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“You did?” She looks around, as though it’s in this room right now. “You f…” Her eye widens. “You were in my apartment.”
I nod. “I’ve visited a couple times. Once when you were gone. Once when you were home.”
“When I was–” She draws in a shocked gasp. “You watched me sleep.”
I chuckle and continue kneading her thighs. I’ve slipped my hands beneath them now, so all I have to do is pick her up and bring her to my lap as soon as I’m certain she won’t shoot me. “It sounds creepy when you say it like that. I wasn’t being creepy. I was just checking in.” I shrug. “In a manner of speaking. I totally looked in your panty drawer. I guess that was a little creepy of me.”
“I’m so unbelievably confused right now.” She pulls back when I slide my lips over hers again. She denies me. She denies us. “Did Scanlon knock me out cold?” She looks around again. “Is this a dream?”
I should say yes. I should take her to her bed and walk away, because I’ve blown my entire cover, not just for my reasons for being in this town, but the fact that Theo Griffin isn’t actually Theo Griffin. Theo Griffin is Gunner Bishop, and if people knew that, shit could go bad fast.
But I can’t lie to her. I can’t look straight into her eyes and tell her anything but truth. She was my ally back when I was eleven. Things have changed since then. We’ve both grown, and we’ve both been influenced by wholly different upbringings.
But that doesn’t mean she can’t be my ally now.
“You dream of me because you know me, Libby.”Goddammit, Griffin! “You think you dream of prophecy, because you know we’ve met. You know deep in your heart we’re already connected, but your brain won’t let you see it.”
“My brain won’t allow fantasies, Theo. I work with logic. I work with facts. And logically,this,” she points between us. “This is impossible.”
“Says who? Your father?”
She shoots back as though I’ve hit her. “Don’t…” She shakes her head. “Don’t go back there.”
“Why not? Are you defensive about him? Do you think he’s been unlawfully incarcerated? Are you mad because daddy is in prison and you’re out here all alone?”
“No! I was the one who put him in prison.” She shoves me away so hard it makes me almost happy that the knock to her head is wearing off. But then she swings off the desk and backs away. “I was the one that arrested him. I was the one that collected unbreakable proof of his crimes. I was the one who testified with my hand on a bible and told him of the things I saw in my life. I told them of a boy who saw his mother’s murder, and I told them my father was the reason that boy was no longer living.”
I act as though her words aren’t electrical shocks through my heart. I shove my hands in my pockets and slowly meander forward. It’s what lions do; they stalk, they calculate, they approach slowly.
“I’d hardly call the thing with the boy as unbreakable proof. If there’s no body, there’s no crime.”
“He needed justice,” she whispers. “Raymond went to prison for a million other things, but that boy needed to be documented. He needed to be mentioned. He needed justice.”
“Heroic of you.” I circle around as she turns and avoids letting me get too close. “It was brave of you to lock your own father away. I assure you, had that boy known you would be his hero, he’d have wept from happiness.”
“Why do you speak about him in the third person?” She raises a hand between us as I come closer. “You say things that go against what I believed to be true. You imply you’re him, but you speak of him in the third person.”
“Because he’s dead.” I’m both touched and horrified when fresh tears slide along her battered face. I look over my shoulder to the door, then I look around and pray this room hasn’t been set up with recording devices. “Gunner Bishop was a child that never grew to be a man.”
Libby backs up against the wall and purges her grief. That name matters to her. That name means something.
“Gunner was a stupid name for the boy inside. God knows why his mother named him that, but it didn’t suit. It never suited. In the span of one day, Gunner met his father, he met Elizabeth Tate – the sweetest angel he would ever know – and then he watched his mother’s murder.”
“Where’d you go?”
I step in with a small grin and press her body into the wall. Hip to hip, toe to toe, I lean against her and slide my hands along her hips the way I was envious of Jay with Sophia. “I ran. I was merely five miles from that godforsaken club when I dragged myself into a dark alleyway and made a bed out of cardboard boxes.”
“An alleyway?” she cries. “You were homeless?”
“It’s better than dead, no?”
“Not necessarily!” she snaps. “It was winter, Gu–” Her eyes widen when she realizes how her life has just spun out of control. “Oh my God, you’re Gunner. You’re him.”
“No.” I lean in closer and nip at her jaw. “I’m Theo. I’m a self-made man. I’m no one’s son, and I’m okay with that. But you’re still that angel. Back then, I was just a child. I wasn’t looking at girls yet, so I didn’t know what I know now. But I knew we were family. With just that one meet, I knew we were partnered. I knew we had something.” I bite her warm throat and smile when she gasps. “I walked into your home a week ago and found you asleep in your bed, and I swear, it all ended there for me. You weren’t a little girl anymore, but a woman whose body called to mine. I tried to reason it away, I tried to remember you as a child, but she was gone. In that instant, she was gone, and you were here, and I’ve never in my life wanted a woman as much as I want you.”
“Gunner, I–”
“Theo.” I slide my hands around her hips and stop on the button of her jeans. Her body tenses and her eyes widen, but then I snap them open and her heart stops completely. “I’m proud of the man I’ve become. I’ve worked hard to be who I am now, I’d like for you to use that name.”
