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It was almost like buying a baby on the black market. Dodge wondered how old her brother had been at the time to make that decision and what steps he took to make sure the family he gave her to was worthy of taking care of her and providing for her. How did he know he wasn’t putting her into a worse situation than the one with her real mother?
Most likely, he didn’t.
That had to be scary as fuck.
“Nobody but your brother was checkin’ on you? Makin’ sure you were good?”
“No. If I had been adopted through an agency…” Her eyes shut again and remained shut. “I kept hoping Sig would come back and get me.”
Hold the fuck up. Who the fuck did she just say? Was he that fucking tired he was hearing things? He had to have misunderstood her, right? “Say again? Who did you say?”
Her eyes opened and she frowned at him. “My brother. That’s who we were just talking about.”
No shit, but… “What’d you say his name was?”
Her frown deepened. “Sig.”
Oh fuck.
The chances of them being one and the same were slim, but definitely not zero.
Motherfuckin’ fuck.
Chapter Thirteen
As soon as the mattress shifted, Dodge’s eyes flashed open. The apartment was still dark and it had to be too early for the sun to have risen since no light was peeking through the blinds. That meant they might have gotten an hour of sleep at the most after he managed to work up the energy to fuck her a fourth time.
While he didn’t say it out loud, he was proud of himself for his performance. It wasn’t fast and furious, but more relaxed and lazy and definitely satisfying for both of them. But it was no surprise that they both passed out shortly afterward.
Now, Syn was no longer using him as a body pillow. As the mattress moved again, he turned his head to see her trying to sneak off the bed.
Even as tired as he was, his reflexes were still sharp enough to snake out his hand and snag her wrist in time to stop her. “Where you goin’?”
“Gotta go.” She lifted her cell phone and turned the lit screen toward him. He could see a text bubble but not what it said. “They’re out there waiting for me.”
They were what? “Right now?”
She nodded.
What the fuck.
He tilted his head and could faintly hear the diesel engine’s exhaust rumbling outside. “You call them to come get you?” When she didn’t answer fast enough, he asked, “Text them?”
She nodded.
“Why so fuckin’ early?”
“It’s time for us to go. You wanted us off the farm by morning.”
He didn’t want them off the farm, Trip did, but... Damn. Already? It was too fucking early.
“Please thank your president for letting us hook up there. And thanks for the heaters.”
Thanks for the heaters.
Damn.
He glanced at the wrist he held. The one his leather cuff encircled. He opened his mouth to ask for it back, then snapped it shut. For some crazy reason, he wanted her to keep it.
Maybe she wanted to keep it, too. As a memento. To remember him. To remember this night.
Maybe. Or with the way she’d been trying to sneak out, maybe she was simply a thief.
If that was true, though, she had plenty of opportunity to take other shit every time she’d been alone in his apartment taking a shower while he was downstairs. He hadn’t noticed anything missing.
Even if she did take anything, she probably needed it more than him. In truth, there was nothing in his apartment he couldn’t live without.
Maybe his gun. But he had that secured in a lock box and that was hidden on the bottom of his dresser.
When she gave her arm a little tug, he reluctantly released her. She immediately moved through the dark to his dresser where she had stacked her neatly-folded clothes.
Her skin was so damn pale her naked body almost glowed in the dark.
A ghost who was ghosting him.
She turned her back to the bed and tugged on her clothes, jammed her feet into her boots and then shrugged on her cat-eared sweatshirt.
He gritted his teeth. She needed a real damn winter coat. Not that fucking hoodie. Too bad he didn’t have any warm coats in the lost-and-found downstairs.
Fuck, he was not ready for her to go. Not yet.
“Hey,” he called out as she bent over to lace up her boots.
When she was done, she straightened and turned back toward the bed. Now she wasn’t as easy to see since her sweatshirt was black and so were her jeans and boots. No longer a ghost but a shadow that blended into the darkness. If she pulled her hood up, she’d simply disappear.
Just like she was trying to do.
If he hadn’t woken up, she would have left without saying another word to him. That shouldn’t bother him as much as it did.
