“You can come back to me, Eleanor. Always.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head. “They need you more than I do. I can’t rip your life in half.”

“It is my life,” he’d reminded her. “You tore my life in half the day you ran from me.”

“Don’t,” she said, and the tears burned bright in her eyes. Her chest heaved and she clung to him so hard her fingernails bit into his skin. “Don’t say I ran. I didn’t run. It wasn’t running and you know it. You know I didn’t want to leave you. I no more ran from you than I’d ever run into a burning building. I could never run from you.”

He laughed at her vehemence.

“Then what would you call it if it wasn’t running, little one?” He pressed his lips to her forehead.

“I crawled.” She tried to smile for him. “It’s what I’m good at after all.”

He wrapped his arms even tighter around her. She prayed he’d chain her to his bed and make her stay there the rest of her life. But she knew he’d let her go at dawn. He wouldn’t keep her against her will even if against her will was what she wanted.

“When you come back to me—” he began and she pulled back to meet his eyes.

“I won’t.”

“If you come back to me,” he said, making a rare concession, “will you run or will you crawl?”

Nora had pressed her whole body into him at that moment. Resting her head on his strong shoulder, she watched as a tear forged a river down his long and muscled back.

“I’ll fly.”

To Søren she knew that night was proof that she still belonged to him. But to Wesley it was a waking nightmare when he’d seen the welts and bruises, her cracked lip, her purpling cheek. It took her a solid hour to convince him she didn’t need to go to the hospital. For some reason telling him she’d had worse didn’t seem to comfort him. For the second time in twenty-four hours, she’d had to beg.

“It’s not violence,” she’d tried to tell him. “It’s love. Some loves only come out after dark, Wes.”

“Not with me, Nora. Don’t pull that writer romance crap on me. He beats you and you let him. And if this is love then he shouldn’t love you anymore,” Wesley had said on his way to the front door, his clothes in a duffel bag and his guitar case across his back.

“I wish he didn’t. For his sake and mine. For yours, too.”

Something in her voice changed his mind. He’d dropped his duffel by the floor and set his guitar down. He’d walked back to her and wrapped his arms gingerly around her. He’d been so careful not to hurt her. She’d cried then for the pain she’d caused him. Wesley had gone with her to her room and helped her take her shirt off. She lay on her stomach in her bed while he iced her bruises and put antibiotic ointment on her welts. They hadn’t talked while he helped her. But when she was finally comfortable enough to sleep, Wesley had told her his decision. He couldn’t stop her from working, but if she ever went back to Søren again, ever let him hurt her again, Wesley was gone. It was like asking her to close her eyes and never open them again, but for Wesley, she’d agreed.