Chapter 25 #2
“My adoptive parents. They knew that I’d gone out.
That I’d left the hotel room. That I’d stolen the car and driven away.
They found me when I was trying to slip back into the hotel.
I was covered in dirt. Bloody. Beaten. Broken rib.
A kneecap that had been busted. They looked at me, and my adoptive mother—my mother—she started crying.
She rushed to me, and she hugged me and she said that it was all right.
She knew, and she accepted what I’d done.
My father got us the hell out of there. Told the cops that I was traumatized.
He got me patched up in secret. He flew us across the country, and then he started paying everyone to protect me.
To guard me. To watch me. Because I think, not so deep down, he was worried that I might kill again.
That I might have changed in the coffin and become someone new. ”
Her eyes closed as she shut out the light. “We all change. No one ever stays the same in this world.”
“Noble knew what I was. He knew that my parents were paying my way, bribing the whole town to accept me, giving me flashy cars, pushing me through life. Oh, fuck.” He heaved out a breath. “I sound just like that prick Cody Crenshaw, don’t I? A family, tossing around money.”
She whirled as her eyes opened. Locked on him. “You are nothing like Cody Crenshaw.” She knew that deep inside. In her heart. The heart that he’d claimed.
“Sloane…”
“You are nothing like him. I know you. You don’t hurt people who are weaker than you.
You don’t target innocent people sleeping in their beds.
You are no monster, Preston. Cody is a monster, straight to his core.
” She wet her lips. “That’s not the approved psychological term, of course. But he’s a fucking monster.”
He held her stare.
“Tell me the rest.” She wanted him to share everything with her. Couldn’t he see that?
He swallowed. Twice. “Noble…”
“Yes. Tell me about Noble. About how the two of you wound up connected.”
“Noble was a kid I met when they moved me here. I got his spot on the football team because my dad thought I needed to work out my aggression. Coach put me in the same day he got a new pickup truck. Connect the dots, right? Meanwhile, Noble was benched. The guy freaking hated me when he was benched. He hated me when I scored higher than him in class. He hated me when I fucked his girlfriend.”
“You did what?” Okay, now he’d surprised her, and was that jealousy flaring?
“I did not know at the time!” He put his hands up.
“I swear. I was a teenage idiot.” He crept closer to her.
His hands fell. “Noble and I fought. A lot. At school. At random gas stations. We were always giving each other shit. One time, we totally destroyed a diner in town. Debra got called in. She yelled at our asses for hours, then she made the whole thing vanish.”
Because Debra had been watching out for him a very long time.
“Despite all of that, despite the havoc that Noble and I caused when we were together, I actually respected the guy. Everyone else fell in line. They bought the hype. The smoke and mirrors that my dad sold. He didn’t.
” Preston’s voice dropped. “He knew I was trouble from the first moment. Noble couldn’t be bribed.
He wouldn’t pretend I was something I wasn’t. ”
So how did he come to work for you?
Preston had stopped about a foot away from her. “One day, I was walking near the train tracks at the edge of town. I could hear that train, hear the whistle, feel the vibration on the tracks. It was coming, barreling closer and closer and I thought…why not?”
“Preston.” Shock exploded through her body. A fist seemed to squeeze her heart.
“My mother had died. The mother who accepted me, knowing what I’d done.
The only one who accepted me. My father—hell, my birth father tried to kill me.
My adoptive father paid people to protect me.
Pretty much paid the town to accept me. But he was getting sick.
Sicker and weaker every single day. I knew it.
I’d heard the doctors. He wasn’t going to be around long.
He was going to die, just like my mother.
They were my ties, and I would lose them both. ”
“Ties? I-I don’t understand.” Make me understand.
“The Last Breath Killer said they were ties. They helped me to keep my control because I cared about them. He wanted to kill them. Did I tell you that part? Did I mention that he had a side plan to kill by adoptive parents?”
“No.”
“Yeah, well, that was his goal. Eliminate them. If you cut the ties, then there is nothing to hold you back.” His eyelids flickered. “I wasn’t going to let him kill them. Whatever it took, he was not going to hurt them. They helped me.”
In return, he’d protected them. Again…He is nothing like Cody Crenshaw.
“I stood by those train tracks that day…” No emotion entered his voice.
“And I knew that once my adoptive father was gone, there would be no ties. I didn’t care about anyone else.
No one else really cared about me. With my last tie gone, what would I become?
Would I hurt people, like the Last Breath Killer had?
Was I born just to be bad? Was that all I had in store?
Death? Pain? I didn’t want to turn out like him.
The tracks were there. They were vibrating.
All I had to do was step on them. It would be over so fast.”
“No.” Tears poured down her cheeks. She didn’t even try to wipe them away. “No.”
“I don’t know if I would have done it. I will never know.
Because Noble came out of nowhere. He grabbed me.
Threw my ass away from the tracks and the train.
Never said a word. Just walked away.” He lifted his left hand.
His right still gripped his phone. Gently, carefully, he wiped away her tears. “You shouldn’t cry for me.”
“Yes, I should.”
The phone in his hand rang.
“That’s probably Josie.” She wet her lips and tasted the salt of her tears. “She’s usually very prompt.”
“Noble isn’t out to kill me. If he wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have saved my life all those years ago. He would have just stood there and watched me step onto the tracks.”
Preston sounded so certain. He was also making her heart ache. “He saved you. So you saved him? Is that how it worked?”
“He didn’t have anyone else when he came back.” A roll of his shoulder. “We understand each other. Better now than we did as kids.”
The phone rang again. This time, Preston swiped his finger across the screen. He put the phone on speaker.
“Noble’s phone was in Charlotte,” Josie revealed without a greeting.
“It pinged from a cell tower near his place. Not saying the man didn’t leave the phone and drive to your area and put you in the ground but, uh, his phone wasn’t with him.
So there’s that.” The tapping of fingers on a keyboard.
“What else can I do? Want me to sneak into the FBI’s classified files?
It’s a slow morning, and I could use some amusement. ”
“That’s all for now, Josie,” Sloane spoke quickly so Josie would not hack those files. “But thanks.”
“Preston’s text said FBI agents had visited.” Josie’s voice was bland. “Anyone I know?”
“Gage Emerick.”
“Such a dick.”
“And Dom.”
Silence. Then, “He doesn’t know where I am?”
“I haven’t told him,” Sloane assured her. But that doesn’t mean Dominic hasn’t figured things out on his own.
“I’m here if you need me.” Josie went back to tapping. The line clicked as she ended the call.
Preston shoved the phone into his pocket. “It’s not Noble.”
“And Frankie?” The man who’d gone to jail for five years.
“His sister worked for me. She got a job with my company six months before he was released. She wanted her brother to have a fresh start.”
“You seem to give those out a lot. Fresh starts, that is. One to Noble. One to Frankie. One to Joshua.”
“I’m not collecting strays.”
“I never said you were.”
“My father destroyed lives. Is it so wrong to want to try and balance fate?”
“Not wrong at all.” That would be one of the reasons I love you. She just could not stop the love thoughts with this man.
His gaze seemed to see right inside of her. “Just because I do some good, it doesn’t mean I am good.”
She crooked her index finger at him.
His brows shot up. But he leaned toward her.
Her hands curled around his shoulders. She pulled him closer to her. Put her mouth near his left ear. “Same, Preston.” Her lips brushed over his lobe. “Same.”
He pulled back. “That’s a lie, Sloane. You are good. You think I don’t see it? You think I don’t feel it? I’m the child of a serial killer. My mother—hell, you just told me about her. How can I be—”
“My biological father had a habit of hurting me and my mother.”
He leapt back so quickly that it seemed as if she’d burned him.
“He would drink. All the time. Morning. Noon. Night. The scent of alcohol was always on his breath. It seemed to cling to his clothes. To his skin. And when he drank, he was mean. So, yeah, he was mean twenty-four, seven.” A firm nod.
“I got used to lying to people by the time I was six. ‘I tripped while I was running and ran into the fence. I fell out of my treehouse. My wrist is broken because I had a wreck on my bike.’ Spoiler, I had no treehouse. I had no bike. I had a mean father who I hated and when he slipped and he fell down the stairs on my eighth birthday, I rushed to his side.” I’ve never told anyone this.
“And as he died right in front of me, as I never said a word, never called out for anyone to help, never grabbed a phone to dial nine-one-one, I thought…wishes can come true.”
“Fuck.”
The tears had stopped sliding down her cheeks. “I am not an angel. Never make that mistake about me.” There. Done. Every savage and dark secret that she had—revealed. He would turn away. Or he would—
He grabbed her. “You’re my angel, and you always will be.” His mouth crushed onto hers.