Iswear, if I don’t ever have to get into a car that Connor Heyward is driving ever again, that would be just fine by me.
Reckless is too tame of a word to call it. Speed limits are a suggestion, and you’d think he was colorblind considering how often he saw a red light and kept going anyway. Considering how protective he is of Haven, you’d think that he would be more careful with her in the car, but when I scooted a little from my seat in the back to look at her and see what she thought about her husband trying to kill us, she was curled up on her seat, her big eyes even wider, her lips parted in obvious enjoyment.
Ah, well. In that case, I kept my own mouth shut and clutched my seatbelt as though it was the only thing between me and a fiery death in a car crash.
I should be grateful. Due to his speed and daredevil driving, there’s no way in hell anyone followed us from the Fortress. Even if the security team alerted Dallas that I left, good luck finding me, babe. Connor’s car looks like so many others on the road. Good chance I was gone before they got a look at the plate,and with him burning rubber once he peeled away from the curb, we were gone in no time.
At my request, just like I asked Haven when I texted her, he drove straight back to their house. Since I had no one else to call for help, I asked her if it would be okay if I crashed with her for a couple of days while I decided what my next move would be.
Oh, I could stay with Dallas. Even though I know the truth now—that he wasn’t my husband, though he wants to be—it would be too easy to stay with him. I’m used to him now. Used to… damn it, I love him, and that’s why it hurts so fucking much that he lied to me. He could’ve been honest. Once he rescued me from St. Luke’s, he could’ve told me the truth. That we were in love once, but circumstances meant that we were separated. Not because our marriage fizzled, but because his father came between us, and so did the fucking Order of the Owed.
I would’ve believed him. If he laid it out on the line for me, explained it all, showed me the photos of us in a different light… letting me know that we were in love once, and could still be… then helped me approach my memory loss from that angle, everything would’ve been different. Maybe I might even remember more now, but I guess I’ll never know. He made his decision to go along with a lie, and now I don’t know what I can believe.
Once we’re at their house, Connor tucked Haven under his arm, walking with her inside while I hurry up the porch steps behind them. At a look from his wife, he makes himself scarce, but I know better. He won’t be gone long, and I join Haven in the same living room where we spoke last time with the intent to spill my guts to the only person who might understand what I’m going through before her shadow returns.
As we sit on the couch, I wait for her to grab her notepad and pen or even her phone; last time, if she wasn’t up to speaking, she would type into her notes app if the pad wasn’t nearby. Shemust be feeling alright, though, because she tucks her legs under her, an apologetic look twisting her tragically pretty features, as she murmurs, “So you found out.”
It isn’t a question. It’s a statement.
In my text to her, I just said that I needed to get away from the King. That’s all I needed to say. By using Dallas’s title instead of calling him my husband, it was like killing two birds with one stone. I let Haven know that nowIknow about the Order of the Owed, Dallas’s ranking in it, and that he lied to me.
She had to know. The moment I walked into her house, when she gave me enough information to discover some of the truth on my own, she had to have already known that I lost my memory in an accident, and that Dallas claimed he was my husband when he couldn’t possibly be. After all, her husband is one of Dallas’s closest friends—and one of the Owed (and if that isn’t a stupid fucking name for this secret society of theirs, I don’t know what is… owed? Owed what? Jesus). Of course Connor knows, and that means Haven does.
And she helped me. She helped me then, and she’s helping me now, and I only wish I could help her, too. I don’t know what happened to Haven, only that it was bad, but if she’s strong enough to find ways to rebel against the Order from inside of it, maybe I… maybe I can, too.
After all, they fucked up my life. Dallas’s, too. His dad… that bastard is the reason I had to marry a man who stars in my nightmares instead of the one who would’ve been a dream if it wasn’t for the little matter of all the lies.
“Yeah,” I say on an exhale. “I found out.”
Haven hesitates for a moment before she leans over, pulling me into a quick hug.
It surprises me how much comfort there is in that simple gesture. How much I needed it, too, and how easily the story spills out of me once she pats my back, then eases away soshe can curl up against the arm of the couch, clutching a throw pillow to her chest.
I tell her everything. Well, almost everything. I leave out how Dallas seduced me, then fucked me in front of a standing mirror, but I tell her about the way he lost it when I accidentally called him by another man’s name, even though I still believed it washisname. The scene in the gym when I cleaned his knuckles for him because asking him about the brand. How he admitted that he was a member of the Order of th Owed, and then after my snooping in his office, I discovered he was the King.
Connor sidles in halfway through. Because he stays quiet, just listening, I keep going. I know that, if I stop, I won’t find the nerve to relive it all. Not when the wounds are so fresh, and I’m beginning to wonder if Dallas has noticed I’m gone yet. I deleted my texts to Haven before I left, then tossed the phone in one of the closets in a spare room just in case he tries to use it to track me down. I don’t want him to be able to come after me just yet, and I have to hope that I can believe Connor when he says he won’t rat me out.
When I get to the point in the story when I decided to ask Haven for help because, really, there was no one else, Connor finally speaks up.
“What about Tony?”
I turn to look at him. “Who?”
“Tony. You know. Tony Wright. Your old man.”
Haven narrows her eyes on Connor. “You know her father?”
Connor shrugs. “Know of him is more like. After Dallas found out that Lucy ran off and married that Julian fucker, he went on a bender. Jack was no help. Adrian had me and Bas go track down Lucy’s dad to find out where she went. That’s how we found out that Jack arranged it so that she married an Owed and got shipped out west, and if Dallas tried going after her, Jack had no problem getting rid of her permanently. When Dallas wassober again, we broke the news to him, and he gave up on going after her, thinking he was saving her. But her dad… he knew. He agreed to it.”
When Haven speaks again, her voice is dark and dangerous. “And you think a man who could sell his daughter out because Jack fucking Collins said to would be willing to help her now?”
His tongue darts out, playing at the corner of his mouth. Rather than apologize for pissing Haven off, he seems to be getting a kick out of it. “Of course not, sweetheart. But I figured your friend here wanted the truth after Dallas fucked up by lying to her. With the right incentive, I bet we can get Tony to tell us the truth.”
I frown. “The right incentive?”
Connor’s blue eyes seem to sparkle. “You let me worry about that, sunshine, why don’t you?”
Sunshine? “What?”
