I don’t know what my dad is capable of or how badly he wants to find Everly. I can only hope he already thinks she’s dead and won’t come looking for her here. We used a fake name to check in, but there was no way around using her credit card to reserve the room. At this point, we just have to pray he disappears and leaves us alone. Until then, I have to keep her safe.
“You scared me,” I mutter, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”
“What are you doing?” I ask as I climb out of bed and go to the desk where she’s huddled over a cup of coffee. She quickly closes the screen, and turns back to look at me, a nervous expression on her face.
“What was that?” I ask.
“You don’t want to see it.”
“Bullshit, Everly, what was it?”
Taking a deep breath, she glances back at the screen. “Well, I found out more about that woman…” Her voice falters as she avoids my gaze.
“My biological mother,” I say, finishing her sentence.
“I don’t know for certain—"
“Yes, you do. Everly, if you’ve done the research and that’s what you think, then I believe you.”
Her chest rises with a heavy breath as her gaze finally settles on mine. The tension between us melts like wax, clearing the air. Grabbing the second chair at the table, I pull it around so I’m sitting next to her.
Finally, she continues.
“Well, I managed to find her identity earlier today. Her name was Sasha Yates.”
There’s a screen up with a missing persons photo. It’s the same girl, my nanny—or I guess, my mother, and as I stare at the photo on the screen, I see a familiarity that makes it hard to breathe. She has crystal blue eyes, dark hair, thick, dark brows, and full lips. Any hope that she could have just been a surrogate is gone now. I look just like her.
“She disappeared from her home at fifteen when I assume she found out she was pregnant. She was hired by your dad, and less than a year later, you were born. Then around the time you were five, she was just gone. But I don’t think she just disappeared, Cullen.”
“What? You think he…killed her?”
Without outright answering me, she turns back to her computer. “I still have access to the database at the coroner’s office from when I worked at the paper, so I pulled up the unidentified bodies report in that year, and I came up with these twelve women. Most are drug-related, and half of them have been identified since. But then I found this…”
Her hand freezes over the mouse, and I wait for her to move.
“Everly.”
“I want to warn you. There are photos, Cullen.”
“Have you looked at them yet?”
“No,” she says flatly.
“Are you afraid to see a dead body?”
She glares at me, and I trace my knuckles along her jawline.
“I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies. I just…I don’t know if I want you to see it.”
Leaning down, I brush my lips against hers. “I can handle it.”
With my hand on her leg, she clicks through the case file. It was a woman, guessed to be about nineteen, cause of death: asphyxiation. As she opens up the photos tab, I hold my breath.
And as the girl’s photo appears on the screen, Everly trembles and looks away.
It’s her. Same dark brows and full lips.
“Are you okay?” I ask, glancing at her, and she stares back at me in shock. Jumping from her chair, she crosses the room.
“How can you ask me if I’m okay? That’s obviously her.”
“I felt the way you reacted seeing that photo.” As I approach her, her shoulders melt, and her eyes soften.
“Because it’s her, Cullen. It’s the girl in the missing persons photo, the girl in the hotel lobby with your parents. That’s your mother, Cullen.”
“I understand that.”
She presses her hands to her face, a shutter in her breath, and I cross the empty space between us to pull her against me.
“This is all my fault,” she cries against the bare skin of my chest. “I didn’t mean to dig all of this up, and now you have to deal with it. It’s not fair.”
“Hey.” I pull her face away and force her to look me in the eye. “I can handle it.”
“No, Cullen. You’re not handling it. You’re bottling it up, pushing it down, letting it fester and morph into something nuclear that will only detonate later. I can’t—“
My arms release her as I step away, suddenly grasping what she’s telling me. “You shouldn’t have to deal with me again when I snap. I get it.”
“No!” She snatches me by the arm, dragging me closer. “If you don’t want to lose control later, then don’t bottle it up now. Last night…you opened up to me. You were vulnerable. Don’t shut down on me again.”
“It’s not that easy, Everly. I had no one. A dead mom. A dad in prison. A shitty, abusive uncle. I don’t know how to open up. I’ve never done it before.”
She approaches me, placing her hands on either side of my face and penetrating me with her warm gaze. “You just found out that you have been lied to your whole life. Your parents aren’t your real parents. Your biological mother was a victim of human trafficking and died a violent death. I can see how this would lead you to anger, Cullen.”
“I’m tired of being angry.”
I can’t resist the urge to finally bury my face into her neck, as if I’m trying to let her tiny body absorb me. Our bodies are so close, I feel her heartbeat against mine, so that the only sound between us is the cadence of our breaths, and I don’t want to leave this space.
But eventually she pulls away. “So where does that leave us?” She whispers without looking at me.
“I don’t know. I think that’s up to you now.”
As she finally gazes up at me, I look first at her lips, trailing my eyes up to hers.
“If none of this happened, if your father and the case and the story about your mother was gone, would you still say that? Would you still want me?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because, Cullen. It’s the thing that binds us, and I understand your anger toward me became passion, but my heart is getting attached to you, to us, and I want to save myself the pain now if your interest is tied to that passion.”
My patience snaps, like the last single thread of a rope. As I snatch her into my arms, I hoist her onto the bed covering her body with mine. Putting my face directly in front her of hers, I speak so clearly there could be no mistake. “I know I’m eighteen, but I’m not a child. I know what I want, and the only thing my interest is tied to is you. Everly, I felt your death yesterday. The night before I found you lying on the floor of your office unconscious. And do you know what went through my head when I thought you had died?
“I told myself I never gave you anything good. I was cruel to you because it was the only way to be with you. Every time I forced you to be near me, I did it because I wanted you so bad, I didn’t know how else to have you.”
My lips crash against hers, and her hand latches around the back of my neck, holding me close. It’s not a kiss of heat and passion—it’s more like a declaration.