Page 79 of Toxic Kiss

“I wonder what Haven will think of her precious daddy when she finds out? Push me, and I’ll make sure the last image she ever has of you is you cheating on your dying wife…her loving mother.”

I sit back in my seat again.

“And for the last fucking time. I didn’t OD. Say it again. I dare you,” I say, my voice far too calm for the situation. Then, I turn and look out the window once more.

No one speaks the entire drive back.

The limo slows, and I can see the bus parked ahead. Cops line the driveway like guards to a prison. But no paparazzi. There are still miracles.

We roll to a stop, and I have to wait for the guys and Declan to get out before I can. I’m anxious. My stomach flips while I scan the area, looking around for one person…and there she is.

Haven stands near the door to the stadium, which also serves as the hotel’s back entrance. She has a tablet in her hand and is acting like this is just another stop on the tour and not the place where my sanity is hanging by a thread.

But her eyes…those fucking eyes…never lie, never hold anything back. They track me like she owns every inch of my pain. I feel them, hot and invasive, like a memory I can’t scrub off.

She burrowed under my skin and carved her name into the marrow of my bones before I even knew what it meant to belong to someone. I used to fight it. Mock it. I tried to fuck the feeling out of my system with every wrong girl and every right excuse.

But the truth?

She is the love I’ll never outrun. The tether that makes every other touch feel fake.

And seeing her like this, composed, unreadable, and so goddamn close…it makes me ache in ways no drug ever manages to dull.

I don’t just want her. I want every version of her I’ve never deserved. And I know, with the kind of clarity that wrecks a man, that even if she set me ablaze, I’ll crawl through the flames just to hear her whisper my name.

I walk up to her.

“You making sure I don’t make a break for it,” I ask, voice dry.

She doesn’t rise to the bait.

“Just making sure you don’t collapse before soundcheck,” she says, but there is nothing snarky in her tone.

I chuckle as everyone files into the door beside us. My mother gives us a look but wisely keeps her mouth shut.

“At least you care.”

She tilts her head, then slowly reaches out. Her fingers brush my arm, barely a touch. It’s nothing and everything.

“I do,” she says, softly.

Then she turns and walks through the open door.

I stand there, gutted. Because I’m not sure if that brush is forgiveness for the fucking hell, I put her through…or the start of another kind of war.

No matter what—I’m here for it.

I pull out my phone, thumb through my contacts until I find who I’m after, and send a text.

Cyrus: I need a background check and surveillance. Full deep dive. Videos, photos, the works.

Thomas: What do you want to know?

Cyrus: Everything. What the guy eats, where he works, what he does in his spare time, and who he is fucking. I want it all, everything, and anything you can dig up. No skeleton is too small.

Thomas: No cost spared service?

Cyrus: I don’t fucking care what it costs.