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I wandered to the large windows to look across the grounds a few minutes later, my gaze finding its way over to the mostly darkened guesthouse.
A jail in its own right. A refuge when compared to the prison I was standing in. And the home I wished I could be slipping out of to say goodbye one last time . . . only to find a reason to say goodbye again tomorrow and the next day.
My attention snapped from daydreams, and my body stilled when the electricity suddenly cut off, silencing all the white noise surrounding me.
I looked over my shoulder as the fan slowed to a stop, then glanced back out the windows to see that the guesthouse’s porch light was still on and Soldier’s Row was lit up.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I turned fully to face the empty room, my heart thundering in my chest as I waited for something to happen.
The power to kick back on.
Someone to come rushing in here.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Fear was pounding through my veins, but I somehow knew the man my heart longed for was somewhere on the property, and it was all I could do to stand there and not go looking for him. But Kieran’s words kept me silent and still.
“Lily, he won’t give you the chance.”
I told myself repeatedly that Dare would . . . he had to. But the truth was, I couldn’t be sure.
It had taken Einstein physically stopping me when I’d tried to leave out of fear when I’d found out who Dare was. And Dare was acting on hatred tonight.
Both consuming. Both nearly impossible to ease.
Nearly.
The bedroom door suddenly flung open, Conor charging in before I had the chance to move. He halted when he saw me, his expression fierce.
“Where’s Kieran?”
“He left five . . . eight minutes ago. Mickey called—”
“Fuck,” he hissed, pulling his phone from his pocket and tapping on it before putting it to his ear. He let out a growl of frustration as he started tapping on it again.
“Come on, Lil,” he whispered as he hurried forward to snatch my hand, tugging me across the room, away from the windows.
“What are you doing?”
“I already called Beck and told him what’s happening,” Conor said when we stopped at Kieran’s old set of dressers, which had been empty until this afternoon when we moved back into the house. “Kieran’s phone is off. If this is what I think it is . . .” He let the possibility hang between us, dark and heavy and threatening.
Yet I still couldn’t help but look toward the door in hopes that tonight could go a different way.
I jerked, my attention pulling from the door back to Conor when a piece of clothing hit me.
“Kieran said if they come for you, they’re not going to surround the place. They’re going to come right in and try to take you.” He opened another drawer and started to shut it, but grabbed a dark shirt out of it and threw it at me as well. With a hard jerk of his head in the direction of the windows, he explained, “So we’re going off the balcony.”
The blood immediately drained from my head.
“We’re on the second floor.”
Frustrated that I wasn’t moving, he took the clothes from my hands and forced the shirt over my head. “It’s taken care of.”
I finished pulling my arms through the lightweight, long-sleeved shirt, the irony not lost on me when I fixed the hood so it rested on my head.
I looked like my own nightmare.
