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The way Olivia would go quiet and the boys would cry.
Carefully, he bent at the knees, getting to her level. “Brianna, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on. Talk to me. Please.”
Sobs spewed from her as she wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled them to her chest. “I don’t need your help.”
“Brianna, please.”
He reached for her again.
Frantic, she smacked his hand away and scrambled back, panting where she was pressed to the tub. “I told you not to touch me,” she whimpered, a blanket of tears covering her face.
Barbed wire balled in his throat. “Are you…afraid of me? I would never hurt you.”
Scorn filled her cry. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want you. I don’t want you. And I don’t need your help. I’m fine!”
Right.
She was fine. She was always fine.
Pushing to standing, he swiveled away from her and faced the opposite wall as he scrubbed his palms over his face. He had no goddamn clue how to handle this. How to help her when she kept refusing it. No idea what to do when he felt the threads of their family being ripped apart.
He remained facing away when he started to speak, though his attention dropped to his boots. “I don’t know what is going on with you, Brianna, but it’s breaking me, and I’m pretty sure whatever it is has already destroyed you. I want to be there for you. Help you. But you have to know this can’t keep going on under this roof. Our kids deserve a safe place to grow up, and it’s our duty to provide it. You have to make the choice.”
He stepped out of the bathroom to her mumbling, “I don’t want you. I don’t want you. I don’t want you.”
And he was pretty sure his heart resembled that fucking mirror.
TWENTY-FIVE
EZRA
My eyes flew open to the dimness of my room while the blood beat wild in my veins.
Careening.
Crashing.
A thunder of regret and mistakes.
I sat up on the side of the bed and scrubbed both palms over my face.
Shame flayed me into a thousand pieces because while Brianna had promised, I’d made a thousand promises, too.
I’d promised to love and keep her.
To protect her and defend her.
To stand with her through thick and thin.
But I hadn’t done any of those things.
I didn’t know if they’d been pared down by her actions or if they’d been faulty from the beginning.
I’d loved her.
I had.
But looking back over the years, I realized it’d been shallow.
Shaky from the beginning.
Warning signs staked at every turn.
I’d never fully trusted her. Had never let myself fully fall. In the back of my mind, or maybe right smack in the middle of my soul, I’d known she was betraying me.
I eased from the bed and moved through the stillness to the bedroom window. I pushed the drape aside and stared out across at the guest house on the other side of the yard.
A dim light glowed from Savannah’s bedroom window.
My stomach clutched in a fist of greed, in the memory of the kiss, in the memory of her touch. It was amplified by the way I’d felt during the dinner we’d shared. With the way she interacted with my kids.
With the way she made me feel.
Yeah, I knew she was keeping secrets herself. But they felt different than the ones Brianna had been keeping.
And maybe the most shameful part of all was I didn’t think anything I’d ever felt for Brianna came close to what I was feeling for the woman across my yard.
TWENTY-SIX
EZRA
“You didn’t find anything at all?” I paced my office, looking back at where Samson was slung back in the chair on the opposite side of my desk, his long legs stretched casually out in front of him, though there was no missing the discontent set on his face.
“Not one goddamn thing. If there wasn’t the damage to the door, there would be absolutely no evidence that anyone had even been there. No prints. No reports of strange sounds. Nothing on the security footage. And not one person noticed anything strange.”
Irritation buzzed beneath my flesh, and I roughed my fingers through my hair, hoping it might give me some clarity. Insight. Any semblance of calm because it was my fucking job to be collected.
To look at each case with discernment.
With logic.
Most of all, I wasn’t supposed to let my emotions get in the way.
Too fucking late because the emotions were running rampant. Rocks lodged at the base of my throat, and my pulse chugged in errant, reckless beats.
I scrubbed a palm over my face to break up the disorder and plopped back into my chair, unable to stop my mind from freewheeling through every scenario.
Three days had passed since we’d found Savannah’s motel tampered with. Two days since I’d had her pressed against my kitchen counter.
