Sirens sound in the distance. Liam hadn’t been bluffing about the cops, but then that doesn’t surprise me. But they got here fast.
“Sirens,” I whisper. Meaning, we have to hurry.
The tender look he gives me melts something deep inside my belly. He opens the door and carefully sets me in the truck. It’s not a limo, but it might as well be. It’s better than that. He buckles me in, heads around to his side, and we pull out.
We’re halfway down the block when I see the flash of lights bouncing off the buildings to the right of us. They won’t catch us. Affection fills me as I look at Stone’s hard profile. They won’t catch him.
“You came for me,” I say, still stupidly excited about that.
He grunts, turning onto the freeway and merging with the other cars and trucks.
I run my bare feet along the rough carpet at the foot of his truck. There aren’t any old wrappers tossed into the bottom, but it’s not exactly clean either. There are too many rips and burns in the fabric for that. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quiet. We need to talk.”
It’s ridiculous, but my mind goes to the silver foil in my clutch. I have a condom. Protection. This was the night when I would lose my virginity, and now I’m with a man who can take it.
“Talk about what?” I ask in a voice I hope is seductive.
He gives me a sideways look, dark and severe. “Your father.”
My mouth goes dry. I look down, twisting the soft part of my clutch. I’m not good at hiding my emotions. And right now they’re lit up like a neon sign, flashing guilty guilty guilty. “My father?” I say as lightly as I can. “Why would you want to talk about my father?”
“It’s serious, what I have to tell you, little bird.”
The sirens get louder. Closer. I give him a frantic look. He glances in the rearview, once, then again. His voice calm and steady as he says, “We’re okay.”
“You sure?”
There’s a grim look on his face. What does he know about my father? Does he know he’s the Innkeeper? Keeper? Is he going to hurt my father? I’ve gone from joy to dread in the space of a heartbeat.
He’s pulling off the highway. It’s the Big Moosehorn Park exit. But instead of heading down to the river, we go the other way, up a road that turns into dirt and rough gravel. It’s a bumpy ride up here, jolting me out of my panic.
“Where are we going?” My voice comes out small.
“A place I like to sit to think.”
Ten minutes through the woods, twisting and turning through it all, and he’s pulling over in front of a tiny cottage. Ten minutes of wondering what Stone could possibly want to say to me except the worst thing in the world. Ten minutes of wondering how I can plead for my father’s life.
He looks over at me. “You can’t tell anyone this is here.”
“How would I even find it again?” Except I remember the path by heart.
He leads me around to the back, to a door with the hinge broken off. “This used to be a ranger station before they built the nice one down by the road. I fixed it up two summers ago.”
It’s old but clean. He lights a gas lamp, and then another. “Remember my friend Grayson, who was framed for murder?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Your friend in jail.”
The place glows, tiny and cozy. A red plaid blanket is thrown over a small couch. There are books and papers around.
“Well, he’s out now.”
I turn to him, forgetting my nervousness. “They let him go? That’s great, Stone! You were so worried about him. He was like a little brother to you.”
He tosses me a bottle of water. “Let him go…that’s not exactly how I’d put it, little bird.”
“Oh my God.” If they didn’t let him go, that means he left on his own. A prison escape? Stone’s expression is unrepentant, which means he probably helped.
“It’s all good.” He grabs what looks like a giant sketch pad from the table and settles down on the old couch, sinking into the cushions. It looks like the most comfortable place in the world.
I sit next to him. It feels strangely natural, like I’ve been here forever.
He sets the pad on his lap but doesn’t open it. He just slides his hand over it. Thinking. There’s something different about him, but I don’t know what.
“It’s amazing to have Grayson back,” he says finally. “I didn’t let on to my guys how worried I was about him. Things are…different with Grayson. Not really in a bad way. I think he grew up a little. Calling his own shots in some ways…”
He looks over at me, pinning me with that intense gaze, eyes deep pools of green that seem to go on forever. It comes to me that what he said about Grayson calling his own shots is significant in a way I don’t understand. Like maybe it changed something for Stone, too.
Or maybe for us. Because something is definitely different. It’s been a year and a half since I saw him last, but it’s not just that. He doesn’t look different, but he feels different. Stronger and more solid. More purposeful.
The air seems to heat and thicken between us.
“But he’s back,” I supply. “I'm glad. However he got out, I'm glad, Stone.” I find that I mean that.
“Me, too,” he says. My breath stutters as he reaches up and slides a strand of hair from my face, grazing the side of my forehead with his knuckle. The small touch burns, sends waves of heat through me. “You look beautiful tonight,” he says. “So goddamn beautiful, it kills me.”
“You look beautiful, too.”
He narrows his eyes, as though I said something silly. He tugs at the frayed collar of the soft-looking green T-shirt under his leather jacket. “Good, because this is my best T-shirt. Special occasions only.”
He’s being sarcastic, but the T-shirt goes with his eyes, and it looks soft, and the collar is perfectly worn below his thickly muscled neck. His pulse thrums beneath his jaw line, and for a moment, I imagine pressing my lips to it. Would his skin feel warm? “I mean it, Stone.”
He keeps his gaze on me for a long time, and I’m acutely aware of us alone, here in this simple, masculine space that feels so much like him.
He seems to remember himself. “There are things I need to tell you, Brooke.”
I nod, tense again.
“We…had a talk with the man who helped to frame Grayson,” he says.
A sense of something darker—something unsaid—arrows through me. Had a talk. They’d do more than talk with the man who helped to send Grayson to prison.
Is the man still alive?
“We got some new info. It’s bad.” He pauses, runs his hands over the pad. “There are other boys out there—right now. Being held, just like we were.”
My stomach turns over. “Where? Right now? Can you get them out?”
“We don’t know where they are. Yet,” he growls.
There are kids being held in a basement like the one I saw. Touching a burning hot rivet as their only sign of hope. I can imagine the heat against my finger. “Did you tell the police?”
He looks at me like I said something outrageous. Like I asked whether he told the Martian delegation or something. “This city, you have no idea, do you? The police have been the best protection these guys could ever have.”