Knowing she could potentially be in danger wasn't why she couldn’t sleep, though, why she was wandering her bedroom at two in the morning.
Nope, that was all Dragon.
Why couldn’t she make a clean break with her feelings the same way she could with her presence?
Distance had helped these last few months, but as soon as she saw him again, that pull that had first drawn her toward the man with the unusual eyes was tugging at her all over again.
It wasn't what she wanted, but part of the problem she’d been facing ever since she learned the truth about her conception and parentage was that she didn't know what she wanted anymore. How could you know what you wanted out of life when you were struggling to figure out who you were?
What she needed was time to herself, away from her family, to try to figure out all the tangled thoughts and emotions stuck inside her. While overbearing at times, her family loved her and she loved them back. How could she be selfish enough to disappear for a while when they’d finally shrugged out from under the burden of finding out the truth about their parents?
That had been the focus of all their lives for almost two decades. Her brothers had shouldered most of it, and they deserved this time to finally be free and focus on themselves and their partners. It would be selfish to go and make it all about her, which was why she tried so hard not to let any of them know how badly she was still struggling.
But it got lonely.
Isolating.
And the lonelier she got, the more isolated she felt, the more the darkness inside her grew.
It would be so nice to have someone who was just solely on her side. Someone she didn't have to worry about them feeling torn and having other priorities. Someone who could just be hers.
As she padded down the stairs, her gaze couldn’t not stray to her front door, thinking of the man sleeping in his car in the street outside her townhouse.
Dragon had come here because of her. To try to get more intel about the woman who had accosted her at the park, but what did that mean exactly? Had he just come because he was genuinely worried that Dr. Gardner posed some sort of threat to her?
If he really thought she was in danger, she didn't doubt he would have shoved a syringe in her arm, knocked her out with a sedative, shoved her on a plane, and taken her back to his home.
As much as she hated admitting it, Cassandra didn't hate that Dragon was outside. That he’d cared enough to come. He’d alsoexplained about Rose, was it just to prove he and his team were right about what they'd done, or did he want to find a way to smooth things over between them?
Would a man like Dragon ever really care enough about anyone, though?
Not because he was incapable of caring about another like he believed himself to be, but because he was so tightly controlled that he was afraid to let anyone get close to him.
Only he had nothing to be afraid of with her.
Why hadn't he seen that?
Why couldn’t he have at least listened to her? Taken her seriously instead of just brushing her off like her opinion meant nothing?
Okay, so she wasn't part of Delta Team, but she knew those guys better than anyone else other than Eagle Oswald himself, surely that counted for something.
But it hadn't.
In the kitchen, she opened her fridge and grabbed some chicken. It was supposed to be for tonight’s dinner, but she felt like popcorn chicken, and she was awake anyway so why not make it now?
After all, a midnight snack could be anything you wanted.
Engrossed as she was in chopping up the chicken into little bite sized portions, it wasn't until she moved to the pantry to grab some seasonings that she felt it.
A brush of cold air against her skin.
With a gasp, she turned to find that her back door wasn't latched closed, it hung open just enough to let cold air in.
Enough to tell her that somebody was inside her home.
There wasn’t a single shred of doubt in her mind that she had closed and locked that door before going to bed. Dragon’s presence had shaken her up, and she hadn't wanted to not takea potential threat seriously enough to at least confirm she was locked in tight for the night.
But someone must have picked her lock.
