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“Ethan,” we murmured at the same time.
“He asked me on a date today.” Teagan began laughing, but stopped abruptly when I added, “A real one.”
“So that was what . . .” She nodded to herself, and tried to bite back a smile. “Got it. Better not let Kieran know.”
“Ha. Right.” I glanced around the café, searching without realizing until Teagan cleared her throat.
“I know what you’re doing. You need to stop.”
My eyes snapped to Teagan, shamed heat filling my cheeks. “I’m not—”
“Elle,” she began, her voice low as she used the name we’d agreed on two years ago. “I’m not stupid. Whenever he’s in here, your eyes drift to him. Whenever he’s not, you look for him. It’s one thing to let Ethan fall in love with you every week because he’s pathetic and harmless. But this guy? You’re walking a dangerous line—”
“I’ve never even spoken to him,” I hissed.
She lifted a brow, studying me. “Yeah? Then tell me something. Imagine your life wasn’t what it is and you were allowed to be out having breakfast with me. If Ethan was standing at our table and the guy you can’t stop staring at—”
“I don’t stare at him,” I interjected softly.
“—was sitting in his booth, and Kieran walked in . . .” Teagan’s mouth pulled into a knowing grin when my head jerked back and eyes widened. “That’s what I thought. You were afraid of Kieran seeing either guy, and I’m going to take a wild guess it wasn’t Ethan.”
“You’re making this into something it’s not,” I finally said, even as my hand slid to rest on my bag beside me on the bench. As though to hide the notes I’d poured over too many times to admit to even myself. “He’s just a guy who is consistently here. Like Ethan. It’s weird when he’s not.”
“Elle . . .”
“Kieran came for Bailey at yesterday’s meeting,” I said quickly, trying to change the subject.
From the way Teagan’s eyes widened to the point of looking comical, I knew I’d accomplished what I’d set out to. I hurried to tell her all that had happened, thankful to take her mind from the mystery guy in question.
But his absence felt physical, and I hated that—hated that I noticed at all.
“He left him whole?” Teagan whispered once I was finished, barely concealed rage dripping from her words.
“According to Beck, and he doesn’t have a reason to lie about this. There has to be a reason Kieran didn’t touch him. You know as well as I do Bailey’s going to get himself a grave.”
“Yesterday should’ve been the start of it,” she replied through gritted teeth as she opened up the journal again.
“Mickey’s biding his time. It’ll happen.”
Bailey and Finn’s greed was one of the reasons Teagan wasn’t running from Finn or his family. She knew if she left, Finn would just find another wife to hurt. She also knew Bailey and Finn were going to get themselves killed trying to take over Holloway—and she wanted to be there when it happened.
After a few minutes, Teagan closed the journal and slid it toward me. “All this time we’ve been trying to figure out why they were there . . . only for whatever it was to be gone.”
“I know.”
“And you still don’t know what Aric was saying to you before he fell?”
I straightened after I slid the journal into my bag. “No, but there’s something else I noticed this time and have been trying to figure out, and I forgot to mention it in there. Aric didn’t seem surprised the men were there.”
Teagan’s brows pinched, her head shaking subtly. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know, trust me.” I worried my bottom lip, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. “But the way they were yelling at him . . . it was like they were accusing Aric of something, and he didn’t bat an eye at them until he noticed the guy touching me.”
“Elle.” Her face pinched, like she was worried about me. “That’s—that can’t be right. Maybe you just saw it wrong that night because you were panicking.”
I grabbed for my coffee. “Yeah, maybe.”
A slow shiver raked over my skin again, the feeling so sudden and exhilarating that my lips parted with a shaky exhale.
