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Shit.
I knew what I needed to do.
It all clicked inside my head. The flash in my mind was as brilliant as the flash from the gun would have been had I decided to pull the trigger, but I didn’t need to. Franks and Landon were completely irrelevant.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I know what to do now.”
“And I can keep everyone else away from you,” Landon said.
I looked back to him. There was nervous sweat covering his forehead—something I’d never seen before.
“Don’t bother,” I said as I lowered the gun. “I don’t need you to. I’m done with you and Franks. You’re never going to contact me again—either of you. This isn’t a request or a threat; it’s simply the way it’s going to be. Do we understand each other?”
Landon nodded as he lowered his hands.
“The two of you forget I ever existed,” I said. “No one else gives a shit about me or what I do.”
We stared at each other for a long time. He looked like he was going to say something else but just nodded again instead. As he did, I saw the one thing I never expected to see on his face—defeat.
It was…satisfying.
I kept the gun in my hand and my eyes on Landon as I backed up to the door and opened it. There was always the possibility he would shoot me in the back as I left though I didn’t think he would. Not at this point.
He spoke just before I maneuvered myself into the hallway.
“I still give a shit about you,” Landon said in a gruff voice. “I always did.”
I stared at him, refusing to alter my expression even though it felt like his words were ripping me up inside. I’d always known it, but he’d never said it before. It was too late now. I was no longer the lonely, fucked up, futureless kid he’d found in the streets and trained to be a killer. I had moved on.
“Goodbye, Landon.”
He nodded once, and I walked out of the hotel room.
I never saw him again.
Staring at a computer screen aggravated the hell out of my headache. I was actually considering getting some fucking reading glasses or something. I wasn’t sure how Raine managed to do it all the time for school.
I glanced down at the list Raine and I had made with a little input from Alex of all the things we wanted in a house. I was anxious to get the whole process over and done with before I lost my fucking mind.
I needed everything to be just right before I did what I had to do next.
Focus.
Using an online app, I poked around at the houses brought up with the search criteria I had entered. There were a lot of nice ones, but nothing seemed exactly right. There was always something major missing from our list of “must haves” that made me pass over the listings.
I glanced up at Alex. He was kneeling next to the coffee table with crayons all over the place, drawing another picture of a house. It was always the same—a little cottage with two windows and a door in the front, and rolling hills behind it. This time, he was adding a bunch of trees to the picture and had even included a big, red bird sitting on a branch.
I looked back at the list of criteria I’d added to the paper and then to the computer screen.
Selfish bastard.
I deleted one of the items from the list, and a whole new group of houses popped up on the screen. Even though I felt like I was starting over, I did it with vigor. My mind was made up, and I wasn’t going to let my own neuroses stop us from finding a place to live. I flipped through a couple dozen places that still didn’t seem quite right, but I kept going. I was as determined as I had been to get down that frozen mountainside.
Then I saw it.
It was fucking perfect.
Rolling hills and everything.
