Chapter Fifteen
Present Day
I stepped out of my bathroom and glared at my phone where it was still plugged into the outlet by my nightstand.
“This is stupid.” I didn’t know if I was talking myself or the phone.
The clock read 6:57. My hair was half styled and I was wearing a bra, matching panties, and my thin, short-sleeve robe. It was time to call cabin eleven and give Sayer his first wake-up call.
I loathed the idea. Everything inside me rebelled against it. I mean, how long was I going to let this guy hold me hostage?
Granted it was only Wednesday morning, but I was already annoyed.
And yet I couldn’t risk the fallout should I not follow through with Sayer’s request. Would he turn me in to the bratva? The Colorado police? To the FBI? Who was he working for these days? And how much danger was I in?
See? There were too many unanswered questions to play this one loose. I was just going to have to suck it up and deal with it. Besides, it was only a wake-up call. I was still safe at home even. This was part of my job.
I cleared my throat in preparation of making the call. And then I cleared it again. “Stop being stupid, Caroline, just make the dumb call.”
I closed my eyes and prayed that it would keep ringing, that he wouldn’t be mean enough to answer, but—
“Hello?”
Uh… Uh… Blank.
“Uh…” I pinched my nose and forced my brain to ignore the sleepy way he answered and the weirdness of hearing Sayer’s voice on the other end of a phone call after all this time. “Uh, this is Caroline with your daily wake-up call.”
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Most of all was my groggy voice from my still sleepy body. I wanted to sound professional on the phone. Firm, yet sophisticated. Instead, I sounded like I’d just rolled out of bed and I needed to be quiet so my gentleman lover didn’t overhear.
Which would have been fine if I had a gentleman lover!
“You sound like you’re going to launch into the airplane safety speech, Caroline.” He emphasized my name. His words were cutting, meant to be harsh. “Try it again.”
“You want me to try to wake you up… again?”
“Yes.” He sounded fully awake now. I could hear him moving around on the other end.
“I’m not going to—”
“One more time,” he ordered. “With feeling.”
I sunk down on the edge of my bed, taking a handful of comforter in my hand and crushing it in my grip until my knuckles turned white. With all the energy of a cracked-out chipmunk, I pasted on a fake smile and singsonged, “Good moooorning!” with as much pep as possible. “Time to wake-uuuuup!”
He sighed heavily, like he was disappointed in me. “Yeah, that’s not working for me.”
Juliet appeared in my doorway, rubbing her sleepy eyes with one hand and holding her blankie in the other. I quickly threw one finger over my lips, warning her to be quiet.
She made a whimpering sound and I flung open my arm for her to cuddle into. She hated mornings. She would much rather stay up late with me than drag herself out of bed every morning for school or daycare. Weekends were our favorite because we both loved to sleep in.
Running to me, she threw herself into the curve of my body and laid her head on my chest. I smoothed her hair with my free hand, praying she would stay quiet enough that Sayer wouldn’t know she was there.
“You can’t be serious,” I argued with Sayer.
He was unapologetic. Even though it sounded like he was pouring himself a bowl of cereal. “I’m paying for this, Six. You better make it good.”
I dropped my head back and ground my teeth together in frustration. Fine, if he wanted to play games, we would play games. Only on my terms. Using the raspy-ness in my voice to my advantage, I dropped my volume and turned up the sex appeal. “Rise and shine, sleepyhead. It’s 7:07 on this gorgeous Wednesday morning. We’re expecting sunshine and temps in the mid-sixties today. Should be perfect weather for whatever evil deeds you have planned.” I was all breathy and tempting sexpot when I finished with, “Now it’s time for me to get dressed, so I’m going to hang up the phone, but if you need anything else, go ahead and bother someone else.”
Quickly pushing end with a trembling finger, I tossed the phone to the other side of my bed and crushed Juliet against me. My entire body was shaking and it took everything in me not to start crying.
I couldn’t keep doing that every morning. Was he insane? Had prison made him crazy?
“Who was that, Mommy?” Juliet’s voice was muffled because of how tightly I was hugging her.
I relinquished some of my hold and took her rosy-cheeked face in my hands. Her bright blue eyes were soft with sleep and her dark hair curled around a face that was a perfect mix of her father and me. “No one,” I whispered, trying to hide the emotion still lingering in my throat. “Just someone at the resort that needed help waking up.”
She yawned wide and flopped back against me. “I need help waking up too.”
My heart swelled, despite the trauma of having Sayer back in town. I knew I deserved his torment. I had been waiting for it for a long time. But what he would never understand was that it was worth it.
This daughter of mine was worth it.
I had promised Sayer my forever. I had sworn to never leave him, to always wait for him, to make it work for us no matter what. And I had meant everything I said. Juliet was the only thing on the planet that could have made me break those promises. She was the only thing worth destroying everything I had with Sayer and my old life.
And she would always be worth it.
“You do need help waking up,” I whispered into her hair. “How about we try a banana to start with? Do you think that would help?”
“I think a donut would help better,” she suggested, sounding so sincere I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh, really? You need a donut this morning to get moving?”
She dropped her head back, blinking up at me. “Well, it couldn’t hurt.”
I threw my arms around her again and laughed harder. Where had she come up with that? I blamed Francesca. Like usual.
“You’re right. It probably couldn’t.” She was so tiny, so fragile, so… perfectly sheltered from this awful world. I didn’t know how I was going to save her this time. I didn’t know how I was going to get her out of this mess I’d created. Only that I was. I wouldn’t let her get wrapped up in my sins. I wouldn’t let the poison of my past taint her childhood—or any part of her life. We were going to get through this. I was determined. Even if that meant becoming the criminal I left behind. Even if that meant dredging up old ghosts I had meant to keep buried.
Even if that meant leaving Sayer one more time.
“Okay, how about this. If you brush your teeth until they sparkle—I mean, do a really good job—we’ll make time to grab a donut before school. You good with that?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes!”
I kissed her forehead, unable to let her go just yet. “Love you, sweet Juliet.”
She kissed my chin. “Love you too, sweet Caroline.” Then she turned around and threw her hands in the air, singing loudly, “Bah, bah, baaaaah!” before running off to brush her teeth and get dressed.
“Worth it,” I whispered again. “So, worth it.”
An hour later, I walked into Maggie’s on the Mountain with a dozen donuts in one hand and two coffees in the other. Maggie stood behind the counter sorting newly arrived keycards and filling out their corresponding paperwork.
“You’re an angel of mercy.” Maggie sighed when I opened the box of donuts.
I set her large latte down in front of her. “There’s an extra shot in there just for you.” I opened the box of donuts. “And an apple fritter.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What did you do wrong?”
“What?” Avoiding her scrutiny, I got busy hanging up my jacket and stashing my purse in the file cabinet. “I had some extra time this morning. I thought I would be nice.”
“You never have extra time in the morning,” she reminded me bluntly. “Are you quitting? Did someone else offer you a better job? Because it might pay more, Caroline, but not everything is about money, you know.”
I laughed off her accusations. “I’m not taking another job. Although that Marriott in Breck won’t stop calling me.”
“Corporate assholes,” Maggie mumbled under her breath before she turned back to me. “Okay, so what is it then? What do you want?”
She was unbelievable. “Why do I have to want something?”
“Caroline…” she warned while retrieving her special donut.
Letting out a whoosh of nervous breath, I gripped the counter with two hands and made my request. “You know my old friend that’s staying here? Sayer?” She nodded, not noticing the strained way I said old friend. “He doesn’t know about Juliet. And I would like it to stay that way please.”
I had been expecting an easy-breezy, “Sure, no problem!” But instead I got a frown and a skeptical, “Why?”
My chest pinched. I thought, “Why can’t you just make this simple for me, Maggie?” Instead, I went with, “Why what?”
“Why don’t you want your old friend to know about your daughter, Caroline?”
Okay, so maybe she did notice the way I talked about Sayer. I rushed to keep my foundation of half-truths stable. “Because we used to date. And it didn’t end well. It would be weird if I just sprung it on him out of the blue. It’s something I’m planning to bring up eventually. I just want to do it slowly and carefully and make sure I protect Juliet.”
“Why wouldn’t Juliet be protected if you just told him about her?”
Goddamn her curious nature.
“I don’t know.” I floundered like this was my first rodeo and I hadn’t thought my build-up all the way through. I had of course. I always had the foundation in place. But she was frustrating me this morning and my anger was clouding my judgment. “She would be fine, I guess. I just… I don’t know. I’m trying to preserve his impression of me, okay? He was my last serious boyfriend before Juliet. I just don’t want him to think… I don’t know what I don’t want him to think, but I do know that I would like to be the one that tells him. Eventually. When I’m ready to tell him. All I’m asking is that you don’t bring her up in the next six weeks unless I tell you it’s okay.”
Her analytic expression didn’t change. “Six weeks?”
“That’s how long he’s booked the cabin for.”
A slow, smug smile stretched across her face. “Huh.”
I waved a hand in the air and busied myself with organizing pamphlets for local attractions near the door. “No.”
“What?” Maggie was all feigned innocence and doe eyes.
“Don’t start with me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, but you’re thinking something. And it’s obnoxious.”
“My thinking annoys you?”
“Magdalen.”
“What?”
The desk phone rang interrupting the circling of our conversation. Maggie picked it up and answered with a short, “Front desk.”
Over the last few years, I’d helped Maggie turn her resort around. Before me, she’d been bleeding money. She always had enough rentals thanks to the touristy area of Colorado she was located in, but she had been making inefficient decisions and not managing well. The problem was that she had too much business for just her to handle. There were too many guests and too many problems and too many balls to juggle—which was always surprising to me given Maggie’s less than winsome personality.
“Sorry to hear that,” Maggie told the phone. “I’ll send someone over with them immediately.” She hung up and that smarmy smile came back. “Cabin eleven needs towels, Caroline. Apparently housekeeping didn’t stock the bathrooms after they cleaned on Sunday. Do you mind running some over there for me?”
I suppressed a sigh. “They probably didn’t think we’d be renting it out until after the repairman dealt with the hot tub.”
“I’ll deal with them,” Maggie strategized. “You deal with the towels.”
“Can’t you make them deal with the towels? Isn’t that their job?”
“Scared of cabin eleven, are we?”
“No,” I told her. “I’m scared of towels. It was on my resume, I’m sure of it.”
“Stop being difficult.”
“Stop playing matchmaker.”
She pulled out a stack of white bath towels, hand towels and washcloths from a cabinet behind her and set them on the counter, nudging them toward me. “I’m not doing anything of the sort. And I resent the accusation. I have my life to worry about, Caroline. I don’t need to worry about yours and the many men you date.”
I started to wonder if she had been abducted by aliens and sent back as a robot. “The many men I date?”
Her lips twitched, but she held onto her poker face. “Are there not many of them? There seem to be many of them lately.”
“I think you’re having a stroke, Maggie. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
She finally laughed. “You’re so easy to rile up.”
I grabbed the cart keys and towels for Sayer. “I’ll remember this when Billy Bob comes back through for his ‘extended layover.’”
She stood up straighter. “His name isn’t Billy Bob. It’s Bruce. And don’t put it in quotations like that. You make it seem sordid.”
It was my turn to smile victoriously. “Isn’t it sordid? I thought that was the whole point.” She patted her bright red cheeks, so I had to keep going. Obviously. “Come on, Mags, you got a hot trucker boyfriend that likes to keep things spicy. Ain’t no shame in that game.”
She glared at me. “Don’t keep cabin eleven waiting now.”
“I’ll be back in a few.”
“Take your time.” Always with the last word.
I pushed through the door making a quick escape. She had no idea what it meant for Sayer to be here, at her resort. Thankfully. I cared enough about Maggie to keep her in the dark.
But that also meant playing this game so she never found out—which was turning out to be harder than I thought it was going to be. And I had anticipated hell.
Hopping in one of our little ATVs we used to get around the resort, I headed out to face the devil himself.
I temporarily forgot about the monster in cabin eleven on the short drive to his cabin. I loved the mountain in the morning. The clouds clung to her side, dusting everything with hazy fog and making the golden light glitter where it broke through. And it was so silent. There was reverence. A quietude that even the tourists understood. We tiptoed through the early hours, soaking up every second of the splendor.
By the time I pulled up to Sayer’s cabin, I had marginally settled from the shock of seeing him Friday night, yesterday, and from calling him this morning.
Not that I was less afraid or that I’d stopped planning to get Juliet and me out of this as fast as possible. But I wasn’t as jumpy. The shock of seeing him after all this time when I had truly believed I would never see him again had faded.
Or I had at least stopped denying the reality of what was happening.
Sayer was here. Sayer was in Frisco and at my resort and in my life. And didn’t appear to be going anywhere.
Curling up in the fetal position until he disappeared again wasn’t an option. So it was time to face the crisis and figure it out. I was rusty, but I knew the game as well as anyone. I could be smarter than him. I could be faster than him. I could be more inventive than him.
I just had to get over my bad attitude and start trying.
Scooping up the towels from the passenger seat of the ATV, I headed up the rock path to the front door of his cabin. Our cottages were picturesque against the mountain backdrop. With wrap around porches and log cabin siding, they were about as adorable as could be imagined. They reminded me of little Lincoln Log cabins with their slanted green roofs and painted green doors.
Sayer better fucking love his accommodations.
The door was cracked and swung wide open when I knocked on it. I leaned back, not expecting for Sayer to have left everything open. There was only silence that greeted me. He was nowhere to be seen in the front room or adjacent kitchen.
“Hello?” I called out.
No answer.
I knocked again and yelled, “Hello!” louder.
Still no answer.
Looking to the right, I saw that his Jeep was parked in the driveway, so he should be home. Besides, I might not have had one single conversation with Sayer in five years, but I knew the man well enough to know he would never accidentally leave his front door open.
The man was paranoid.
Like me.
It was what the job had done to us, made us always look over our shoulder and assume everyone we met had ulterior motives.
I took a tentative step inside. “Sayer?” I called out. Still no answer.
Okay, so I had two options. I could assume he was just fine and leave the towels on the bench next to the door. I could leave before he noticed me and avoid talking to him altogether.
Or I could pretend to be concerned about his well-being and take a look around. Discreetly, of course.
And noninvasively—lest he try to get me fired.
I went with option two.
Carrying the towels sandwiched between my hands, I stepped all the way inside Sayer’s rental cabin and kicked the door quietly closed behind me. I didn’t find any of his belongings in the front room save for two pairs of discarded shoes—a worn pair of running shoes and a newer, nicer pair of dress shoes. There was also a book on the coffee table by an author I didn’t recognize. It looked like nonfiction.
So Sayer was boring now. Interesting.
Tiptoeing into the kitchen, I found more of the same—interesting if I were doing a character study on how Sayer had changed over the last five years, but useless for investigational purposes. There was a six pack of local beer on the counter and English muffins. A look in the fridge revealed eggs, bacon, stuff for sandwiches, a marinating piece of meat, a Caesar salad kit and a flat of bottled water.
Huh.
I had never seen Sayer so much as make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before. When he lived with Gus, he let their housekeeper make all of his food and later, when he’d moved out on his own, he only ate out or bought meals that could be microwaved.
Lack of culinary skills was one of his more tragic traits in my opinion. He’d never been domesticated, never had someone to make him meals or show him how to make his own. Once we became an official couple, I’d cooked for him as often as possible to remedy that, but he had never once shown interest in learning how to do it himself.
There was a laptop on the table that caught my attention. Looking around, I stepped closer to it. It was closed and didn’t look like it was on. I nibbled my bottom lip and weighed the consequences of snooping. I would have to turn it on probably and that would take time. And I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly. I doubted he kept files labeled Sayer’s Devious Plans open and ready for my perusal.
A sound at the back of the cabin drew my attention and I decided to wait for a better opportunity to explore his computer. He would have to go into work, wouldn’t he? And I had master keys to all of the cabins.
I would break in later and find all the secrets he thought he could keep from me.
Skipping the second bedroom for now, I headed straight for the master suite. I heard movement, but couldn’t see anybody from the hallway.
“Sayer?” I called out in a half-hearted effort to get him to finally answer me. When he still didn’t, I walked in and prepared to face him.
Only nothing could have prepared me for what I found.
Which was Sayer buck naked.
Oh my God.
The door to the bathroom was wide open. I turned the corner to set the towels on the edge of the king size bed and caught sight of him in all his nude, muscular, holy-hotness glory through the mirror over the dresser. It provided a perfect view of the bathroom and the opaque glass that walled the shower did nothing to give the man privacy.
His head was bent under the shower and he had one arm braced against the wall while he ran the other through his hair, rinsing shampoo out. My mouth watered and I had to swallow quickly to keep from drooling.
I had his profile, a straight side view of his rippling back, those ridiculously toned arms and sides that tapered to a narrow waist, corded with muscle. And then there was the lower half.
I must have made a sound because his head snapped up and his gaze targeted me. Busted.
“What are you doing?” he demanded with such force it caused me to back up a step.
“I, uh, I brought you towels.” I lifted them as proof. “I didn’t mean to… Uh, I called your name, but you didn’t answer so I thought I would… Here are your towels.”
He shut the shower off, still facing me, giving me a giant view of his giant… umm, ahem. “Well, you might as well bring one here.”
Was he serious? I all but threw the towels on the bed and started backing up. “I’ll just leave them here for you.”
“Caro.” He stilled me with just my name. “I’ll drip all over the floor. I just need one.”
“Oh my God,” I hissed at the stack of towels as I picked one up. This was crazy. I should have run away. But I didn’t.
With trembling hands and a flopping stomach, I walked a towel into the bathroom where he still stood bare-ass naked.
“It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.” he reminded me as I tried to look anywhere but at his body covered in droplets of water and surrounded by steam. The scent of his soap left a heady aroma in the room. His presence seemed to take up ninety-nine percent of the space.
I had seen everything before. We’d been naked together more times than we’d been clothed—or at least that was what it seemed like to my teenage hormone-rattled mind. But I wasn’t sure I had ever seen this before.
How did that happen?
He was twenty-three when he’d gone into prison, barely a man, barely a grown up. But he’d come out the full package of manhood.
Literally.
Finally finding the wherewithal to look at the ground, I held the towel out in front of me and shuffled toward him. His toes wiggled as I approached, catching my attention. It didn’t seem possible, but they had also changed in our time apart. They were hairier, more masculine looking. They shouldn’t have also gotten more attractive. That didn’t seem fair.
I looked at my feet hidden in black Merrells. Had my feet changed? Aged? Were they prettier? Or just older looking?
“You’ve changed.” His low voice echoed in the long but narrow bathroom.
I decided not to take the bait. Instead, I wiggled my hand holding his towel, reminding him to take it.
He reached for it, our fingers brushing in the exchange. It was like a lightning bolt had rocketed through me. Such a simple touch, but not at all simple in the same breath.
My head snapped up and I found those brilliant blue eyes that had always signified my downfall. He was watching me, waiting for me to lift my gaze to his.
They were like locked doors. I couldn’t see past the surface. I had no idea what was hiding behind them. Only that something was. Only that he was doing his best to hide as much from me as possible.
And it nearly broke me.
I didn’t leave Sayer because I stopped loving him. I left him because I found someone else that needed my love more. And the temptation to tell him that made my knees lock and my hand reach out to steady myself against the wall.
But I couldn’t tell him. He was still working for the Volkov. He had to be. Otherwise he’d be dead and not here. There was no way to leave the brotherhood other than death. Forty years in the future, they’d let him retire. But he’d just spent five years in prison for them. And on top of that, he had been one of their most successful soldiers ever. They would never let him go.
Consequently, he could never know about Juliet.
Because I would never take her back to DC to live that life. And I would never give them leverage over my life by revealing my daughter.
They could all burn in hell, because we had gotten out and we planned to stay out.
“What are you doing here, Sayer?” I was breathless with anticipation and too many emotions and crippling fear.
He secured the towel around his hips, making it possible to breathe a bit easier. Maybe his nakedness had something to do with my inability to catch a full breath…
“This was my idea, Caro. Do you really not remember?”
I remembered. I remembered everything. But that idea was a plan for both of us. A hypothetical escape for when we got out of DC.
But he never planned to leave DC. He’d made that abundantly clear. He’d always intended to stay. And to work for the bratva. I had been the idiot to fall for his lies. For his game.
I pulled my mustard cardigan tighter around my chest, hiding the scoop-neck navy blue tunic and all of the pain pinned to my exposed heart. “So what, you’re really here to put down roots? To run your bar and pay your taxes and stay out of trouble?” I waved my hand around the bathroom, my expression wrinkled with intense frustration. “This is all about getting on the straight and narrow?”
He scrubbed two hands over his face, hiding an elongated sigh. When he looked back to me, he looked ancient, worn and dragged through an eternity of something horrible. “You have no idea, do you? You have no idea what I’ve been through the past five years or how fucking hard prison is. You have no idea how many times I had the shit beaten out of me or dodged attempts at my life. You have no idea what the last five years have been like for me because all you think about is yourself.
“But that’s fine. That’s totally fine. That’s your right. You can do that if you want. But let’s talk about that. You. Let’s talk about how you left me, since we still haven’t really addressed the fucking heartbreak I went through. You didn’t show up and you didn’t show up and you didn’t show up and then finally I woke the fuck up and started asking around about you. Did someone take my girl? Did something happen to my girl? But nobody knew. Fucking nobody. Then they started asking me the same questions. First your dad, which was fine. I can handle Leon Valero. But then the bosses showed up, Caro. Just imagine what I thought when they came to visit me, asking for your whereabouts. And then the FBI came. ‘Where’s Caroline Valero? Where the hell is Caroline Valero?’ Nobody seems to know. Least of all me, the asshole trapped in a federal penitentiary with zero chance of early parole.
“So yeah, Caroline, by the time I got out, I was tired. Tired of the life. Tired of fighting every day just to keep breathing. Tired of it all. So I grabbed the only person I had left in this world and we made our way west to set up a life I had only dreamed about. And then what happened? You fill in the blank.”
When I didn’t immediately respond, he growled, “Go on, Six. Fill in the blank. What happened next?”
I wiped at tears I only just now realized were falling. But there was fire in my voice when I bit back, “I don’t know, Sayer. I can’t fill in the blank because I don’t know what happened next.”
“I found the girl everybody’s looking for. The girl that promised she would stick by me through all the shit, the girl that swore she would never leave me. She was here all along. Had I thought that my ex-girlfriend was going to take my dream and turn it into her own without so much as a postcard to deliver a proper fuck you, I would have handed over that information a long time ago. The brothers? They can have you. The FBI too. I don’t care what you’re doing here Caroline, but whatever it is has nothing to do with me. And the same goes for my business here. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. So stay out of it.”
He was warning me to stay out of his business? Hilarious.
“Did you just bring a whole bunch of trouble into my life, Sayer? Is an army going to come looking for you and find me instead?”
Something flashed in his eyes. Something I couldn’t decipher. But it was sharp enough that I didn’t trust his next words. “My business with them is settled. If they come here it will be for you. Not me.”
“Your business is settled, huh?”
“Settled.”
“Then what’s with the note? What’s with the cabin? If you want a life of peace and quiet why do you keep causing chaos in mine?”
His jaw ticked once. Twice. His tell. But what was he telling me? “You’ve somehow managed to stay under the radar for five years. The note was a favor. You run now and they will find you. They have not stopped looking. They won’t ever stop looking. At least not for Frankie. You run again and it’s only a matter of time.”
“Frankie’s not with me.”
“Don’t pull that shit with me. I know better.”
Chewing on my bottom lip until I tasted blood, I decided it wasn’t worth it. Clearly Sayer had done enough research on me to know the basics of my life here. It wouldn’t have taken anything to find Frankie once he found me. I just had to hope that he hadn’t discovered Juliet yet.
“Do I have your word that you’re not going to bring the hounds of hell down on me? Can I trust you not to run back to your brothers and give all this away?”
His head tilted and for the first time since we’d started our conversation I noticed the elongated scar across his middle. After all these years, he had never told me how he’d gotten it. He’d never shared his secrets. And yet I was the one surprised when he turned out to be a liar. Silly, Caroline.
“Do you trust my word?” he asked.
I lifted my chin and stared him down until I couldn’t see straight. I stared until I knew I was seconds from breaking down in tears, until there was no breathable air between us anymore. “No,” I answered him simply.
Before he could say anything else, I spun around and fled the bathroom. I noticed his glasses on the bedside table and that was the last straw. There was something about seeing them that broke me.
My reaction was stupid. So stupid. I should be scared for my life. I should be angry he was staying in Frisco. But there was something about that tiny weakness that dug at my armor. When did he get glasses? How bad was his vision? Was it simply because he was closer to thirty? Or was it because of something that happened to him while he was in prison?
I covered my mouth to stifle the sob that would not wait and ran to the ATV. I got out of his driveway and down a secluded access road before I had to pull over. I covered my face with my hands and finally let the tears fall.
It hurt to see him. So much. He had every right to rail at me, to throw my sins back in my face. But damn, it hurt.
And this place. Oh God, this place.
I had never given him credit for this town. Not once. It had been my idea. I had been the one that wanted to run away to some obscure place in the middle of America. I had been the one that decided on the mountains. I had been the one that had researched whether or not we could hide here.
“So if you’re off the whole Midwest corn and country kick, what about Frisco?”
“Where’s that?” I slung my bare leg over his naked thigh and pressed my body closer to his, loving the feel of us fitted together like this. Our feet rubbed together, teasing and enticing and comforting.
“Colorado,” he said simply. “It’s the one with the mountains.”
“I know Colorado has mountains.”
I felt his smile when he kissed the top of my head. “I just like the sound of it. Frisco. It’s got to be a real cowboy town, yeah?”
“I didn’t know we were looking for a cowboy town,” I laughed. I’d started tracing the lines of his stomach with my pointer finger, following the length of his raised scar, enjoying the way he squirmed but let me have my way.
He lifted up, looking down at me with the devil in his eyes. “You’re in love with a cowboy. Of course he wants a cowboy town.”
I tried not to laugh. “Oh, really? You’re a cowboy, huh?”
I squeaked from surprise when he ripped his arm out from underneath me and pounced like a jungle cat. He straddled my waist, keeping his weight elevated. He leaned over me, slowly pushing my arms over my head by sliding his rough palms along them.
I shivered, anticipating what he was going to do next.
“Oh, I forgot. You’re the cowboy.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean cowgirl?”
His smirk was wicked. “Do you mean reverse cowgirl?”
I shook myself out of the memory, knowing it didn’t lead anywhere helpful. Fine, Frisco had been his idea. But he’d never mentioned it again. Not even once. And after that night, we’d talked about leaving less and less until he was finally arrested and there wasn’t talk about leaving ever again.
Frisco wasn’t his to claim. Not even a little bit.
I dried my tears and headed back to the office. I saw him leave a little later in his Jeep, the tires kicking up dust in his wake.
That was it, I determined. The last time we needed to speak. He’d said his piece. And I didn’t have anything more to say to him. So if he wanted to set up a life here, that wasn’t my problem. He could do his thing. And I would do mine.
Until I figured out how to get us out safely.
Then I’d go find a town that was truly mine. A town that had nothing to do with Sayer or my memory of him or our past.
And that would be that.