Ihad spent my entire night trying to find more pieces to the new mystery that was my parents’ lives.
The list the informant had given me was helpful, but I still wasn’t surehowit was helpful. There were twenty names and I would have to dig into each and every one of their lives.
The one thing I still couldn’t figure out—what had prompted them to be connected to Cameron in the first place? To this group? And why had they spent so much of my childhood vanishing for weeks at a time?
I had always assumed it was work. But something about it didn’t feel right.
The clock blinked at me from the corner of my laptop screen. 6:47 a.m.
Which meant I had spent the past eight hours on a conspiracy theory deep dive instead of sleeping, and Maverick Moto would be opening soon.
I groaned, slamming my laptop shut and dragging myself out of bed. I needed to get ready. I needed caffeine—or maybe a drop of water.
More than anything, I needed to stop spiraling. I needed to get focused, get efficient so I wasn’t aimlessly running around finding more clues that led to more questions.
I stepped into the hall, hoping it would reset my morning, but somehow leaving the safe confines of my room only made it worse.
The bathroom door swung open, a thick cloud of steam curling into the hallway.
And in its wake—Aiden.
His towel slung low on his hips, his skin still damp with water dripping in slow, taunting trails down his stomach. Tattoos sprawled over his chest like some kind of forbidden map I’d never been allowed to trace.
Not with my hands.
Not with my mouth.
Damn.
For one humiliating, horrible second, I stood there staring—glitching like a faulty computer.
And then—because Aiden might be the worst person on the planet—his eyes met mine, and he smirked.
It was slow and deliberate. Like he could actually see the way my pulse had short-circuited.
I needed to say something. Anything to deflect from the fact that I was basically eye-fucking him in the hallway at 6 a.m. like an absolute disaster of a human being.
His voice dipped low enough to make my knees weak. “Keep staring, Psycho. You might see something you like.”
“Might,” I said, the word squeaking out. As much as I liked to stay in control of the situation, staring at a broad, uncovered, tattooed chest was leaving my brain useless.
Especially one who had run to my rescue last night.
“Evie?” he asked, the cocky grin on his face catching my attention.
“What?” I said, finally meeting his eyes.
“Are you going to stare all day or move out of the way?”
I looked at his chest again, the water only accentuating the tattoos and hard abs. Part of me almost agreed to staring all day. The other part of me was mad. I wanted him so badly and he was making fun of it.
I gave one more long look before I spun, turning back to my room and storming off without a word. I’d already blown it, but at least I could get away without making a complete fool of myself.
My heart pounded in my chest as I slammed my door, realizing a second too late that I never got my water.
And suddenly I was angry I hadn’t licked that water right off his chest.
Work went by in a blur until, somehow, I was sitting on the floor of my room as I slammed the Bedazzler down repeatedly onto the small, red tank top I had found in the back of my closet.
