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I grabbed the handle above her head, hoisting myself up to cup the back of her neck. Then I gave her everything I felt in a searing, slow kiss that was long and hard of all the things I wanted to say, but didn’t have the words.
And in her own way, she replied. Curling her hands into my chest and tugging at my shirt, she pulled me closer. Her body melded against me, and suddenly she was too fast away. I kept our lips locked together, my tongue sliding deep into her mouth over and over. My hand closed over her hand over my heart, and I squeezed them together.
"I want to replace everywhere he touched or hurt you, so your body remembers me,” I said roughly. My heart wrung out in my chest, right where she could feel it.
Slowly, her hands uncurled from the tight fists, and she pressed her lips to my chest. Then she leaned forward, winding her arms around my back, pressing her cheek into the same place like that until my legs cramped. We stayed like that untilwe weren’t alone in the yard, and Red Hart’s first hands started to drift away to the bunk house for the night.
She let me go, and I stumbled my way to the driver’s seat, trying to concentrate on remembering how to drive with my fingers laced tightly in hers.
I love you.
Perhaps it was my turn to host a silent conversation with her, and her turn to listen.
****
The drive back to Longside was far too short. We pulled up into the silent yard. I turned to face her and ran my thumb over her cheek.
"I promised I’d bring you back. But I don’t know how long your peace will remain your own.”
She shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know. A few days, maybe?”
The man who abused her also kept her on his own schedule, and not hers. I wondered if he knew what he did to her, if his father–at least, the man who claimed him–understood their relationship, or even knew about it.
“Will you let me stay?"
She lifted those eyes to me, her bottom lip fitted between her teeth. She let it go and ran the tip of her tongue across the soft pink flesh. "Yes–"
My phone rang and its cradle, and I swore, twisting away from her to pick up the call. "Yeah?"
"Kyle, I'm gonna need you to come back."
Travis’ voice filled the cab with my truck sounding older, more tired and weary than I'd ever heard him.
My heart beat too fast in my chest. "What's happened?"
"You need to get out to Jack Stone’s place.”
Disquiet gripped my stomach as I kissed Sienna hard, savoring the taste of her, the warmth and comfort my heart craved. Because as I threw myself behind the wheel and took off in an eddy of dust devils that blocked out the clear night sky in my rear vision mirror, I knew I’d need every inch she gave me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It took me over ninety minutes to see the darkened space where Jack Stone’s house should be beyond Travs wife’s veterinary surgery. Ninety minutes of utter hell and frustration that gripped me for the entire drive through the black night that seemed to lose all its brightness the moment I got back behind the wheel.
Well, it should have been dark. The night was lit with alternating red and amber lights that created a glow well out from where the house should be visible at close to midnight. By the time I pulled into the drive, my chest restricted my breath to short puffs.
I parked behind the sheriff's car, managing to turn the engine off in my truck before I leaped from it, making quick work of the manicured lawn the old man must have slashed at least once more since I saw him last.
Jimmy, the gangly new sheriff, spun his hat in his hands at an increasing rate as he spoke to the paramedics who were packing up the back of the ambulance.
“Hey,” I jogged across to him. “Trav called me. Didn’t say what’s happening.”
Jimmy turned to me, his boyish face lined with grief. “I’m sorry, Kyle. He– there’s no resuscitating him.”
“What?”
Blood thrummed in my ears, leaving me with a muted sense of echoing background noise and hollow words that wouldn’t leave.
“Kyle!” Rachel barreled into me at waist height. “I didn’t know if Trav got word to you. My phone died. It’s been– Oh, god. I’m so sorry.”
