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She must have worked out where the name Lily comes from by now. Wonder what she makes of it.
“I’m calling her Lily. Maybe one day she’ll trust us enough to tell us what her real name is.”
As I make my way down to the bar so I can let them know I’ll be out for the next couple of hours, I pass by a mirrored wall.
The easygoing and charming Aden Shaw mask snaps back into place. It’s wearing thin, but for now, it’s holding.
Just.
15
SAIGE
The amiable smile was a lie.
Aden isn’t who I thought he was at all.
“I’ve changed the sheets and left a fresh towel for you on the bed. A new toothbrush as well. And—” Behind me, Aden’s voice halts and I turn from the photo on his wall.
Three men hang off each other’s arms. All have alcohol-glazed eyes and wide smiles curving their lips, but beneath their smiles, something is missing.
I don’t know what that is, but there’s an emptiness that reaches out through the photo, screaming so loud I can’t be the only one who sees it.
“Are these them?” I ask. “The hounds?”
“Yes.”
I return my attention to the framed picture. “You look close.”
“We were. Once we shared everything.”
The strange note in his voice makes me turn to him again. His gaze isn’t on the photograph but me, and there’s an intensity in them that makes my mouth dry. “Everything?”
“Everything.”
He means a vehicle, or maybe cash, Saige. That’s all.
Yet, that doesn’t explain why my body is responding as he’s talking about something a little more exciting than that. “So what happened?”
He shakes his head, and this time his smile is sad. “Now that’s a long story I doubt you want to hear.”
I do. I really do.
But I don’t push because it’s nothing to do with me, so I let my attention be drawn once more by the photograph of the three men.
Turning away, my gaze rests on the man with shaved dark hair and piercing gray eyes that seem to stare right into mine.
Next, I shift my focus to Aden. Maybe the photographer had perfect timing and caught him at the exact moment when his smile began to crack. But I know that isn’t true. Someone could’ve taken his picture ten minutes before or an hour later, but it wouldn’t have made his grin real.
The guy on the left becomes my new focus. A towering, heavily muscled man at least six-two with a commanding green stare. All are in their mid-late twenties, dressed all in black, impossibly hot, but it isn’t their bodies or handsome faces that hold my attention. Or not only.
It’s their pain.
“Did someone die?” I ask the photo.
I can just make out the corner of the mirror at the back of the bar, so they must be at the Cerberus. But there’s no one else in frame and no flashing lights coming from the direction the dance floor is in.
Maybe they were having a wake and someone told them to smile for the picture.
