Unperturbed, Boots hopped up on the seat, curled into a ball, and instantly fell asleep.
“God, you’re such a drama queen,” Sutton said with an eyeroll while we waited for the garage door behind us to slide open.
“Just fucking drive.”
Sutton chuckled lightly and shook her head, then backed out and took off for town.
On the drive, I marveled at how…easythis all felt. Being near her should have sent me over the edge, and it did in certain ways. But for the most part, her presence was a balm to my frayed soul.
When we’d been together, our relationship had been new. Fledgling. Before her ordeal, we’d barely gotten our feet wet, only dipped a toe into the waters of the new dynamic we were exploring. We’d never bothered to tell our families, deciding to keep it between us—and everyone who knew us on campus—until we were sure we could go the distance. I remembered being so fucking certain if things didn’t work out, we could revert to our close friendship like we’d never crossed the line.
In the end, we hadn’t managed to stay friends, but holding our relationship close to our chests, being fearful it wouldn’t work out, wound up being a good thing. It saved me the embarrassment of explaining to my family how I, Lane Lawless, had been unable to protect my girl from the evils of this world, and had been unable to hold her together in the aftermath.
I’d loved her back then, sure—a love born on the foundation of a friendship that had slowly morphed into somethingmore. But it wasn’t the same as it is now. Not after years of repressing it, of watching her from afar with admiration and so much fucking respect for how she picked herself up in the wake of the thing that nearly destroyed her.
The truth was, I’d spent these years feeding into the public opinion of our mutual hatred mostly to protect myself. Secretly, the hatred I felt most was formyself. The twenty-year-old version of me who had grown from a scared boy to a man who had seen the darkest parts of humanity hadn’t been able to protect her. I’d never forgive myself for that, for not fighting for her or finding some way tohelpher.
I’d wanted to shield her from that, from my own self-loathing. After everything, she deserved that much from me, deserved my distance.
She may have fired the shot that ended us, but I’d certainly been the one to load the fucking gun.
Being near her again, though, being in her proximity like this? It was doing crazy things to my insides, fucking with my head.
Jury was still out on whether or not that was a good or bad thing.
I couldn’t help but be drawn back to my coma dream.
I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Sutton running right to my door when she needed help was the beginning of making that dream a reality.
I couldn’t help but pray to a god I didn’t believe in that it was.
Soon we were pulling up in front of Sutton’s cute little bungalow on the edge of Dusk Valley’s city limits. Johns was already parked out front and exited his vehicle when we did.
Parked behind him was the crime scene van. Our department was a small outfit, but one of the things I made sure of when Itook over all those years ago was to bring a crime scene tech onto my staff. When there wasn’t anything to investigate, he acted exactly as the rest of my deputies did. Wallace simply had that extra layer of training that came in handy for situations like this.
“You ready?” Johns asked Sutton.
Her brows raised toward her hairline. “Should I be worried?”
Johns sighed. “It’s…not good.”
“Wonderful,” she said with a grimace, then gestured for him to lead the way. I pulled up the rear behind them.
eleven
. . .
SUTTON
“Not good,”as it turned out, was code forreally fucking bad.
twelve
. . .
LANE
I’d seena lot of shit in my days as a cop, but Igaspedwhen we walked inside, though it was masked by the sound of Sutton’s own.
