His hoarse voice is a dagger in my chest. “I’m not. Unless it’s a coincidence and the new Lachlan Park security guard we hired a few weeks ago happens to share the same name.”
That word is another blade to my sternum.
Coincidence.
His fingers fly across the keyboard as the blood rushing to my head starts to flood behind my eyes. The second a resume with a headshot fills the screen, the recognition is a metal rod to the backs of my knees.
I should’ve put two and two together when Kate finally let his name slip tonight. But I was too distracted.
The black-and-white image on the monitor confines me to my spot.
I’d know those eyes anywhere.
The last time I saw them, they were framed by a smearing of blood as they watched the life slip from Rowan’s.
Alexander Brighton doesn’t only go by Xander, he also goes by Lex.
THIRTY-NINE | KATE
Ialmost said it, but the words sat heavy on my tongue. The way Preston’s been making me feel all night nearly had me feeling light enough to tell him that I love him.
That I’m completely and utterly his.
The way he broke for me on that Ferris wheel, relaying the memories of that horrific night five years ago, had parts of myself reaching out to him like the roots of a plant somehow embedding themselves in the weakest parts of shattered concrete, like I could fill them.
Hold them together, though I’m not made up of the same matter.
Now, there’s this hollow, regretful feeling churning in my stomach, knowing I could’ve said those words to him and didn’t.
Tonight, when we get back to the estate, I’m going to.
I know he hasn’t said them first, but I’ve felt them in all the details woven through tonight. Have recognized it in the way his eyes hold mine, like two magnets destined to fit. If love isn’t a man offering to hunt down your demons to the end of the earth, even when he’s haunted by his own, I don’t know what is.
The silence in the break room is eerie as I open my locker, which contains an extra pair of clothes, my last paycheck, and a few other miscellaneous items. A cold draft pushes through the room, wrapping around me like freezing fingers clawing my skin. It sits on my arms and legs, making them prick with gooseflesh. My body is eager to return to the man who somehow injects heat into my bloodstream, even though he instills fear in others.
There’s something oddly poetic and beautiful about that.
Knowing he’s weak for me.
As if my body is aware, the hairs on my neck rise, feeling a presence in the small room behind me.
My teeth sink into my bottom lip as I suppress my smile. “Should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to leave me alone for five minutes,” I tease. A few heartbeats pass. The absence of a response has me shaking my head, as I rearrange the contents of my locker to make it easier to carry them down into the tunnel. “Luckily for you, I enjoy your possessiveness.”
“Do you?”
My heart plummets into my stomach. The low timber of the voice has my fingers tightening on the handle of my locker. It’s taking all my power to fight the tremors seizing every muscle. I must be hallucinating. The tone in my ears somehow shifts into one with the authority to have terror eating me from the inside out.
My feet feel as if they're buried in tar as I slowly turn, my entire body solidifying in fear.
Those dark eyes that appear in my nightmares arrest mine, breathing life into the petrifying dreams I’ve carried ever since I ran. “Because you know how much I love it when you run. But hiding from me?” he tsks. “Now that really pisses me off.”
“Xander,” I breathe, trying to ignore the way I feel like the scar on my neck is splitting open with his presence alone.
He takes a step forward, and I take one back, my back plastering against the cool metal of the lockers behind me. My palms flatten over the surface, trying to hold on while the ground I finally felt steady on is ripped out from below me.
“How…did you find me?” my lip quivers.
He blows out an entertained snicker laced with disdain. “I almost gave up. Thought you were gone for good. But finally, after months of looking for you—” His head shakes side to side in displeasure as he drags his hand over his dark, cropped hair. “You really outdid yourself this time. Fucking Maine.”
