My stomach dropped. “It’s a no, then. You don’t want to go away with me.”
“Of course, I do, A. But I can’t leave now. Let’s finish this first. Let’s get the Apparitions behind bars and get the Russians to back off. Then I’ll take you anywhere in the world. But if we start running now, we’re never going to stop.”
I turned my head from him. It made sense, but it still stung.
He shifted to my side and pulled me into his arms. “Don’t be mad at me. I just want you safe.”
“I know,” I grumbled as he kissed my forehead.
I fell asleep in his arms, and the next morning, after saying goodbye to Rach and my parents, he brought me home, where our team’s headquarters had been moved. The living room was crowded with tables and stacks of boxes, evidence-filled whiteboards standing everywhere.
He insisted the team work from his apartment while I was recovering, refusing to leave me alone. The director had granted it, seeing that there was a mole in the FBI building.
Everyone had passed the director’s questioning and polygraph tests. Liam had been the only traitor in our midst. And all of us had sworn not to breathe a word of our investigation to anyone outside the team. Even the director received bogus updates. And I had a suspicion that he was on to us. But he kept quiet, took our false reports without a word of protest. Because the director wasn’t stupid either. So he supported our secrecy. Looked the other way when our paperwork didn’t quite match reality. Because anyone in that building could be another traitor.
Just like Liam.
But could I really call him a traitor when he’d risked his life to save mine? Who knows what would have happened to me if he hadn’t been there—whatever the hell he was doing there, in the first place.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around it; how close he was to the Apparitions.
A memory had me jolting upright in bed.
Raina’s face when she saw Liam. I had thought it was his death-stare that had her scared. But sheknewhim. She knew he was with Grayson.
And that death-stare Liam gave her, hadn’t been for my benefit. It had been a warning for her to keep her mouth shut.
Owen reached for me, wiping at his eyes. “A nightmare?” he mumbled, blinking up at me.
He had been sleeping soundly next to me, but I couldn’t get my mind to shut down. I had a strange feeling that I was missing something. Something vital.
“Raina knew Liam,” I answered.
Owen frowned and sat up next to me. “You’re right. She started freaking out, right after Taylor opened the door.” He was quiet for a while. “You remember what she said? That Varon already knew we were there. That he was hearing everything we said.”
Gods!“She was shaking and screaming at the window that she wasn’t going to talk. She…”
“Was screaming at Liam,” Owen finished my sentence.
“We should go see her again. If she knew Liam was working with Grayson, there has to be a lot more she knows. She is his… girlfriend, after all.” I couldn’t help the slight cringe as I said the words.
Owen didn’t miss it. “It still bothers you.”
I sighed. “No, it doesn’t. Not like you think. It’s just… weird to me.”
He nodded. “It’s okay if it does, Ava. I’m not expecting you to act like you never loved the man.”
The way he said it—I frowned. “Is that why you don’t want to have sex with me? You think I’m still hung up on Grayson?” He’d been using every trick in the book not to take it any further than kissing.
Owen fell back onto the pillows with a groan. “I really don’t like you saying his name when we’re in bed together. It’s bad enough I had to listen to how he talked to you while you were fucking.”
I gave an incredulous laugh. “Are you being serious right now?”
Owen shifted his gaze to me, then pulled me onto his chest, our noses almost touching. I watched as he struggled to find the words.
“I’ve never been the insecure, jealous type. But I’m really struggling with this. I was there, Ava. I know how much you loved him. I saw how torn up you were over him. You’ve told me yourself that you could never love someone like that again. I don’t want to be your second choice, the placeholder, because you can’t get who you really want. Not when I can’t even fathom not being with you every day for the rest of my life.” He pushed my hair behind my ear. “I need all of you, A.”
My throat closed up. “Youhaveall of me.”
