Page 35 of The Endless Want

Which means nothing good.

The Russians didn’t show themselves to lose track of us. They let us go so we’d think we’d escaped. Ailish doesn’t see that yet. She’s too exhausted. But I do.

She stirs as I brew coffee, trying to ignore the way my damn chest wants to leap out at the idea of her awake. The idea of hearing her voice and seeing her eyes. But I need to focus.

She doesn’t say anything, but I hear her moving. Her movements stutter once, and I feel her eyes on me before the bathroom door shuts, letting me know she’s left the room. The shower turns on, and I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing she needs to get clean and wash the night off of her. The attack part, that is.

But I swear I hear a sob and move toward the door. I reach out and give the knob a flick, not that surprised when I find the door locked.

Another sob wracks her, and I stand there, listening to her cries over the sound of the water I’m sure she hopes drown it all out.

Did I cause this, or is this just shock wearing off from the attack?

Either way, it’s time to call my guards in and leave. She’ll be better when I fix everything.

CHAPTER 10

Ailish

I came out of the shower to an empty room and a shirt folded on the arm of the sofa.

That's what I remember. Standing in the doorway with my hair dripping, holding a towel closed with one fist, looking at a black T-shirt squared off at the corners like a man had ironed it, and understanding that he'd waited until the water was running to go. I remember pulling it on. I remember lying down because my legs had stopped being interested in the argument. I don't remember deciding to sleep.

When I finally wake again, the room has changed.

It’s quiet. The rain has stopped. The light through the window is faint—morning or afternoon, I can’t tell. Everything inside me is heavy, like I’ve been stitched together from bruises and exhaustion.

The blanket pooled around my legs smells like cedar and starch and a hint of Declan’s cologne. A smell I shouldn’t know this well. A smell that now sits on my skin like a confession written in invisible ink.

My head throbs. My ribs ache when I breathe in too deeply. But it’s not the physical pain that hits hardest. It’s the empty room.

Declan is gone.

There are two men in the stairwell instead. I hear them before I see them, the particular quiet of people trying not to wake someone, and when I open the door one of them straightens off the wall and says ma’am like I’m cargo he’s been assigned to.

No jacket over a chair. No mug on the counter. No boots by the door. He erased himself before he stepped out and left staff behind.

A strange numbness settles over me. Then, under it, something sharper. Something like humiliation.

He left without a word after everything that happened last night. After the attack, the fear, the adrenaline, the way we collapsed into each other like we were the only two people left breathing—he still left.

He didn’t even leave a note.

I swallow against the tightness crawling up my throat. My hands clench the threadbare blanket reflexively, knuckles whitening.

What did I expect? Some explanation? A truce? I shove the thought away before it can take shape. Before it can hurt.

Slowly, I swing my legs over the side of the sofa. My clothes—ripped, dirty, half-ruined—are in a heap on the floor. I gather them, not bothering to fold anything, just needing to move, needing momentum before the silence crushes me flat.

There must be something I can wear.

I check the bathroom first. Nothing. No spare linens, no forgotten shirt draped over a chair. The place is Spartan, almost militaristic in its emptiness. A base of operations, not a home.

I go back into the main room and open the small closet in the corner. Inside, three hooks hold a single coat and two empty hangers. Beneath it, a locked metal case sits flush against the floor.

I try it anyway.

Locked. Of course.