"Not gonna happen!" Len snapped savagely, shoving her back down with difficulty when she suddenly gained a burst of strength, "You can barely take care of yourself!"<br/><br/>"As for me hurting people, take a look in the mirror. You hurt youself by listening to that damn voice in you head. As soon something bad happens, you automatically assume you're the problem. You're the reason things go to shit. There's no way you can fix it so you choose to run and hide. You believe no one gives a damn about you. News flash, Emma Duncan, I fucking care. And regardless how you feel about it, you're stuck with me sweetheart until one of us ends up dead!"<br/><br/>Had he been thinking rationally, he would have realized his words sounded like a bad excuse at a marriage proposal. Not that it mattered at the moment, he was pretty close to his limit and he was fighting the urge to hurt her.<br/><br/>"I can't help but stick with you because I can't leave you alone," He continued, angry tears falling on her face, "I don't know what is happening between us, but for some reason or another, I can't see myself anywhere but with you!"<br/><br/>His voice cracked as he then recounted how he met her mother. How he'd been racing cars with a friend. How his friend had taken a shortcut through the parking lot her mother had been walking through. How his friend had hit her and kept going while he'd wrecked trying to keep from hitting her as well. Then, clenching his eyes shut as the memory ripped through him as fresh and raw as that day it happened, He recalled how he'd promised to find and take care of her daughter as she was taken to the hospital where he heard she later died.