“I know that. It’s okay, you can tell me.”
He closed his eyes for a moment before saying, “I was just thinking that he’ll still win. Even if he no longer walks this earth,I’m still his prisoner…it’ll be like I never escaped. I’ll still lose everything I was trying to get back.”
I leaned down and brushed my mouth over his. “The phone’s going to work, Ethan. I know it.” He started to open his mouth to speak, but I cut him off with another kiss. “That’s not a lie. I know it in here,” I said as I used my hand to tap my chest. “It’s going to work and you’re going to be able to go home again.”
Ethan studied me for a long time before nodding, and then his arms were around my neck as he pulled me down into his embrace. I wrapped my arms around him and just held him until the tension eased out of him and he said, “Feed me or I’m going to fight you for the leftover pizza.”
I laughed and said, “Okay, but you’re going to have to let me go first.”
Ethan didn’t loosen his hold on me. Instead he said, “Never mind.”
I chuckled at that and gave him exactly what he wanted…no, what he needed.
Chapter 14
ETHAN
I wasn’tsomeone who typically resorted to stereotypes to define people, but admittedly, when Cain had told me we were going to meet the man Ronan had tasked with fixing Lucy’s phone, I’d imagined a tall, young, thin, geeky guy with glasses and an eager beaver personality.
I got the tall part right, but that was as far as it went in describing Vincent St. James.
First off, the man was in his late forties and there was nothing geeky about him. With his short black and silver hair and a body that rivaled any man’s half his age, he was the epitome of a silver fox. He was taller than Cain which probably put him near the 6’5 mark and he had huge biceps and a broad chest. If I hadn’t already been in complete and utter lust with the man at my side, I definitely would have looked twice at Vincent and several times after that, too.
There was nothing eager beaver about Vincent either. He was cold and aloof as Cain introduced us and he made no effort to shake either of our hands, which for Cain’s sake, I was glad for.
The man had ended up meeting us at a house deep in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in West Virginia.He hadn’t said if the house was his or not and we hadn’t asked as he’d let us inside. Nor had he offered us any kind of food or beverage as he’d led us to the kitchen and accepted the envelope containing Lucy’s phone.
“Do you have the passcode for it?” Vincent asked without looking up from the phone. His eyes were examining the cracked screen.
“Yes,” I said.
He slid a pen and small pad of paper across the island to me and I quickly jotted down the code.
“Did it power on at all after it was dropped?” he asked.
“No,” I responded. “We tried plugging it in but it seemed like it wasn’t charging.”
Vincent nodded and then looked up at us. “I’ll need a few days with it…if I need to order parts, might be longer. If you’re staying in the area, there’s a hotel about ten miles from here. It’s open during the off season.” His gaze shifted to Cain. “It’ll be pretty quiet.”
Cain nodded. “You have my cell?” he asked.
Vincent gave him a nod, though his eyes were back on the phone.
Neither man exchanged any additional words as Cain took my hand in his and led me from the kitchen. It was the second time he’d grabbed onto my hand, the first being just outside the bank right before the cops had shown up. But unlike that time, this time I was actually able to enjoy the sensation of his callused skin against mine. Not to mention that he was holding my hand on purpose, not just as part of some act.
“What now?” I asked.
“It’s not worth flying back to Seattle to wait so we’ll check out the hotel. You okay with that?”
As much as I missed Lucy, the idea of getting to spend a few more days with Cain in complete and utter privacy was a welcome relief and for the first time since we’d left the hotel that morning, I felt my spirits lift. Admittedly, I hadn’t done well after Cain had voiced what I’d already known – that my life was not going to bewhat I wanted it to be if that phone couldn’t be fixed. I’d felt guilty for coming off as an ungrateful jerk, especially considering how much harder things would have been without Ronan and Cain, but knowing I’d be losing my family all over again, along with the freedom to be the real me, had been devastating.
After we’d checked out of the hotel and gotten some food, Cain had returned the rental car and we’d taken a cab to a different agency and gotten a new rental. They were steps I wouldn’t have even considered taking if I’d been on my own. The drive to West Virginia hadn’t taken long and we’d spent much of it talking about our childhoods. Cain’s had been tough to listen to because there’d been so little joy in his life compared to my more stable upbringing, even after he’d gone to live with his grandmother after getting out of the hospital. He’d admitted that his life with her had been good and that she’d been kind to him, but he’d been unable to connect with her like he would have been able to had the circumstances been different. His aversion to being touched had started even before he’d left the hospital and his grandmother had not been an exception to that. Like the girl who’d tried to kiss him, when his grandmother had gone to hug him for the first time, he’d lashed out at her. While he hadn’t hurt her, he’d known she was afraid of him after that and she’d never again tried to have any kind of physical contact with him.
He’d been sent to a shrink after his stay at the hospital, but his trust issues had made him practically unreachable at that point. Being around other people hadn’t worked either and he’d dropped out of school by the time he was sixteen. He’d gone on to get his GED a year later, but hadn’t had any interest in college so he’d stayed in Indianapolis to be near his grandmother, despite their strained relationship. He’d worked odd jobs over the years, mostly ones where he hadn’t had to interact with a lot of other people. When his grandmother had died just after his twenty-first birthday, he’d left Indiana. He hadn’t told me what he’d done after that, though I did wonder if it was at that point that he’d met Ronan and started working for him.
When we hadn’t been talking on the drive to West Virginia, I’dbeen thinking about my conversation with him that morning. He’d been so certain that my interest in him was tied to the fact that he was protecting me and helping me finally get away from Eric once and for all. Like I’d told him, feeling safe was just a sliver of what had my feelings for him growing stronger and stronger the more time I spent in his company. I was scared of how quickly I was losing parts of myself to him. It had been a little over two weeks since he’d tackled me in the snow and put a gun to my head, but yet, everything was different.
He was different.
