Page 107 of The Quiet After The Fall

“Yeah, true.” She bites her lower lip, thinking. “I’m surprised Moretti bailed so quickly…one short conversation and he’s ready to end a business relationship like that.”

“Guys like that will do anything to cover their own ass,” I say. “Maybe that’s why he’s still insisting on the wedding…keeping me under his thumb while my father goes down. I don’t know. Whatever it is, he can go to hell. Ella doesn’t want me now either. I—” I hesitate remembering the conversation with Ella that feels like it was days ago. “I told Ella about us. We cleared the air.”

Sawyer scrambles up, back against the headboard. “Shit. Is she okay?”

I can’t help but laugh. “The two of you care more about how each other feels. It’s wild. Yeah, she’s as good as can be expected. We also talked about Owen.”

She nods, eyes cast down. “That’s good. Maybe when this mess is settled, her and I can get coffee again and talk more. I know it’s crazy but I actually like her.”

“Not crazy.” I push a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “I think she’d like that.”

“Good.” Sawyer leans into my touch, some of the tension leaving her face. “We can all use an extra person in our corner.”

She kisses my palm and I sigh knowing I need to get up and moving. “Time to go talk to the devil himself. If anything, I want to see where his head’s at. He’s been quieter lately, and it’s unlike him not to follow up after sending you that letter.”

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re going to say to him, but you can’t save him, Knox. You’ve done nothing but try to save everyone in your life for years, but now he has to reap what he’s sowed.” She shrugs.

“I know, and he will.”

“I love that about you, by the way. The way you’re always trying to save people.”

The word love lingers in the air between us and I almost forget how to breathe. “What else do you love about me?”

“Cocky as always.” She laughs but there’s a real smile there, warm and unguarded. She leans in and ghosts her lips over mine. “I love your terrible sense of humor. Your glasses.” She taps the frame with one finger. “I love that you’re actually a huge nerd underneath all the brooding. I love that you push me to be better, to never settle.”

“Keep going.”

“I love that you carried me through the woods like some beefed up Tarzan and I still can’t decide if it was insane or the hottest thing anyone’s ever done to me.” She presses a kiss to my jaw. “You’re my rock, but also the only person with the power to absolutely wreck me. Maybe I’m crazy but I love that. And mostly, I love that even after everything your family has put you through, you’re still going to show up for them, even when no one would blame you for walking away.”

My throat feels tight, clogged with emotion. It takes everything in me not to cry in front of her. I blink, and cup her cheeks. “You give me hope, Sawyer. I love you. I love you so fucking much.”

I kiss her slowly, memorizing this exact moment before I have to go ruin it by walking into my father’s house.

“I love you too,” she says once we break apart. “Come back to me. Whatever happens today. Come back.”

“Always.”

My parent’s house is too quiet when I let myself in. It’s never a loud place, but there’s always some kind of noise.

No TV in the background. No footsteps on the wooden floors. No one fussing around in the kitchen.

There’s a plate on the kitchen counter, though—a cream colored smear on it going hard around the edges. My mother’s car is here, but I didn’t think to check the garage for his.

“Dad.”

Nothing.

I head down the hall and his office door is standing wide open, which never happens. The smell hits before I reach it. Stale scotch and sweat.

I step inside and stop.

Every drawer in the desk is pulled out. Paperwork’s all over the floor, the piles he had sorted into whatever order made sense to him last time I was here scattered apart or gone. The filing cabinet’s worse. The second drawer with the squealing track is hanging halfway out, and the third one, the one I had to yank open, is empty. Every manila folder in it, gone.

Wonder World Phase II, gone.

Not that it matters. I’ve got all of it on my phone and in my email and printed in a stack in my trunk. But it means he knows I’ve been in here. It means he sat in this room since I last saw him and made a decision.

The shredder bin in the corner is overflowing and his laptop’s not on the desk. Unless this wasn’t him. Did Moretti already grab him so quickly?