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Another step. Then another. The closer he got, the more my heart raced in my chest. Bradford grinned.
Then—it hit me where I’d seen that smile before.
“Rich?”
Bradford stopped. His smug grin slowly spread into a wide smile. “You remember.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
He stood right before me now, lifting his hand to touch my face. I jerked back. Grabbing a lock of my hair, he rubbed it between his fingers. “Do you call this honey brown? Golden brown? I never could figure out if your hair was light brown or dark blonde. But it’s just as soft as I thought it would be.”
Once more, I felt the urge to throw up.
“The night you walked away from me, I vowed to win your love. I followed you around campus as much as I could…and you were clueless. Even followed you to Hamilton that first Christmas break. Stayed in this very cabin. That’s when I saw you looking at Ryan with lust in your eyes.” He closed his own eyes, his brow furrowed as if in pain. “I wanted you to look at me like that. I saw a glimpse of it the night he brought you to Le Vacher. You let your eyes move over my body, and I saw it—you wanted me.”
My eyes widened in horror. “No! I’m in love with Ryan.”
“Shut up!” he yelled. “Don’t you ever say that again! Never!” He started to pace the room again. “I had the chance to go to France. Develop my culinary skills, but I had to pass it up to move to fucking Hamilton. I had to stay close to you so when you graduated and moved home, we could be together. Then that fucker ruined everything!”
“What about Savannah? I thought you loved her?”
An evil laugh slipped from his mouth. “Savannah was a cover. Yeah, she’s a good fuck. But she’s a little whore. Anything I want to try, she’ll do it for me. It’s really pathetic, actually. She means less than nothing to me. She was only a warm place for me to stick my cock. I used to close my eyes and pretend it was you riding me. It was you I was sinking into.” He gave me another smirk. “Savannah fell so fast, I knew she’d be the perfect thing to take any suspicion away from me. Sure, she’ll be hurt when I never show up again, but she’ll get over me. They always do.”
My voice cracked as I asked, “What do you mean, when you never show up again?”
He paced back toward me. “After I make you mine, we’re leaving Hamilton.”
Tears slipped free and rolled down my face and I shook my head.
“Oh, princess,” he said, putting his clammy hand on the side of my face. I had to fight the urge to jerk away. If I did, I knew it would only make him more angry. “We can’t stay here. We need to start a new life together far, far away. The longer we stay, the sooner that fucking family of yours, or Ryan, will find us. They’ve been out all day looking for you.”
He frowned. “Poor little Ryan was all torn apart when Savannah and I stopped by to bring him some food I’d made. I am, after all, the caring and concerned friend. I was watching you on my cameras trying to figure out how to get out of this room while that dumb fuck was sitting right there.” He let out a sick-sounding laugh. “While he was crying in Savannah’s arms, I was sitting directly across from him, watching you on my phone. Imagine how pissed at himself he’d be if he knew that!”
My chest squeezed so tightly I had a hard time breathing. Oh, Ryan. I closed my eyes and tried not to picture how worried everyone was.
“Avery…is she okay?”
“She’s fine. And so is that stupid-ass bodyguard of yours. I have to admit, the addition of Nox and his merry band of military men threw me off, and I had to lay low for a bit. I thought I was finally going to be able to grab you when we went four-wheeling.”
I sucked in a breath. “That was you?”
He smiled. “When that stupid idiot Bonnie had to go to the bathroom and you offered to go with her, I knew it was my chance. The fucking bodyguard was so busy staring at Bonnie’s ass, he never noticed me slipping through the woods.”
“How did no one know you were gone?”
He shrugged. “I ran back to my four-wheeler and met back up with Savannah. Told her I took a wrong turn. She didn’t even notice I was gone for a few minutes.”
As much as I didn’t want to think about it, I asked, “That’s how you knew all of our plans? The camera in my apartment? How?”
