Does he like the Foo Fighters, too?”
    The woman squared her shoulders.
“Are you going to play deflection until I call you on your shit?”
    She shrugged. “You have to admit,
I’m good at it.”
    Sally didn’t return the mirth.
She let a sizable pause go by before asking, “Who belongs to the shirt, Ray?”
    She let her gaze fall again to
the beige lump in her lap. Tried to tuck in the spots where she’d dampened it
with her tears. This heartache was so ugly. And stupid. And useless. “You mean
who belonged to it.” She ran a finger along the worn collar. “Me,” she
finally said. “It belongs to me. He left it behind. Which means it’s officially
mine now, right?”
    “Is that a good thing or a bad
thing?”
    “It’s a no thing.”
    As Sally’s brows ticked up, she back-pedaled
over her thou-protesteth-too-much answer. “It’s nothing, okay? It has to be.
It’s what I agreed to, all right? And the last time I checked, I was a grown-up
who knew the difference between strings-free sex and stalker-time
expectations.”
    One side of Sally’s mouth kicked
up to join her brows. “So you slept with someone.”
    “What’s so funny about that?”
    “Nothing. I think it’s wonderful.
You’re moving forward with life, getting on with what a normal twenty-seven
year-old woman should be—”
    “It was Zeke.”
    After ten seconds, she got ready
to repeat it. Maybe the bomb was so huge all Sally had gotten were the shock
waves and not the real words. The woman looked more Zen-perfect than ever, not
even lifting her pen to jot this in her