Still, the idea of leaving is wrong in a way I don’t have language for yet, like I’m stepping away from something unfinished and pretending that won’t matter later.
I move slowly, deliberately, hoping he’ll turn back, hoping he’ll give me something. Anything.
“Did something happen?”
He stops just outside the doorway but doesn’t face me. “Get dressed.”
The edge in his voice shuts me up. Whatever this is,he’s not offering context. I can’t tell if that’s because he doesn’t care or because he does.
Either option leaves a sting behind.
I pull on the first clothes I grab. My hands move on instinct when I reach under the mattress.
Nothing.
My pulse stutters.
I turn just as Ridge steps into the doorway again, the photos lifted between his fingers like evidence. Like a problem already solved.
My stomach drops. The air between us thickens.
“Looking for these?” he asks.
The words are a sucker punch to my chest.
My mouth goes dry. My mind races, trying to build a version of this that doesn’t end badly.
“I didn’t know what they were,” I say, and I hate how unsteady it sounds. “I found them in the desk.”
His brow lifts. The faint curve of his mouth isn’t humor. It’s something colder.
“In the desk in the room I asked you not to go into?”
“I was bored one day. The door was cracked, so I figured I’d explore. It was harmless. They didn’t seem like anything, but I got nervous, so I put them there to keep them safe until I could put them back.”
“Safe,” he says. “That’s what we’re calling hiding them now?”
“You came back, and I panicked,” I say. “I didn’t know I was leaving.”
He steps closer. Not rushed. Not aggressive. The photos dangle loosely from his hand, but his eyes stay locked on mine.
“So you planned to take them with you.”
“No,” I say quickly. “I didn’t have a plan. I don’t evenknow who those people are. It honestly all happened so fast. That’s it.”
He lets out a quiet sound that isn’t a laugh. “You’re a terrible liar.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “I’ve been locked in a bunker, Ridge. Forgive me for not handling my downtime with grace.”
He flips through the photos, detached, clinical. Then he pauses, holding one up to the low light.
“Who’s this?”
My gaze follows his finger. The man with the dark birthmark.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve seen him around, but I don’t know him.”
“Where exactly in the desk did you find them?”
