“Go pack your things,” I demand, turning my back to her. “We’ll be staying the night.”
She squeals behind me, which forces a smile onto my lips. Not like we haven’t been spending the nights together anyway, albeit a level away from each other.
I retreat to my truck, sitting in the driver’s seat and watching her on her bedroom camera while she packs her things. She whispers to herself as she goes, rifling through her dresses and occasionally pulling one out and holding it against her body.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Ms. Mills,” she says to herself in the mirror, a sweet smile playing at her lips, absent of any venom I’m starting to think I imagined every time before.
Twenty minutes later, we’re headed toward Sunset Peak.
She spends the first half of the trip surprisingly silent, fingers flying across her screen as she texts, probably Maeve. When we’re thirty minutes from town, she leans forward and drops her phone into her purse, bringing her hands into her lap and fidgeting more than I’ve never seen her fidget in the year I followed her. I’ve actuallyneverseen her fidget. I’ve only ever seen her wear the brightest fucking aura of confidence that you’d never expect from a woman who’s being stalked by a police officer who suspects her of being involved in multiple murders.
I glance at her out of the corner of my eye as she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the rest of her blonde waves cascading down her chest. The blue dress she picked out rides up her thighs; her smooth skin practically begging me to lean over and touch it.
I know it’s not the dress she’s planning to meet my mother in, because she held that one up to her body and whispered, ‘this one will be perfect,’before folding it into a square and laying it flat in the bag that she definitely overpacked for a single night stay out of town.
“I forgot to put deodorant on,” she blurts, dipping her nose to her armpit.
I lift my nose into the air, smelling nothing but her sweet scent of berries and vanilla. “I’m sure it’s fine,” I assure her, trying to hide the smile that pulls at the corner of my mouth.
Her fingers clutch the edge of her dress, revealing another sliver of skin that threatens to rip me right off the road. I imagine her nails scraping into my back the way they’re scraping into her thighs, our bodies tense around each other. My hands framing her face as I lower my lips to hers again. The phantom feeling of my lips on hers winds a surge of heat down my spine, and I speak before I pull us over and bring my thoughts to life. “Why are you so nervous?” I ask her, and she whips her head in my direction in response.
“I’m about to meet mymother-in-law, Colin.” I chuckle, but the sound falls flat, especially when I look over and see the very serious look on Chloe’s face. She stares back at me so intently that it makes me shift in my seat. I reposition my hand on the steering wheel, flexing my fingers around it, but the image her words create in my mind is unavoidable: a domesticated version of us, my arms wrapped around her body in her kitchen, pressing my face to the bend of her neck, feeling the spread of her smile against my temple. It’s foreign and utterly familiar at the same time.
The question I’ve wanted to ask her for months is on the tip of my tongue.
Why is she so sure of me?
How could she possibly see through what I didn’t even realize until a few days ago? How has she been so certain that there was anything more than what she saw on the surface? A pissed off man with a vendetta against the most gorgeous girl in town, for no good reason other than a gut instinct.
I’m still not entirely convinced she wasn’t involved in the deaths of her stepfathers, but she was younger then; barely out of her teens. And if shewasinvolved, I blame her mother. It can’t be easy growing up in a household with a murderer, and I can’t imagine the impact that may have had on her psyche.
But I ignore her implication that she’s going to be my wife one day, and decide to ask her another one of my burning questions instead.
“Why do you think these guys are coming after you and your friends?”
Besides the drugging at the party and the assault on her in the alley, I told her quite a few details about Logan’s death because I didn’t want to leave her, or Maeve, completely in the dark about the potential for more danger to swirl into their lives.
She seems a bit surprised at the sudden change of topic, but she covers it well, that mask of confidence sliding over her features and her red lips tilting up at the corner. “Are you interrogating me, detective?”
I shrug one shoulder, because maybe I am. A part of me is having trouble accepting that my suspicions of her have been completely unfounded, while another part of me is screaming to accept the fact that may be the truth, and move on.
But I’m still a detective. And I need to figure out what her connection is to the group.
She faces forward, not waiting for an answer before she speaks. “You said they’re in a trafficking ring?”
“Yeah. Up north.”
She nods beside me, lips pursing in thought. “Maybe we’re their next victims. Three pretty girls like us, we’re the perfect targets.” A soft laugh escapes her, like even though she’s speaking the thought out loud, she doesn’t entirely believe it. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” she asks, turning her face to mine.
I can’t lodge loose the feeling that she’s trying to convince me, and then I shake my head, attempting to free the skepticism of her that has flowed so naturally over the last couple of years, and let the truth sink in.
She’s innocent. It’s all been my imagination.
“It does.”
19
Chloe
