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I pulled my arms through a kimono as I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen half an hour later. My hair was still wet from the shower, but after how long and exhausting the day had been, I needed coffee just to get through drying it.
My pace slowed when I rounded the corner out of the hallway into the main area of the house and found Beck and Kieran talking in low tones.
There was no point in turning around and pretending I hadn’t noticed them. Kieran would’ve already known I was on my way out there long before I’d ever seen or heard them.
Wrapping the material of the short kimono around my waist so it would cover my bare thighs, I stepped closer to the guys but didn’t interrupt them, and they didn’t say a word to me even when they glanced at me.
Their hushed conversation didn’t stop until Kieran finished giving Beck his orders. Everything was said quickly, words and sentences clipped, names in code.
Codes I knew, of course. Words I could’ve caught if I’d actually tried to pay attention.
But there at Kieran’s feet, taking all of my focus, was his dad’s old military backpack. The bag that had been stashed in our closet for years, waiting for the day we ran from this life.
After what had just happened between us, I wasn’t sure how much more pain my heart could take before I finally started tearing at my chest.
I’d known that something irreparable had happened before Kieran had left to meet with Mickey. But that didn’t mean I was ready to finally accept that the future we’d planned would never happen.
“You’re leaving,” I said as soon as they finished talking, and forced my gaze away from the faded green pack to his piercing eyes. Kieran reached for me but I took a step away. “You’re leaving?”
Kieran loosely encircled my wrist with his long fingers, and waited to make sure I wouldn’t pull away from him. “I’ll be back after I sort things out in Texas.”
The pain in my chest eased as his words sank in. “Texas?” I shook my head as I wracked my brain for any mention of the state before then. “What’s going on in Texas?”
For the first time ever, Kieran hesita
ted in telling me something about the business. His brow pulled low and his mouth tightened in a hard line as he stared at me, indecision clear as day in those eyes.
And it hurt.
All I could think of in that moment were the times Kieran and I had told each other our darkest secrets—things we’d never shared with anyone—and now he was keeping something from me. He’d been keeping something from me.
I wondered what else I didn’t know, but couldn’t ask because I was keeping a world of things from him . . .
The nightmares and an old friend.
Disguises, cherished notes, and an intoxicating bond I tried not to make sense of.
Guilt sat low in my stomach like acid.
“Our contact didn’t pick up a shipment, and no one has been able to get in touch with him for a week. I’m gonna check on him.”
There wasn’t a need to ask why Kieran was the one going to Texas even though it wasn’t his job to check on contacts. If he was going, he was going to make sure the contact wouldn’t have a way of talking. “I didn’t know we had a contact in Texas.”
“Well, we might not anymore.” Beck’s wry grin abruptly fell when Kieran set his cold glare on him.
“Why didn’t I know about this?”
Again, that hesitation from Kieran before he finally said, “There isn’t a need for you to know.”
“Since when isn’t there—” I began, but stopped when he picked up his bag and turned toward the front door. “Kier—”
“I’ll be back when I’m done.”
“Kieran.”
He paused and ran a hand through his shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair. A heavy sigh left him when he turned to look at me again. “I’ll be back when I’m done, Lily.” His tone was softer, his eyes now pleading with me to drop the issue.
As much as I wanted to stand my ground and demand to know why there was a contact in another state that Kieran would hesitate to tell me about, I knew if I mentioned it again, he would do what he’d been about to.
