Chapter Twenty
The bed was empty.
Murray smoothed his hands over where she should’ve been, the sheets cold but slightly rumpled.
Morning light blurred around the edges of her blackout curtains.
His watch said it was still early—earlier than when she normally woke up on days she didn’t have to work—but no signs of movement reached his ears from the rest of the house.
She’d pulled him into her bedroom last night, but that was where her offer had ended.
Leaving him standing at the end of her bed, Aslen had taken one side of the mattress and left him to decide what to do next.
Exhaustion biting every muscle, Murray had chosen the other side of the queen-size bed, keeping as much space between them as possible.
It hadn’t lasted long. Sometime during the night, he’d sought her out after hours of tossing and turning.
He’d pulled her back against his chest, letting go of the tension in his upper body as her heart echoed the rhythm of his own.
Only then had he been able to really fall asleep.
And, hell, the zombie apocalypse wouldn’t have been able to wake him, he’d slept so deep. Deeper than he had in years.
She hadn’t even woken, her breathing smooth and even, as he’d held her.
To make up for crossing that line. For hurting her with his implication of using her scars against her.
He didn’t give a damn about the whorls of scar tissues along her neck and shoulder, and had spent a good majority of last night visually tracing what he could see of them over and over.
She was beautiful, in every way. But he couldn’t give Aslen what she needed, what she deserved.
No matter how many times he’d replayed that kiss.
The way she’d melted under his touch, the small whimper that’d escaped when he penetrated the seam of her lips, how she’d gripped his shirt harder.
He’d never had such a visceral reaction to a woman in his life.
Like that invisible thread that’d formed between them all those years ago had somehow guided him on how to touch her, where she needed him the most, how to make her feel what he was feeling.
In return, he hadn’t been able to breathe from the force of Aslen Woods.
Her taste lingered in his mouth and triggered a craving he’d never had before, even now urging him to find her and soothe the itch to find out if a second kiss would be as good as the first. She’d always been the center of his universe, even more so than his parents and brother, but now?
It was as though his entire being had honed itself on her. Breathed for her. Lived for her.
Murray swiped one hand down his face and shoved himself upright.
She was right. He really was a bastard for taking advantage of her after what she’d been through, and he hated himself for allowing it to get that far.
He’d broken his promise to always protect her.
Turned out, he couldn’t even protect her from himself.
He swung free of the bed, sweet hints of lemon verbena clinging to his skin and clothes, and crossed into the hallway outside her bedroom.
Danny’s room off to the left remained empty, the roommate keeping her word to give Aslen space after coming home from the hospital.
The rangers’ lease agreements didn’t allow for painting, but Aslen’s friend sure as hell had made her room her own.
Danny hadn’t bothered making the bed—another queen-size—and obviously didn’t believe in a laundry hamper with how many clothes she’d tossed across the floor and over the dresser.
Photos in silver and crystalized picture frames faced the bed from the single nightstand, but he caught a blurry sight of a group of four people. Most likely her parents and siblings.
Aslen didn’t have that. While she kept a partially burned photo recovered from the scene of the house fire, the faces behind the frame had worn and aged.
He doubted she could even picture their faces clearly anymore.
She’d lost everything the night her parents had died, and he’d somehow convinced himself he could be enough to make up for that by giving her a new family. Him.
But all he’d done was give her a false sense of hope.
A mistake he wouldn’t make again.
Moving into the main living space, he froze at the sight of her at the small, round dining table. She’d dressed in her ranger uniform for the day without so much as waking him, and he didn’t want to think about the reason why his brain had found her a safe place to let go and rest. “Good morning.”
Aslen set down her coffee mug at the sight of him. Waiting. “Morning.”
He internally cringed at the cold distance in that one word. And he didn’t blame her one bit. “You’re up early. Figured you might want another day to recover before diving back into the case.”
Was this how it would be between them from now on?
Years of late nights, of inside jokes, of showing up for promotions and celebrations and holidays, of breakups and illnesses—gone?
Had he so thoroughly rejected the idea of them becoming more than friends that he’d broken everything he’d worked for since he was sixteen years old?
Murray couldn’t get enough air, choosing to distract himself with a mug of his own from the kitchen.
“I’m fine.” Shifting in her seat in his peripheral vision, Aslen took another sip of her coffee.
Hell. Those two words screamed of anything but her being fine, but he wouldn’t push her.
Not after what he’d said to her last night.
It was anything but fine between them, and he had no idea where to go from here.
How to repair the damage he’d done. “I thought we might visit the scene of the RV explosion at Lava Point campground. From what my rangers can tell, it was a rental under a false name, but I’d like to see if you can pick up on anything about the arsonist from the belongings left behind. ”
“Okay.” Nothing more. No nervous recounting of facts.
No argument about how to spend her time on the investigation.
No telling him to go to hell and never come back.
It was as though she’d become a shell, and his heart jerked hard enough at the thought of losing that brilliant light it physically hurt.
Murray closed his eyes against the pain ricocheting through his chest as he set the pot back into its holder and turned toward the table where she sat. “Aslen, I’m going to need more than one-word answers from you.”
A burst of fire lit up her eyes. There. Not wholly a shell then. But she was trying to emotionally detach from him. “I think you made it more than clear last night that you don’t need or want anything from me. Why start now?”
“Aslen.” He didn’t know what else to say. That he was sorry he’d hurt her feelings? Sorry he couldn’t give her everything she needed in a partner?
“You don’t have to explain. I’m used to you pushing me away when things get uncomfortable for you.
” She shoved herself to stand, carrying her half-full mug of coffee to the sink, and poured it down the sink with a little too much force.
Black liquid charged up the sides of the sink and soaked the front of her uniform.
She hissed a split second before the mug fell from her hand and shattered at the bottom of the sink. “Hot! Hot! Hot!”
Murray pulled her away from the sink, turning her into him to assess any damage. He’d spent a lifetime worth of adrenaline trying to save her from the man who’d abducted her. He wasn’t sure if his heart could take much more. “Where does it hurt?”
“Don’t, Murray.” She backed out of his reach.
Pain reflected in her expression, but all he could do was wait for the shoe he’d been avoiding to drop.
“Just…don’t. You can’t pretend that you didn’t kiss me last night or that there’s nothing wrong between us and try to take care of me when I burn myself. ”
Peeling her uniform top away from her stomach, Aslen allowed her expression to fall, which made him sick all over again.
“This isn’t like the time you forgot we had a dinner date after work because you decided to go out drinking with your department or when you made a point to bring Ranger Richie home a few months ago, claiming you forgot we had plans to go to the movies. ”
The air thinned, making it that much harder to get a full breath.
“You’ve been trying to put distance between us for years, and I think it’s because you knew.” Tears lined her eyes as she seemingly forgot about the coffee dripping down her slacks and onto the floor. “You knew I had feelings for you.”
His blood ran cold.
“I think you realized it early on. You were waiting for them to go away the older I got, but I think you also figured out they haven’t.
And that scares you.” Her shoulders rose on a strong inhale, and Murray wasn’t sure he could take much more of the dread pooling at the base of his spine.
“You can deny it all you want. You can pretend it never happened, but you kissed me back last night, Murray. You were just as affected by what we shared as I was. No matter what you do or what you say, you can’t take that from me, and you can’t convince me you didn’t feel something. ”
His throat worked to swallow but all he found was emptiness. “Aslen—”
“You know the worst part? It’s not you telling me that kiss was a mistake or that nothing will ever happen between us.
I’m used to your constant attempts to push me away.
I’ve gotten used to the wall you keep trying to build between us since Jackson disappeared.
” A weak smile crested her mouth. A mouth he’d tasted and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since last night.
She was right, damn it. She was right. He’d felt something, and it scared the crap out of him.
Because the possibility of them? He couldn’t risk it.
He was all out of love, every ounce stolen from him in illness, heartbreak and a disappearance.
Her tears breached, skimming down her perfect face.
“The worst part was you climbing into my bed to hold me all night and letting me hope all over again. Only to realize you did it for you.”
Murray didn’t know what to say to that, to this woman who was the same Aslen he’d known all his life and yet not.
He’d known about her crush on him from the beginning.
She hadn’t made an effort to hide it with her side glances when she thought he wasn’t paying attention or her attempts to get them alone and spend time together.
And, yeah, he’d gone out of his way to prove he wasn’t interested by forgetting dinner dates and getting involved with the vainest information ranger he could find, but not to hurt her. Never to hurt her.
It’d all been to stop himself from ruining the very last relationship he cared about.
Because that was the only ending for them.
No matter how many times he’d tried to convince himself otherwise, in the end, he’d fail her just as he’d failed his family.
He was a ghost of a man with no heart left to give, and she deserved so much better.
“Aslen, you don’t understand. I can’t give you—”
A shrill ping escaped from his pocket. Murray unpocketed the device, reading over the ME’s message. Confusion warred across his face—he could feel it.
Aslen swiped at her face. “What is it?”
“The ME is finished with the external examination of the second body we found in the RV.” Murray forced himself to meet her gaze. “He recovered something in the victim’s hand. He believes it’s a copy of the same photo left with the first.”