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Celeste
We were past the shed.I tried to stop there, in sight of the house, but he kept walking. When I called after him, he pretended not to see me. I jogged in his wake.
“Liam? I understand that you don’t want to have this conversation in the house. But there’s no need to go all the way out there. It’s not safe.”
He kept walking. Drawing me into the wetlands out there. It was both taunt and threat. Taking the reins of control. Seeing how far he could drag me against my will.
“Leave the gun behind,” I said. “You took it away from me. You proved your point. If you really just want to talk, put it down.”
His jaw flexed, but he wasn’t the sort to threaten with a gun anyway. He didn’t need weapons to control people.
He set the gun on the ground. Then he waved for me to walk past it. Once I did, he followed, and I could still see the gun behind us.
He may have put it down, but he was pissed. I was going to need to give him what he wanted. One part, anyway.
“What’s this problem about?” I asked. “Me playing Celeste Turner, I presume?”
He only smirked. I didn’t push—I needed to let him feel in control again. Something had pushed him to the edge. He’d been happily skipping along with our arrangement, and then something had changed, and I was in as much danger as I ever was with Aaron.
Liam was Aaron’s lawyer. One of them, at least. I may have left Aaron more than a decade ago, but he’s never stopped looking for me. When he hired Liam to defend him a few years back, he decided to toss his new lawyer this bone, too.
Find my ex. She stole from me, and I want back what’s mine. Her and the money.
The money. Right. Two thousand bucks. See how far that goes when you’re in hiding, unable to use your ID, unable to get a job. I was sure Aaron had told Liam it was more money. I was sure he also told Liam he wanted me back. Both lies. He just wants me punished, and he’ll pay far more than two grand to do it.
Aaron hired Liam to find me. Liam set his investigator on the task. It took a while, but when it comes to vengeance, the Bank of Aaron throws open its vaults. Liam found me, and I threw myself on his mercy. On a five-minute acquaintance, I could tell how much he’d like that, so I’d gone all in, hoping to lower his defenses with sex and then flee.
While he certainly took the sex, he wasn’t letting me get away that easily. He had another idea. A way for me to hide from Aaron. See, there was this old woman, a client of his, half-blind and on her deathbed. This client wanted him to find her long-lost granddaughter, and he wasn’t having much luck with that, but I was about the right age, and I did superficially resemble this granddaughter. If I nursed the old lady through to the end, I’d get a new name and a house.
Look after a dying woman? How hard could that be? I found out soon enough. By then, it was too late to back out. Liam had only to make a phone call to Aaron, and I’d be on the run again. I mistook Liam for 50 percent gullible savior and 50 percent useful tool. And maybe, just maybe, a desperate part of me mistook him for a potential partner, in crime and out of it.
No, the real Liam wanted me afraid and vulnerable and trapped, and my only way out was to kill him, which I’d failed to do earlier that evening. Which I was still failing to do, even in that forest with Daisy’s gun in my waistband.
“You mentioned a problem,” I said.
“Aaron’s tracked you down. He’s contacted me. He wants me to bring you in.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
I wanted to sneer and call him on his bullshit, but I was too infuriated. He couldn’t even bother coming up with a believable story. He didn’t care whether I saw right through it. That was part of the control game. I was so thoroughly trapped that I didn’t even dare call him on his lies.
“So what are we going to do?” I said.
“You need to go into hiding. I’ll find you a place to hole up, and then I’ll tell Aaron that I investigated, and I don’t think this Celeste person is you. I’ll send photos of Daisy at the house and claim his investigator mistook her for you.”
“And then I can come back?”
“No, I don’t think that’s safe. You’ll need a new name, new life.”
In other words, surrender everything again. Give up my name. Give up my house. Yes, neither was mine, but they provided shelter, and he was ripping that away. Dragging me from my den. Taking my home and my identity and my job with its small roster of clients who were finally paying my bills. All gone. And for what? For a lie. For control.
I reached out and ran my fingers down his bare chest. “Are you sure there isn’t another way?”
He stepped closer. He didn’t touch me. He was just putting himself within reach. Telling me to show him how much I wanted to stay in this house, keep being Celeste Turner.
Convince me.
I ran my fingers over his chest, light enough to make him shiver. Then my tongue, tickling and tracing over every sensitive spot. I considered continuing to make my way down, to drop to one knee and then the other.
