Katya, well…
I was lucky she loved me and always would.
Leaning back, I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe. I didn’t actually have evidence that thiswhole thing was Hunter. Micah’s stalker was evil, and this was kind of his thing, but it would have taken a lot of work and contacts to know where I lived.
Unless, of course, he’d been stalking Micah when he was with me. But I had been careful, damn it. I’d been paying attention every time I put Micah in my car and taken him to my house.
I wanted it to be a safe space. So maybe this was just a coincidence. Maybe this was something else.
Maybe…shit. I couldn’t come up with another maybe. It was just too weird.
My brother was in the middle of trying to figure out the best way to handle this situation with Hunter, and he still had no answers, but when Katya told me what she’d found at my place, in my state of shock, I’d texted Tyoma.
I needed to get information, and then—in spite of the fact that he wasn’t speaking to me—I needed to call Micah. I was doing my best to respect the silent boundary he’d created between us, but this was important.
I didn’t care if I’d done something to make him hate me. Or if he was too busy hating himself and feeling undeserving of me—or any other ridiculous thought that had popped in his head.
I would protect him with my life.
Or at the cost of Hunter’s.
I breathed a little easier once we were able to stand up and queue to exit the plane. The flightwasn’t crowded, and there were only three other people in first class with me.
Noah was pissed off that I’d left early, but he was keeping his mouth shut, considering he was leaving the team soon, and, as he’d put it when I told him I had to head home, pretty soon I was going to become someone else’s problem.
But Noah was the least of my worries. It took me half an age to get through the crowd, get my bags, and finally make it to the little spot where my car was parked.
Traffic was even worse getting out of Logan, but eventually, I was on the road, making the familiar drive back to my place because I needed to see the carnage with my own two eyes. I felt violated, and I had another fresh wave of sympathy rush over me for what Micah had just gone through.
It was different, of course. I could walk right in and see the damage. I didn’t need to rely on others, to put my trust and faith in strangers, for the truth.
But the feeling was heavy in my chest as I parked at the curb and started my way toward my door, where I immediately found a puddle of water coming from beneath the seal.
Katya had taken care of the running faucets. She’d sent me photos of smashed pipes and clogged drains and the sofa, which had been torn into shreds, and the weird bouquet sitting in the center of a shattered vase that littered my living room floor.
All the doors in the house were busted off the hinges, most of my dishes were smashed, and theonly thing that had been left untouched was the bed I slept in.
The bed I had taken Micah in.
Something about that felt even more sinister, but I didn’t know why.
The first thing that hit me when I opened the door was the smell of damp. That ugly, musky stench that told me it would take an age to clean and repair. My shoes sloshed through water that had leaked from the kitchen, and I turned to see the living room, but I only lasted a second.
My eyes snagged on the broken vase and the flowers, which looked a little too neat to be an accident. Not to mention, I didn’t have flowers or a vase in the house before I left.
I peered up the stairs and saw they were still slick with water, and it took forcing myself one foot after the other to make it up the landing. The second set of stairs was a little drier, but not by much.
My bedroom was at the very end of the hall, and my stomach twisted as I made my way toward the door. I felt like I was in a horror movie, waiting for some knife-wielding monster to jump out of the shadows and gut me.
The door creaked loudly as I pushed it open, half on the bottom hinge with the top one ripped away from the wall. The edge scraped the floor with an ugly sound, and my nerves began to fire. I wanted to scream, and laugh, and cry.
I wanted to punch someone.
I wanted some asshole to piss me off in the nextgame so I could wail on him and be thrown out. It would be cathartic.
This anger needed somewhere to go.
My breath caught in my chest as I stepped into the room, and it was exactly as Katya had said. He’d left the bed entirely alone. The space around it was a complete disaster—my dresser drawers and closet had been emptied, my clothes strewn all over the floor, and as I took another step inside, I felt something crunch beneath me.
