LANE
“You…didn’t?”Sutton’s voice cracked, and my fear rose.
I shook my head. “Where’d it come from?”
She explained the box, how she’d found it on her bunk at the firehouse when she came back from a call yesterday.
I thoughtshehad bought the lingerie herself to surprise me for Valentine’s Day. It never once occurred to me that someone else had given it to her, pretending it was from me.
What the fuck was going on here?
Everything had been so…quiet since I’d gotten rid of Addie. Why was this happeningnow?
“Do you still have it? The box, I mean.”
Sutton nodded. “It’s upstairs. Should still be on the bed in the guestroom.”
The euphoria I’d found with her moments before had completely evaporated. Leaving her where she was, I headed upstairs. Boots greeted me at the top landing, and I bent to brush a palm down his spine before continuing to the room. He trotted dutifully along beside me.
Right where Sutton said it would, the box was on the guest bed, the lid askew, the tissue paper tossed to the side.
Fuck, I should’ve grabbed gloves before I came up here. I couldn’t touch it with my bare hands, not if I wanted forensics to run tests on it. Racing back down to my office, I grabbed a set of nitrile gloves from the carton I kept in my desk drawer and snagged a plastic bag from the kitchen before returning to the room. Boots sat on the mattress, right next to the box as though standing guard, eyeing me expectantly.
“Good boy,” I said, scritching under his chin. Then I donned the gloves, replaced the tissue paper and lid, and stuffed the box into the bag, tying the handles tightly.
It was the best I could do on short notice.
I brought it back downstairs and slid the package onto the kitchen island.
Before I could make it back to my room, Sutton met me in the hall. Wearing one of my tees, she held the offending bra and panties between her thumb and forefinger, as far away from her body as she could manage, like they were a shitty diaper she didn’t want to be carrying.
“Where are you going with those?”
“To burn them,” she said simply, marching past me, heading for the living room.
“Wait, what?” I asked, turning to rush after her. When I got there, she already had the fireplace lit and was lowering the garments toward the flames.
I stopped her with a gentle palm on her arm before she could complete the task.
“That’ll ruin the logs,” I said, indicating the faux lumber sitting inside my gas fireplace.
“Don’t care,” she replied, straining against my hold.
“Sunny.”
“Chief.”
“Please, baby. Just let me throw them away. You’ll never have to see them again.”
Sutton’s shoulders slumped, and she nodded, handing me the bra and underwear. I brought them to the kitchen and shoved them into the bottom of the garbage can, then went back to her. Lifting her in my arms, I carried her right into my en suite bathroom. Setting her on the counter, I moved to my massive shower and turned on the rainfall one overhead. Once I made sure the temperature was hot enough to burn even the devil himself—exactly how Sutton liked it—I picked her up again and walked us inside. She clung to me, exactly as she had our first night back together.
“Talk to me.”
“I feel…violated,” she admitted, lifting her head from my shoulder to look at me. “Does that make sense? Like if that lingerie didn’t come fromyou, I have no idea who would’ve sent it, and that makes my fucking skin crawl.”
“I get it,” I assured her, sweeping the heavy, wet strands of hair back from her face. “I bagged the box for evidence, and I’ll bring it to the station when we’re done here and have Wallace dust it for prints and whatnot.”
“No!” she yelped, squeezing me tighter. “Don’t leave.”
