“It’s not your fault.”
“I know,” I mutter.
“What about you?”
I pull away to look at her. “What about me?”
“Your family? Do you have one besides Megan?”
“A mother,” I answer truthfully, and I can’t keep the disdain from my voice. Like her, and though the situation is entirely different, I didn’t have a good one.
“Do you –”
“Let’s get you in the shower,” I say, cutting her off. I’m not having this conversation. Not right now.
I start to walk out of the kitchen, but she tugs on my arm and stops me. “No secrets, Nix. That goes both ways.”
I flex my jaw once but give her a little nod. “I’ll tell you someday, but right now . . . I can’t.”
She breathes out through her nose before whispering, “Okay,” and sliding her hand down my arm to twine her fingers in mine.
I don’t remember the last time I held a girl’s hand, I don’t even remember what it felt like. So, for a second, I just stare at our fingers before giving into the feel of it, the emotion that curls around my heart, before leading us away toward the bathroom.
I will tell her, I promise myself. But tonight? Tonight, too much has been unpacked to even touch on the subject of the woman who birthed me. I need a moment to breathe, space to think, and I’m glad she’s giving me that.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Charlotte Mitchell
In the middle of the night, I lay on the soft, plush bed of Nix’s guest bedroom, staring at the texture on the ceiling and contemplating the entire fucked up night. It didn’t go as planned. I wanted to gain intel; I wanted to get closer to discovering who is behind all this.
I didn’t expect to be outed.
And I didn’t expect to live if it ever happened.
But he has feelings for me, and that leaves me awake all night because what we are doing is so dangerous on so many levels. I could lose my job. He could lose his. We could never find the boss. Hell, we could die trying.
I look at the clock on the bedside table and quietly groan at the baby-blue numbers displaying the time. In a few hours, the city will come alive, and as of right now, we don’t have a single game plan on what we do from here. It’s a conversation I dread having because he’s going to want all the control. Not that I blame him, and by rights, Ishould give him a majority of it, considering he knows more about the deeper, dark parts of this business than I do. And if anyone has a chance of finding out who his boss is, it’ll be him because, on the ride over here, he confessed that he’d never met him before. Never even heard his voice.
Andre has, and Andre is more likely to tell Nix something he shouldn’t than he is to tell me. My wheels are spinning over how we can get the details of what Andre has stored in his brain… without tipping him off.
Damn near impossible.
Slowly, I slide to a sitting position and run a hand through my damp hair from my earlier shower before readjusting Nix’s big t-shirt. I hadn’t had clothes to change into since we didn’t stop at my apartment, so Nix gave me some of his clothes. I have no underwear, but the shirt is long enough to cover my lower regions anyway. Not that it matters, he’s seen me naked.
After I showered, he showed me around his place. Aside from the kitchen and the living room, he has an immaculate dining room, a spacious balcony, an office lined with bookshelves, and two bedrooms: one master and one guest. I never entered the master. Both of us had one interest: time to think everything over. It went without speaking to one another that we both needed it. And when I laid my head down, I had been tired, but now?
Now I can’t sleep. Now that I’m alone, even if Nix is in his bedroom down the hall, it’s all too real.
Sliding back the covers, I pad across the room on the chilly, dark wood floors and quietly open my door. I have every intention of grabbing a glass of water to see if that helps calm my mind, but I don’t want to wake him. I don’t want to start this conversation before I have had time to come up with my own plan to present.
The hallway is dark, and I make my way along it but pause at his office. The door is slightly ajar, and a little light is filtering its way through the crack; it must have been left on. I nibble my bottom lip, weighing my options. I don’t know much about him. He doesn’t let me in. But his office? It could have little tidbits of him, small things to discover about this closed-off man.
But what if I’m caught? I wouldn’t have a valid excuse because he wouldn’t like the fact that I was picking through his things when he’s such a private person.
However . . . something in there could help me make my decision on how to proceed. Something inspiring, something mundane to Nix but huge to me.
I look a little way down the hall and at his bedroom door. It’s firmly closed and seemingly dark if the sliver of black under the door is anything to go by.
