Keera had snapped back to reality, finding herself cuddled up in Arden’s arms. She’d felt foolish she’d allowed the stress to pull her under, but she’d told him she was fine and asked to be let down.
He’d done what she’d requested, but then he’d put his arm around her as he led her to his vehicle and drove her home. They hadn’t spoken as they made the short trek to his house, and when he’d tried taking her to his room, she’d told him she wanted to be alone.
He hadn’t wanted to give her that, but she’d asked him to respect her enough to listen to her. That had done the trick, and he’d allowed her to go into her room and shut the door. She hadn’t slept much that night.
She should have known something was off, should have seen what Ethan was doing, what he was bringing into her school. The guilt weighed heavy on her shoulders. She’d grown complacent in her life with her father out of it. But after growing up with drugs and crime, she should have been the first to know something was off when she’d come to Edmonds.
Maybe she’d just been living in denial for so long, it was the only way she knew how to live. Kicking herself repeatedly wasn’t going to help. What she had to do was once again pick up the shattered pieces of her life and try to figure out how to have some sort of normalcy. One thing she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that she wasn’t going to get it by living in this alternate reality with Arden.
It was time to go home.
Her apartment didn’t have much in it, but she’d started over once before, and she could do it again. This time, though, she was older, and much wiser. Or at least she felt she was.
She stepped into Arden’s living room after she’d packed her bags with the clothes his family had brought her. She wouldn’t walk out without talking to him first.
Arden was standing by the window, his back to her. She stopped and enjoyed the view of him for a few peaceful seconds. He truly had been good to her, and she knew he wasn’t going to like her leaving, but Ethan had been killed, and her father was in no way a threat no matter what he had planned.
The problem was, they didn’t know who else was involved. But they might never know. Their biggest leads had both died before they could say anything. And there was no way Keera was going to live in fear for the rest of her life.
The worst part of all of it was not knowing the story of her brother’s death. She didn’t think she’d ever get answers to any of it, and that wasn’t something she wanted hanging over her forever. But even if it was, she couldn’t impose on Arden indefinitely, not when she knew he wanted more than she was capable of giving.
“You seem to be in deep thought,” she said as she approached Arden.
He turned to face her, but she was well aware he’d already known she was there. He would have been a nightmare to play hide-and-seek with because he always seemed to know when someone was around.
“A lot’s happened lately, and especially in the past two days. I’ve been going over it and over it in my mind, trying to see where the connections are,” he told her. “You didn’t sleep well,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, I have circles over my circles now,” she said, rubbing at her eyes. She hadn’t even bothered with makeup. It was no use at this point, and she didn’t have to be anywhere. She’d have to try to fix it before school in two days.
“You’re still beautiful,” he told her, making her heart beat a little faster. It was so strange how much this man affected her. She would miss that. If she were being honest with herself, she’d miss a lot about him.
“I’m a mess, but I’ll live with it,” she said with the semblance of a smile.
“This isn’t over yet, Keera,” he told her, his body tense. “I know you’re growing restless, and I know you have a need to get out of here, but I can feel in my gut that this isn’t over. You can’t be on your own right now.”
She sucked in her breath, unable to let it back out again. “I wish you wouldn’t say that. I have to keep living, or whoever has tried to scare me other than Ethan is winning in this game they’re playing,” she told him. “I refuse to be bullied into dancing to a tune for their entertainment.”
“It’s not about letting them win or lose, it’s about being smart. Please just give me a little longer to get this solved. Declan is collecting more leads. We’re so damn close.”
“Arden,” she began with a sigh, and he held up his hand to stop her.
“We just need a little more time,” he said.
“I think you believe this is solvable, that there’s always an answer. But sometimes in life, bad things happen and we never get to know why. Children die when there’s no reason behind it, vehicles fail and crash for no reason, and people get murdered without ever having a killer found. We might just need to accept that our biggest leads are both dead and we don’t get to know why there was a file on me and my brother, and why things happened the way they did.”
If she resigned herself to thinking this way, then she didn’t feel as out of control. If she believed like he did, then she was disappointed every time they didn’t get what it was they’d been trying to find.
He opened his mouth to respond when his phone rang. He looked at the caller ID, then looked at her apologetically. “It’s my brother. I need to take this.”
She waited as he answered the call, then tensed. He was silent as he listened to whatever his brother was telling him, but the tension in the room had gone up by several degrees. Keera didn’t want to know what the call was about, didn’t think there was any further bad news she could handle.
But even as she had that thought, she realized there really wasn’t anything more that could happen to her. There weren’t any other people in her life with the power to hurt her, at least not emotionally. Of course, they could kill her, but that was out of her hands.
Arden hung up the phone and turned to her. Tension flowed through his big, beautiful shoulders, but determination shone in his eyes. He stepped toward her, and though Keera wanted to retreat, wanted to protect herself from the feeling his touch would give her, she wouldn’t keep running—and that included running from this man. Moving home wasn’t a retreat, it was reclaiming what was already hers.
Arden stopped in front of her, reaching out to her, his hands gentle on her shoulders. “I don’t want to hear about the call,” she told him.
He smiled. “That was Declan, as you probably figured out. It’s not a big deal, but we need to go and check something out,” he told her.
“I think you’re sugarcoating it, because you’re pretty tense right now.”
He smiled again, the first genuine smile she’d seen on him in a while. They hadn’t had a heck of a lot to smile about in the last few days.
“You’re beginning to read me as well as I can you,” he told her.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” she admitted. Her thoughts and feelings grew so jumbled when he was this close, when he touched her. She didn’t like it one bit.
“I love you, Keera,” he said, almost seeming as shocked at saying it as she was at hearing the words.
Her heart fluttered at the words as emotions choked her throat. But she couldn’t allow these emotions in. She couldn’t trust love, not at this point in her life. Her father had told her he loved her, too, and his actions had contradicted his words.
No, Arden had done nothing but be great to her, but they’d also been living in this heightened world since they’d known each other. There was no way for them to know if any of this was real—or if any of it could last.
“I can’t stay here anymore,” she told him, fighting back tears. “I can’t do the love thing again. I just . . . I can’t,” she said, pleading with him to understand. She didn’t want to hurt him. And she’d be doing exactly that if she didn’t let him know now that they weren’t going to ride off into the sunset together.
She expected anger, or even distance, but Arden simply looked at her and smiled as he lifted his hand to her cheek and gently caressed her.
“I didn’t mean to blurt that out. I know this is bad timing, and I know you need time. And I’ll give you all of it that you want. Just know I’m not easy to dissuade,” he said.
He leaned down and kissed her cheek, making her heart ache that much more. Then he let her go and stepped back. She wanted to run to her room, grab her bag, and scramble out the door. But he was leaving, and she could follow after he was gone and not have to face a big fight over it.
“Angela’s on her way here. Please wait until I get back. We don’t have to talk tonight. I don’t expect you ever to come to my bed unless it’s what you want. But I truly am worried for your safety. Please let me check out this lead, and all the rest can be sorted through later.”
He didn’t ask much from her. She could give him one more night. Maybe she even needed to make love to him one more time—a fitting goodbye. She wasn’t sure if that would help or send her further out of control. She didn’t know if she’d find out or not.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait until you get back.”
He and Max turned and walked from the house, and Keera had to fight back tears as she walked to the window and watched him drive away. She’d given him her word that she wouldn’t go anywhere, and she had her integrity clearly in place, even if she didn’t have much else. So though her heart felt as if it was breaking over and over again, and though she wanted to run far and fast, she didn’t.
Keera sat down and waited for Angela. The two of them could wait for Arden to get back. Each time he went out on something like this, Keera was a mess. If he got hurt trying to help her, she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.
Yes, Arden was a grown man and more than capable of making his own choices. But if she had never come to this town, he wouldn’t be in danger all the time.
He loved her.
His softly spoken words played on repeat in her head. She tried telling herself they were just words, that they didn’t matter. But each time she closed her eyes and heard the echo of his voice saying them, her heart beat a little faster.
She was truly afraid she loved him back. Even if she wasn’t sure what that word meant, even if she didn’t feel she was capable of loving someone or being loved. Arden had made running away that much harder.
Angela arrived, and they visited for a little while before she insisted on making Keera something to eat. She said if she didn’t feed her, she had no doubt Keera would live on nothing more than coffee. Keera couldn’t even argue with her, as the woman was 100 percent right.
Keera went into Arden’s office and looked over all the notes they had lying out as she tried again to make sense of all that had been happening. Staring at the papers, praying to see something she hadn’t seen before, she gave up after a while.
There was a crashing noise from somewhere in the house, which instantly worried Keera.
“Are you okay, Angela?” she called. But there was no answer.
Dread ran up and down Keera’s spine. Something was definitely wrong. She crept out of the office, looking both ways before going down the hallway.
She didn’t call Angela’s name again. There was something inside her telling her all wasn’t well. She should be lifting her phone, calling Arden, but she’d been through a tremendous amount of stress lately, and she assured herself she was doing nothing more than overreacting. She was sure the noise she’d heard had been from Angela puttering around in the kitchen.
And though that’s exactly what she wanted to believe, she felt herself trembling as she neared the kitchen. She couldn’t hear a sound, which didn’t bode well for Angela. The woman wasn’t known for being quiet while she was cooking. She loved loud music and danced her way through a meal, telling them the food turned out so much better when the cook did a few dances while preparing it.
Telling herself she’d made a promise to face her fears, Keera pushed open the door that led to the kitchen. Then she froze.
She should have paid more attention to her instincts and not just barged into the room. Angela was on the floor, facedown, her eyes closed. Keera wasn’t even sure if she was still alive.
Standing over her friend was a man dressed fully in black, not a single thing about him on view, nothing to help identify him. He looked up, giving her no idea what his expression was. But what she did notice was the deadly looking black gun he held in his hand, the one that lifted as he realized she was there.
Keera wanted to help Angela, but she had to get away from this man and make a phone call if either of them had the slightest chance. She didn’t let out a single sound as she turned and sprinted away from the kitchen, seeking the best place to hide.
She heard heavy footsteps behind her and knew the man was practically breathing down her neck. She really wished Max was there with her now instead of having gone with Arden. She could use the dog a hell of a lot more.
She turned down a hallway when someone grabbed her hair, stopping her from moving forward. Though she’d fight to the death, Keera had a feeling her time was up, that Arden had been right. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to get lucky this time.