AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Emery must look toward the end of the stairs because Gage says, “Let’s not wake her. She’s been through enough without having us disrupting her sleep, hmm?”
“Tell her I stopped by. When I know more, I’ll be in touch.”
“I will.”
I pad back up the steps before Emery can see I’ve been eavesdropping the entire time, slipping closer to my door as I listen to him leave. Gage locks the door behind him.
“You can come out now, little one,” he calls up, and even though I try to keep myself level-headed, my blood warms.
“You knew I was down here the entire time?” I ask, moving back down the stairs to where he stands by the front door.
He nods, a massive smirk tugging his sinful lips up. “I did. I canfeelwhen you’re nearby. Like a coming rainstorm. My hackles raise.”
I chuckle. “I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not.”
He laughs. “It is from someone who loves storms.”
I lick my lips as my smile fades. It’s easy to get lost in this thing between us. To forget that there’s so much I don’t know about him.
“So, you have questions I’ll bet,” he says.
And I nod.
He sighs from a place of resignation. “Well, come on. I’ll make you breakfast and coffee while you carry out your inquisition.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
Gage
As I fry bacon and scramble her eggs, taking a moment to pop a bagel into the toaster, she sips her coffee and arranges her questions in her mind. It’s in the way she watches me with a careful gaze. Surely, she’s wondering who the hell she’s let into her life. With good right. I was her stalker at one point. And if she asks me to leave today, I will be her stalker once again. Because she’s mine, and I’ll never let her go.
“So?” I ask, not able to take the strained silence any longer.
She grips her mug tighter. “You’ve killed people.”
It’s not a question. Rather, a realization formed into a sentence. One constructed to get a rise out of me. To test my reaction to the words strung together.
I nod as the bagel pops up, maintaining her eye contact. “I have. And I don’t think I’ve ever told you I was a good man.”
She sets her mug down on the bar, pulling her hands back. I notice the shake in them, but I don’t want to acknowledge it. “But you’ve killed for good reasons,” she says. Once again, not a question.
“Not until I was free of my father.” I set to plating her food, adding cream cheese to her bagel, and setting it down in front of her. She stands, moving to the fridge, grabbing apple butter and a butter knife from the silverware drawer and then sitting back on her barstool.
She smears apple butter over her cream cheese, and I smile. Decadent little thing.
“So, your father had you kill for the wrong reasons?” Her brow quirks as she eyes me, biting into her bagel and making me wish I was a pastry for a split-second.
“No, it wasn’t that. He likely could’ve had the same reason I do for ending people’s lives. But he wouldn’t let me in. I wanted to know thewhy,and he thought I should carry out orders blindly. Loyally. I’m not a man who kills without reason. It’s not who I am. So, I had to strike out on my own. Took a few of his finest with me, people with the same mindset as me, and started my firm.”
She digests it as she takes a bite of egg.
I grab a glass from the cabinet next to the sink, using the fridge’s ice machine to add some cubes. And then fill it with water. Sliding it across the bar to her, I let my hand linger on the glass so that hers will graze it.
She eyes our connected hands when she reaches for it.
“You didn’t forget setting the fire. It was just so long ago,” she murmurs as I pull my hand back.
“So long ago, and I didn’t know you were there. And I think part of me locked that night away in my head. Not knowing why I was setting it, but needing to do it anyhow, you know? I wanted into his firm, and to do so, I had to make a call. I didn’t know what I was covering up, or who could be in the house. I just had to act if I wanted to change my future.”
