The memory hits, sharp and fast. I don’t let it take me under.
“He had connections,” I say. “Money. Power. People who made problems disappear.”
I glance up at Donovan. He’s watching me now… completely still.
“I became one of those problems that day. He threatened us,” I tell him. “Me. The girl. Told me if I said anything, he’d make sure no one ever found her.” The words don’t shake though they should. I raise my chin, adding. “I testified against him anyway.”
Donovan’s turned off the heat on the stove. His spatula is on the counter, and his arms are crossed tightly over his chest. A muscle flexes in his neck as he listens, his stormy eyes drilling into me.
“They locked him up,” I say. “For a while.” It all washes back over me now. The day he tracked me down, held me at gunpoint. How he swore he’d ruin me, destroy my career, kill me if I didn’t disappear. “That’s when they came to me,” I say. “The Marshals. New name. New life. Different rules.”
I let out a breath, thinking hard around my next words.
“I followed all of those rules.” Every single one. “I didn’t leave anything behind. Didn’t keep anything I wasn’t supposed to. Didn’t tell anyone where I went or who I was now.”
My gaze drifts back to the kitchen. To him.
“My mom doesn’t even know where I am, though she knows I’m alive.” The words come out softer and more fragile because I don’t have certainties anymore… or answers. “I did everything right, and he still found me.”
I wrap my arms around myself and start pacing. “They were supposed to protect me,” I say. “That’s the whole point.” My voice cracks. “But my house is wrecked, and my neighbor says she ‘knows about me.’”
Donovan doesn’t say a thing. He just listens, though it looks like it takes something out of him to hold still.
I shake my head. “I don’t feel protected. I haven’t in longer than I care to think about, and I’ve lost everything. Everyone.”
Until you. Until one crazy night that felt like hope I no longer thought existed.
That’s the truth… the one I’ve been avoiding. The reason I can’t look at him now, even though every part of me longs to sink into his arms and forget about the world.
It doesn’t help that his gray-blue eyes flood with warmth and understanding. Or that he drops his arms to his sides like he’s half ready to reach for me, too.
I turn away, trying to ignore what I hunger for more than anything. A sense of home, of peace. Like I don’t have to do this all alone. But I have to or risk losing everything. Besides, he doesn’t deserve this. No one does.
I sniffle, wiping the back of my hand over my cheeks. “That’s why I was on the move the other night. That’s why I stumbled into the bachelor auction and bid on you. Because you looked…safe.”
Donovan nods once, heading my way. He sets a plate down in front of me. Eggs. Toast. Simple.
Then, he sits across from me. “You’re safe here,” he says.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I just did.”
My breath catches because he believes it. Completely. And for the first time since I stepped off that plane, I want to believe it, too.
“I don’t stay,” I say. It comes out softer now. Less like a warning. More like a confession.
His gaze doesn’t shift. “Then stay tonight.”
I look down at the plate and my hands, tracking the faint tremor that hasn’t quite left. “I don’t know how to do that,” I admit.
“Yeah,” he says. “You will.”
“Are you eating?” I ask quietly.
The pan still sizzles in the kitchen. “Have to finish mine. I’ll be right back.”
When he returns, we eat in silence, the only sounds the metal clink of forks against plates.
