I’d never really imagined myself settling into the same domestic lifestyle Sean had found for himself. Not because I didn’t want it, per se. Of course I wanted to find my person, wanted to be a mother,wantedall of those things. But intimacy was so hard for me, both physically and emotionally.
Except with Lane.
With Lane, everything waseasy.
I could no longer deny that a large part of my heart and soul yearned for him. In over fifteen years, I’d really never stopped. And I knew Lane would take care of me. I knew he’d protect me—mind, body, heart, and soul—with everything he had, with his life if it came down to it. And if the night of the gala was any indication, he was more than ready to go there with me.
The problem wasn’t Lane.
The problem wasme.
I was the thing holding us back from each other.
After the night of the gala, all the hangups I thought I had when it came to relationships and physical intimacy no longer loomed so large. Maybe they were finally melting away.
Lane deserved to be loved wholly and without reservations, and he wanted that withme.
Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get home and talk to him. To finally sit him down and tell him everything on my mind—the good, the bad, the ugly.
The stretch of road between Boise and Dusk Valley was usually fairly quiet, especially on a holiday like today, when everyone was safely at home, celebrating with their families.
Which was why I found it jarring to flick my eyes up some time later and see a vehicle in my rearview.
Right on my bumper.
As I daydreamed, the sun had sunk lower in the sky, necessitating the use of headlights, and theirs blinded me from making out much about the vehicle. Big, black. Likely an SUV of some sort. There was no way in hell I could see who was driving.
We were on a corner, still about twenty miles outside of the city limits, so I willed my anxiety to simmer. Surely they’d pass me the second we hit the next straight stretch.
Only…they didn’t. Even after I slowed down in an attempt to urge them around me, they stayed right on my tail.
Unease prickled my skin, raising goosebumps in its wake.
With a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, I returned to my normal cruising speed and willed them to make a move. To go around me, to back off, to drive me off the road—anythingso long as they got it over with.
None of those things happened. Only once the WELCOME TO DUSK VALLEY sign appeared and I officially crossed into city limits did they pull over and stop, growing smaller in the distance as I proceeded through town.
While I had half a mind to turn around, drive up to them, and demand to know what the fuck they thought they were doing, I was far too shaken for a confrontation.
And far too shaken to go home.
Lane. I needed Lane.
Pressing the Bluetooth button on my steering wheel, I directed Siri to call him.
twenty-four
. . .
LANE
I’d just hungup a group FaceTime call with Aria and Owen when my phone rang again. Expecting it to be one of them, I grinned, readying to tease them about missing me so much.
Instead, Sutton’s name flashed on the screen.
“Hey,” I said when I answered. “Everything okay?”
“Someone was following me.”
