Chapter 13 Haven #2
He doesn’t want to leave me behind. That much is obvious. But whatever his boss needs him to do, it must be important, because with a final look thrown my way, Dallas walks out the door.
The renewed quiet that follows feels heavier than it should. Haven and I stand there, facing each other like two strangers at the edge of the same cliff, wondering who is going to be the first one to jump.
Finally, she turns and walks down the hallway. With a flick of her fingers, she gestures for me to follow her.
And I do.
The living room in the Heywards home is simple yet cozy. As I walk into the room with Haven, I see a big leather couch, a coffee table with a stack of books on it, and a fuzzy throw blanket folded over one of the couch’s arms.
Haven sits on the far end of the couch, tucking one knee up to her chest. Following her lead, I sit on the opposite end, hands folded in my lap because I don’t know what else to do with them.
She studies me again.
Up close, she does look… young. I still think she’s around my age, but there’s something in her eyes that makes her seem more innocent.
Like how going through something traumatic can either age you or stunt you, freezing you in a version of yourself that never got to finish growing or adding lines to your face instead.
Looking at Haven, I have no idea what she’s gone through, but I can see why Connor is so protective of her.
I’ve just met her, and I want to hug her close and promise that everything is going to be okay.
The way she’s watching me tells me that she feels the same.
How much does she know about me? About my accident?
About my missing memories? I don’t know, but I notice how her eyes are drawn to the wedding band on my left hand.
The ring I seem to have kept on even during my estrangement with my husband, and the one that tells the world that I’m still married to Julian ‘Dallas’ Collins.
I wait for her to say something. Anything. She doesn’t, though, and I feel like it’s up to me to fill the silence.
“I’m sorry,” I say at last. “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to—”
Haven’s lips part and, for a second, I think she’s going to speak. She doesn’t, though. Instead, she reaches toward the stack of books. I notice there’s a small notebook on the top, plus a pen. Grabbing them both, she flips open the notebook and starts to write.
Holding it up so I can read it, I see that it says:
Do you remember anything yet?
Welp, there’s the answer to my question. Did Haven know about my accident? Yeah. I guess so.
I shake my head.
Pursing her lips, she adds another line beneath it.
You’re lucky. I wish I could forget.
That breaks my heart. Maybe it’s a good thing that I can’t remember what happened before I fell.
That I’m missing so much time before that fateful night.
I don’t remember why I agreed to separate from Dallas, or what made me fall for him in the first place, but I have a second lease at life, plus a second chance with a man who is desperate to make it work this time.
But Haven… whatever she went through, she’s obviously still dealing with it.
If Connor is anything like Dallas, I doubt we’ll have that much time without him hovering—whether she glares at him or not, I get the feeling that he’ll be making his way to the living room to check on her sooner or later—but I feel a kinship with Haven that I haven’t with anyone other than Dallas since my fall.
I scoot a little closer to her. “Do you… do you want to talk about it? I mean, I totally understand if you don’t, but I’m a good listener. With the way my brain’s a sieve these days, I might not even remember come morning.”
She flashes me a thin-lipped smile, staying silent.
Message received. “Connor said you don’t talk much. That’s okay. I don’t mind the quiet, either.”
Her eyes light up. This time, she scrawls:
Connor talks too much
A small laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Haven watches my amused reaction with something like cautious approval. She sets the notebook and pen down on the couch cushion between us and leans back, studying the ceiling for a beat, like she’s making up her mind.
Then she reaches down and pulls her sweater sleeve back slightly, exposing her wrist.
There are faint scars there. They’re not fresh ones. I’m not a good gauge, but I’d say they’re a couple of years old, though they’re still visible.
Haven rubs her thumb over them before trailing her fingers down to the underside of her palm. She flexes her hand, folding her fingers open and closed, drawing attention to the undamaged skin there.
I frown, shaking my head so she knows I have no clue what she means.
“Did you see it?” she rasps. “On their hands?”
The sound of her voice startles me. It’s rough, like she hasn’t used it in a while. Like every word costs her, but something she sees in my confusion has spurred her to try again.
“Um. On Dallas? And Connor?”
“On all of them.” When I nod, she asks, “Do you remember? Do you know what it means?”
I don’t, but I don’t know what’s stranger about this conversation: that we’re having it at all, or that she doesn’t seem surprised when I tell her that Dallas brushed it off as something stupid he did when he was eighteen and he was initiated into some kind of club that he and most of the kids he knew messed around with.
“Club?” Her eyes flash. “He tells you you’re his wife. But you… you’re no Offering.”
Huh? “I’m sorry… I don’t know what you mean.”
She grabs for the notebook again as though she’s lost her voice—or because she used too much of it—before writing this:
the Order of the Owed
Haven scribbles it out, then adds:
the secret society in town… you don’t know?
Keeping quiet myself, I shake my head.
“That’s how it works,” she says, voice quieter now. Almost strangled. “You’re not supposed to know unless you’re in it. But you should… and he should tell you.”
He should. “He’s my husband.”
He’s my husband, and he’s keeping this from me.
Why? What does it matter if he’s in some kind of club or…
or secret society? He’s out tonight for a work thing.
That’s all. He’s a mechanic. He works with his friend, Sebastien.
Sure, he’s paranoid and he lives in the penthouse he inherited from his lost parents, and he’s super protective of me after what I went through, but he… he’s Dallas.
And he’s mine.
But he also has a second job, I remember, this side hustle of his when he works for Adrian, and now that I think about it, it’s not like this could be an emergency, late-night, mechanic job… can it?
Why is Haven telling me this? Is it a warning? It must be important enough to her for her to actually talk to a stranger when that’s clearly something she doesn’t normally do, but I don’t understand it.
Haven ducks her head, allowing her hair to fall forward in her face. “I love Connor. I love Connor,” she says again, emphasizing the word love. “But I’ll never forget he’s one of them.”
What?
I open my mouth to ask when, right on schedule, Connor comes walking into the room as though he stayed away as long as he could, but just can’t do it anymore.
A boyish smile fills his face as he moves to the other side of the coffee table. “I thought I heard someone saying my name. You getting on alright, Lucy? You call for me?”
I glance at Haven. “It wasn’t me.”
Connor’s pretty blue eyes land on his wife, a rush of some combination of heat, of affection, of relief filling his gaze. “Oh, sweetheart,” he breathes. He gestures for her to go to him.
Rising up from the couch, he floats into his arms, squeezing him tight as though she didn’t just refer to her husband as a ‘them’.
Meanwhile, I sit on the couch, my overnight bag at my feet as I resist the urge to yank my phone out, call Dallas, and beg for him to turn around. It’s only been about fifteen, twenty minutes. He couldn’t have gotten that far yet, right?
No.
No.
He’ll be back. He promised.
And if I can’t trust my husband, who can I trust?