AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You brought her with you?”
“I’m leaving now, Sloane. If the cops think I had something to do with Archie being shot, then it sounds like I’m due a trip out of Seattle, anyway.”
I could kill him. I could literally wrap my hands around his neck—they probably wouldn’t reach the whole way around, but who the hell cares?—and throttle him to death. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”
Zeth opens the door to the souped-up muscle car, leaning inside to scoop Lacey out. She looks even paler than when I last saw her in the hospital, although her eyes seem brighter, quicker, more responsive. He stands, holding her, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, and for a moment he looks torn. He cares for this girl. Loves her in his way. For the fifteen millionth time I wonder who the hell she is to him. But now isn’t the right time to ask.
“I’m tired, Zeth,” Lacey mumbles. “Just take me home.”
“Can’t, kiddo. Gotta leave you with the doc for a while, okay?”
Lacey eyes me surreptitiously and then buries her face into Zeth’s chest. He gives me a hard look. “Which way to your car?”
I feel like being a dick about it. You tell me. You’re a psycho, right? You’ve been watching me. You should know where my car is. But what purpose would that serve? The purpose of fuck you, that’s what. Still, I turn around and set off in the direction of my car. When we reach it I open the passenger door but Zeth shakes his head.
“She can’t. She won’t,” he says.
Okay. I guess I should remember that. He places her carefully onto the back seat and a small rucksack, that I didn’t even realize he’d grabbed, goes in there after her. Once he shuts the door, he places his hands on my shoulders. “She needs to see Pippa.”
I nod, at least not arguing with him on that front. “I’ll make that happen.” I open my car door, fully intent on getting inside and driving away as fast as I can—perhaps if karma is on my side, I’ll be able to spin up a few puddles of rainwater into his face—but he grabs hold of my arm, stopping me. The door makes a repetitive ding, ding, ding, sound as he stares down at me.
“I’m sorry, Sloane.”
I blink up at him, trying to read his expression. It’s a number of things mixed together, making it hard to decipher
“You’re sorry?”
An apology? Coming from his mouth? I’m so stunned I can barely believe my ears. Just seems like something he would never do.
He looks away, back across the car lot, clenching his jaw. “I don’t ask anyone for help. But I know I can trust you,” he rumbles.
“Of course you know you can trust me. You’re holding me an emotional hostage with my sister. You know I’ll do anything you tell me to in order to get her back. The question is can I trust you?”
A deep, slow smile draws one side of his mouth upward, his eyes sparking with sudden amusement. “Should you trust me? Absolutely not. Can you trust me?” he lets me wait a moment, still smiling down at me. Ding, ding, ding. The car persists in its chiming, announcing that the door is still open. Zeth steps forward, lifting a hand to carefully cup my cheek in his palm. He softly brushes his fingertips against my temple, leaning into me a little. He tilts his head at an angle so he can dip down to inhale deeply from my hair. “Yes,” he exhales. “You can trust me. You gave yourself to me back at my apartment; I’ve never done it before, but I gave myself in return. I may not have wanted to, Sloane, but I didn’t have a fucking choice in the matter. That means we belong to each other now. And it means I’ll come back for you soon. I’ll do my best to find your sister, and I’ll do whatever I can to make those bastards pay for what they’ve done to her.”
Zeth’s words plague me until I give myself a migraine from overthinking them. I wake before dawn and lay there, turning them over and over in my head, wondering what the hell he meant by what he said—I gave myself in return. I may not have wanted to, Sloane, but I didn’t have a fucking choice in the matter. From the mouth of absolutely anyone else on the face of this planet, it would be fairly obvious what they meant. And yet, from Zeth Mayfair, they could mean everything and then again nothing at all. I want to ask him. I want to pick up the phone and demand to know what the hell he was thinking, saying that to me. I can’t do that, though; my pride just won’t let me. And I shouldn’t want to know, either. I get the impression the sound of the dial tone in my ear as I’d wait for him to pick up would be like sitting with a sealed envelope in my hands. One that contains the results to some terrible blood test that will tell me if I’m going to survive something or succumb instead. Because it seems that drastic to me—this whole having Zeth in my life and how he is in my life. And I still essentially know nothing about the man.
Fuck. I need to stop thinking about him. As soon as the first rays of daylight sneak over the horizon and craftily work their way through the blinds of my room, I get up and shower, mentally tidying the whole mess away to deal with another time. I’m good at that.
Instead, I have a houseguest to focus on. Lacey is an enigma. She’s up before me, sitting at the breakfast bar, spooning Lucky Charms (I don’t own any Lucky Charms) into her mouth when I come downstairs. Out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, she is watching the city slowly come to life, a lumbering, grey machine seemingly defrosting, remembering its purpose. When she sees me cautiously approaching, her slight body tenses, spoon clattering into her bowl.
