The Villain (The Vigilantes #3)

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Athena

D oorframe . One step into…the bedroom. Three steps until…the bed. Two steps around—“ Crap !” I let out a hiss of pain and sank to the floor, clutching my calf, which I’d just caught against the corner of the bed.

“Crap,” I repeated, defeatedly, and felt for the end of the bed. Carefully, I maneuvered so I could rest my back against it.

Steeling myself, I pressed my fingers to my ankle and slowly moved them higher until I reached the spot that triggered pain, and then I continued to probe and assess my newest injury. There was no wetness, so I hadn’t broken the skin. Unlike my poor big toe that I’d caught on the lip of the shower yesterday.

Thankfully, Rob had been there. With the water from the shower, I wouldn’t have even known I was bleeding everywhere if she hadn’t told me before carefully bandaging it up.

It had been four days since that first shower. An entire week since the explosion. And I was convinced I’d acquired enough bruises to start a museum. A bang here. A tap there. The worst part was I didn’t go far— I didn’t have far to go.

In a matter of moments, my entire life had been whittled down to the space between a bed and a bathroom. In a safe house.

I thought back to nights when I was married to Brandon, when I would get up to use the bathroom and turn on the nightstand lamp. He hated that. My side of the bed was farthest from the bathroom with several obstacles in the way, but he didn’t care. The light woke him, and that was unacceptable, so after many trials and injuries, I’d learned to maneuver the path in darkness.

Ironically, that was what this felt like except there were no lights to turn on, and I was in darkness all the time.

Every morning, I felt my way to the bathroom, flicked on the light switch, and pulled off my eye mask. Every morning, I hoped that the flip of a switch would turn my vision on again, and every morning, all I saw was the same stretch of black.

They all assured me it would come back—along with my memory—but every day I stared into the darkness and cracked off a chunk of that hope.

The worst part was that my head felt better. There were still holes in my memory. And I still couldn’t see. But the pressure and headaches had decreased. The only time I took any of the pain medication from Dr. Nilsen was before bed to keep the throbbing pain away, and that was when Dare came and held my hand.

I didn’t know if it was him—I couldn’t be sure if it was anything more than a delusion from the meds or a consequence of the trauma to my brain. Or it could’ve simply been a fantasy I wanted to hold onto—the one good thing I looked forward to during the dark days .

Strong, warm fingers. A massive palm covering mine, firm and tender, assuring me he would protect me.

I would almost swear that hand had held mine every night since the explosion—even the ones I’d been unconscious or sedated for. But it all could’ve been the drugs.

And that was a small part of why I kept taking them—because I didn’t want to lose that hand to hold onto. My gorgeous guardian ghost.

“Get back up, Athena,” I murmured before I dwelled on the feel of his fingers all day.

I had big plans this afternoon. Big, walking-to-the-front-of-the-house plans.

I flattened my palms to the floor, my fingertips feeling the crease between the individual wood planks, and then pushed myself upright. This time, I reached one hand to the bed, exploring along the end and charting out the tip of the corner before navigating with cautious steps around it.

I’d only ventured to the front of the safe house when Rob was with me, but I couldn’t just sit back in bed and listen to music or another audiobook. I needed to be…up. I needed to move.

I needed to feel sunlight.

So, I did, at the pace of a snail. Around the corner of the bed, and then out straight until I felt the wall. From there, my fingers crawled like a spider until I found where it turned into the short hallway, and then I followed that all the way to the front room.

In my case, this safe house was more than a safe house. It was the safest house because, aside from the bed and a chair I’d only heard move around, there wasn’t any other furniture in it. Rob had apologized for it, but I couldn’t understand why. No one lived here, why would the small house be filled with furniture?

I gripped the corner of the wall like I was about to step off into the deep end. I’d only been out here once yesterday because I’d asked Rob for a walk—something more than the safe several feet between the bathroom and bed. She’d agreed, tucking my hand into her elbow, and we’d joked about how we were “taking a turn” about the room, like we were characters in an Austen novel rather than…whatever this twilight zone was.

She’d verbally mapped out the space around me. The light gray walls. The windows along the front that faced a small clearing bordered by a dense forest. There was a kitchen with a small island. And then the door she always entered from that she said led to a kind of satellite workspace and garage for them so they didn’t disturb me; her tone had barbs when she’d mentioned that—like it was a topic not to be trespassed on.

Another change I’d noticed. As the pain in my head dimmed, my other senses started to sharpen, especially my hearing. The rustle of the sheets. The breeze that hit the front of the house. The splatter of rain drops on the windows. Even the bottomless exhales from the man who sat beside my bed each night and held my hand.

My hearing was so good now, I’d started hearing dreams.

I’d never questioned the idea that someone with a deficit of one sense had heightened responses to the others. But to know that fact was entirely different from experiencing it. It was like understanding the principle of gravity…and then being tossed out of an airplane without a parachute.

I was in free fall and trying to hold myself together.

My head spun at the first sound of the doorknob.

“Rob?” I faced the direction of the sound—of the door.

She usually came by around this time. We’d sit and talk. Eat dinner. She’d tell me about her work in the city, helping abused women find shelter and justice, while I showered. And then…back to da rkness.

My inhale coincided with the soft opening of the door and the rush of sandalwood into my nostrils; it wasn’t Rob.

“Athena.”

Dare.

The man who’d saved my life had disappeared with the same harsh abruptness as my sight. Except for in my dreams.

“Hi.” I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling warmth creep into my cheeks as I kept my head turned toward his voice.

I willed my eyes to work. Willed the darkness to turn to shadows and the shadows to morph into a man. I wanted to see the man who’d saved my life and who made me warm just by being near me. The one who’d taken care of me…made me comfortable…promised to keep me safe.

But all my willing didn’t work; no matter how hard I stared, there was only darkness instead of Dare.

“What are you doing?” His voice rumbled over me, warming me like the heat of a fire rasping in the hearth. Each word got slightly louder as he came closer, and his footsteps got heavier where they landed on the floor.

Rob was about my size, but this man…was bigger. I heard the weight of him, and I could almost feel the change in pressure against my skin. Like there wasn’t enough space in the room for both all the oxygen and all of him.

“I wanted…I needed to get out of the bedroom,” I said, trying not to let my voice waver.

Six years was a long time of being trained not to stand up for myself—of constantly breaking down my own needs in order to satisfy Brandon’s. But Dare wasn’t Brandon.

“I’m sorry. Just with everything”—my fingers subconsciously lifted to my face—“it sometimes feels a little like a cage.”

I hated how ungrateful it sounded. I was safe. Protected. Guarded, here. But I was also trapped in my own mind. Alone in a dark, windowless, wallless cage.

“What can I do?”

My lips parted, a wash of tingles racing over my skin. His nearness was almost as breathtaking as the dedication in his voice. It was as though I could ask anything of him, and he’d do it.

“Take me outside.”

I felt his hesitation. The ripple in the air from his harsh intake of his breath. This wasn’t what he’d come here to do, but it was what I needed.

“Please.”

A bottomless exhale. “Okay,” he husked. “But you have to cover your eyes.”

My shoulders sagged with relief. “Of course,” I agreed eagerly. “My eye mask is in the bedroom.” It went unsaid that he’d be able to grab it faster than I would.

A coldness accompanied his retreating steps, and then the heat returned along with his presence.

“Here.”

My heart stumbled when he returned, as though his body carried its own charge—a kind of magnetic field that pulsed and drew me toward it—toward him—whenever he got close.

Because I couldn’t see him, the rest of my senses went into overdrive. My skin blanketed with goose bumps. My ears fixed on the heavy tumble of his breaths. The soft flutter of silk in his hands. And the scent of him…my nostrils greedily breathed it in. Drowned in it. All potent and rich. Even my tongue, through my parted lips, could taste its raw masculinity.

And then the cool silk of the mask draped over my eyes. Instinctively, I reached up to adjust it and bumped his hands in the process.

“Sorry,” I murmured, feeling him pull away instantly .

“Don’t apologize.” His order made me shiver.

All Brandon ever wanted from me was apologies. Each of them reminded me what a failure I was to him and how generous it was for him to still love me.

But not Dare. He wanted no apologies. He seemed to want nothing but to take care of me—even if it was at a restrained distance.

“I’m ready.” I pressed the mask gently to my cheeks, making sure it was secure.

“I have your shoes.”

“Oh, right.” I nodded. How could I forget those?

The air moved as he lowered in front of me, and since my hand braced on the wall, it must’ve been the entire world that tipped when his strong hand wrapped around my ankle. God, his skin was so hot. Each of his fingertips was like a small flame where they touched, burning an unspoken ache onto me.

“What happened here?” His deep voice was rough, distracting me until a burst of pain announced the touch of his fingers on my injured calf.

“Is it cut? I didn’t feel blood?—”

“Bruised.”

Breathe, Athena. Just breathe. I coached myself silently, grateful that my eye mask also covered most of my heated cheeks.

I forced myself to swallow. “I ran into the corner of the bed.”

“And here?” He rubbed over the bandage around my big toe.

“Caught my toe on the edge of the shower,” I answered, his sharp inhale piercing the silence a second later.

At that, the questions stopped as he put my sneakers on, my brain foggy and drunk by the time he was finished.

“Ready,” he grunted low and straightened, bringing a wave of electrified air up my body with him.

I managed one solid breath before large palms cupped my shoulders to guide me forward. And instantly, I was adrift in the darkness.

His nearness disorients me. Even without my sight, my brain tried to map my surroundings as I felt my way through them. The bedroom. The bathroom. The front of the house. It took a lot of focus, and the bruise on my calf evidenced how hard it was, but when something interrupted that focus, it was like the part of hitting a pi?ata where they spin you around after blindfolding you.

Any direction could be right. Any direction could be wrong. But as long as it was those strong hands that held me, I’d let them lead me anywhere.

One of his hands disappeared, replaced by the sound of a handle turning, the soft glide of a hinge, and then…I inhaled, and his unmistakable sandalwood was replaced with cool, crisp air—the kind that was scrubbed clean by trees and then steeped in salt.

My chest tightened. Freedom. Or as much of it as I could have right now.

“Careful, there’s a lip,” he warned low, guiding me slowly over the doorframe and out onto the distinct softness of earth.

“Are we close to the ocean?” I said between massive breaths; I really underestimated how much I needed some fresh air.

“Yeah.”He led us a few paces forward, and I soaked in every sense of my new surroundings. The earth under my feet. The cool air in my lungs. The slight prickle of sunlight on my skin. The faint taste of salt on my tongue.

We stopped, and the second his hands let go of me, a whip of cold raced along my spine, and I couldn’t stop my body from jolting slightly.

“I’m okay,” I said quickly, somehow sensing he’d seen me shiver and afraid he’d insist we go back inside.

“Here.” His gruff word was followed by a weight on my shoulders. A jacket. A heavy jacket that was warm and soaked in his scent. I felt for the edge, smooth leather greeting my fingertips.

A leather jacket.

“Thank you.” I curled deeper into the masculine cocoon, and when he stepped back, the vacuum of darkness swallowed me again. Biting my lip, I tried to imagine our surroundings. The shape of the leaves catching on the wind. Their color brimming with the sun-saturated summer green. And the ocean—would it be visible on the horizon? Blue and glittering against the sky?

There, I lost the image. All the threads I’d woven together tangled back into a knot of darkness.

“Do you think my sight will come back?”

I tried not to dwell on the alternative because it wouldn’t make anything better, but sometimes I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t help but worry if this was it—the end of the career I’d envisioned before it had hardly started.

I’d survived so much to be back here—to be painting and drawing again. And to think that could be irrevocably altered…

“Dr. Nilsen believes so.” His low voice chased away my thoughts.

“Do you?”

“I’m not a doctor.”

I shivered. “You’re very black and white, aren’t you?”

“Makes things simple,” he grunted.

A small smile curled up my cheeks. “I knew someone like that once,” I said, and just as quickly, I shoved the memory away. “I thought I’d notice some change by now—some improvement. But every day is the same. I know I should probably be worried about other things, butI’m an artist. My whole life…is what I see.”

My throat felt thick. To say it out loud, to hear what could be gone forever, it felt like the air had been taken right from my lungs.

“I understand.” His deep voice grounded me.

“I feel like I can’t trust anything.” Oh no. Heat lifted to my cheeks, realizing how that sounded. I clamored to correct myself. “I didn’t mean you. I know I can trust you,” I said quickly, feeling like the biggest, ungrateful jerk. “I feel like I can’t trust myself, if that makes any sense. It probably doesn’t?—”

“No,” he interrupted. “It makes perfect sense.Losing trust in your own instincts…is one of the hardest battles to fight.”

He spoke like he knew firsthand, the tenor of his voice cutting a measure lower, the inflection of his tone hanging at the end of certain words like he had gathered strength to speak the rest.

I wondered if I were able to see him, if I would’ve noticed those small changes, or if this was some superpower silver lining to having been robbed of sight.

“It feels like I’m losing myself,” I admitted softly, my voice cracking.

There was no reason to hide my vulnerability. How could I when I relied on them for everything? Food. A place to stay. A babysitter while I showered. How could I when it literally covered my body in bumps and bruises and was written across my face in the form of an eye mask?

I felt the solemn assessment of his gaze penetrate through me, but I fought the urge to fidget, instead tightening my hold on his jacket like it was a life vest. “Even now, how do I know what time it is? Is it even daylight? Are the stars out? To think it could be anytime, and I could be anywhere—at the edge of the ocean or on the edge of a cliff—is mind-boggling.”

He didn’t reply, but I knew he was looking at me. At least the eye mask hid from him the well of tears that burned in my eyes.

“I have no picture. All my life, I’ve had a picture…” I trailed off, and the silence that lingered was just as heavy as the darkness encasing my world.

What if this was my future?

It would be okay. I would make it okay.

“To your left is the safe house. A small, dark wood cabin with big windows framing the gray front door. It’s built up against a grass-covered hill, which camouflages it from the back.”

His rasped words brushed bold strokes through my mind, painting right over the darkness. I sucked in a warm breath, feeling the safe house come to life before me. A modern hobbit’s house framed into a grassy knoll.

“In front of the house is a small clearing in the forest where we’re standing now. Grass and daffodils all the way to the trees.” Sentence by sentence, the darkness cowered and retreated in the face of his firm tone. “The evergreen trees are thick, so you can’t see too far even in winter, but now, with the rest of the trees in bloom…it’s impossible.”

“I can smell them. Pine and ocean,” I murmured. “And I can hear the way the wind rustles every needle and leaf.”My head tipped back, feeling that same breeze on my face.

“The sun is playing hide-and-seek above the clouds,” he went on, shading in more of the picture. “But it’s mostly a tired and gray sky.”

“From all the rain.” I’d heard the patter on the windows for two days straight .

“They’re calling for sun by the weekend.”

I wondered if I’d be able to see it by then. I swallowed, feeling a knot form in my chest. A reminder. “Thank you for bringing me out here. I’m sure this wasn’t what you’d planned on when you came to see me.”

He paused. “No, it wasn’t.”

I felt the edge in his tone, and guilt washed over me. They were already doing so much to help me—protect me—and here I was, begging him to describe the sky.

“Do you know what happened? Do you know who…” Tried to kill me.

“The explosives expert finished his investigation and confirmed what we believed—that the bomb was on a timer activated by a remote.” His weight shifted, the subtle crush of foliage underneath his feet. “It means the bomber had to be close. First to plant the bomb, and then to set it off. Do you remember anything about that morning? Did you have a regular routine you were following?”

My shoulders slumped, and I gripped his jacket tighter.

Routine?

It was hard to find a routine when it was more than boxes to unpack being back here.

“I remember…leaving my house that morning. I was in a rush. I even forgot a jacket, but I was carrying some of my paintings—” I broke off with a small cry.

“What? What is it?”

My paintings.

“I’m sorry.” I wished I could turn away from him, but there was no turning away from someone you couldn’t see. “I just…do you know if they found any artwork in my car?” I’d worked on those landscapes for months. To think they were gone…

“I don’t,” he answered after a beat .

I lowered my head in a nod, wishing the whole of me could disappear inside the shell of his jacket.

“Where were you taking them?” he asked next, giving me something to focus on rather than the tightness in my throat.

My brow scrunched, my mind suddenly treading in the deep end. “The gallery…”I bit my lip. “I think that’s where I was going—I don’t know where else I would be taking them, but…”

“But what?”

I tried to remember. I dug for what happened next, but it was like trying to dig myself out of quicksand. “I don’t know,” I admitted defeatedly. “I have a gallery show in four weeks—three weeks. That has to be where I was going.”

“What gallery? And can you describe the paintings?”

“The Tableau. It’s on First Street in Monterey.” I breathed out slowly. “They were two cityscapes of Downtown Carmel Cove.”

“I can have someone check and see if they’re there.”

“Thank you.”My shoulders slumped. “Someone should let Glenn—the gallery owner—know. She gets back from vacation tomorrow.” And considering I stopped there almost every day, it wouldn’t take much before she started asking questions.

“We’ll speak to her.”

“I wish I could remember. I hate that I can’t.” I lifted my hand to my temple, only to be met with the silk of the mask, which frustrated me even more.

“One day at a time.”

Even as he spoke, my brain hooked on a thought that seemed out of place yet hadn’t come from nowhere. “Did you speak to Rich? Is he okay?”

There was a shift in the air, but I couldn’t tell if it was a breeze or if Dare had suddenly stilled .

“We haven’t talked to your…Rich yet. We’ve been…ahh…more focused on your ex.”

Brandon?

“I can’t imagine Brandon would be angry about Rich—or how he would know. It’s only been a few dinners,” I insisted, giving my head a small shake.

Even with everything he’d put me through for the divorce, deep down, I knew it wasn’t because my ex still wanted me—wanted to be with me. He just didn’t want to feel like he’d lost. Brandon always had an incessant, obsessive need to win.

“Athena…”The low gravel of Dare’s voice made me shiver, like a rumble strip that brought the conversation to a heavy pause.“Were you aware your ex-husband took out a two-million-dollar life insurance policy on you last year?”

Two million…

The world didn’t tilt this time, it washed out from underneath me.

I stepped back in shock—and right onto something that was uneven. A rock—a branch—whatever it was rolled my ankle. I let out a cry and started to topple backward. But gravity didn’t have a chance. Not against this man.

“Shit.” His low curse dissolved as he grasped my arms andsteadied me against him, an anchor in the storm.“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Physically, at least, but even my voice didn’t sound like my own. “Are you…sure?” I gave my head a shake. What an idiotic question. “Of course, you’re sure. This is your job.” I let out a quick breath. “No…I had no idea he had a life insurance policy on me.”

Two million dollars.

It was insane. So insane, I still didn’t want to believe it—couldn’t believe it. Why so much? Why right when I told him I wanted the divorce? It wasn’t like he was going to leave me with anything anyway.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t believe Brandon…I can’t imagine why…”

I couldn’t finish the thought—I couldn’t get farther than the audible breath Dare took. It wasn’t from the exertion of catching me…it was a bracing breath. And I felt that familiar black hole in my chest—like some part of me knew there was more to this.

“What is it?” My heart stumbled and slowed, preparing for whatever the other shoe was that was about to drop.

“Were you aware that he liked to gamble?”

At least Dare was already holding me this time when my knees gave way.

“I…yes, Brandon liked to gamble, but he wasn’t…he hadn’t…” I trailed off, taking a second to pull apart the stitches of my past in order to tell him the whole truth. “It started when we were in college. Frat party games. Sometimes the stakes were decent, but nothing too crazy.”

It was college. There were people doing crazier things on campus than a backroom game of poker once a week. It was how Brandon relaxed, and sure, sometimes he lost more than he was expecting and asked to borrow money from me, but I didn’t think twice about it. By that point, the number of times I’d leaned on him for support after my mom…they were countless. Priceless.

“I didn’t realize it was a problem—or, I guess, how big of a problem it was for him—until we went to Vegas for our honeymoon. He couldn’t…I couldn’t pull him away.” My cheeks felt on fire. I shouldn’t be embarrassed—I wasn’t the one with the addiction—but I guess I still had a ways to go in breaking the habit of blaming myself for all my ex-husband’s faults. “We had to come home halfway through our trip because we couldn’t af ford to stay. He’d lost all the money we’d brought with us and maxed out his credit cards.”

Dare released my shoulders, but not before I felt the jolt of anger that went through him. But after anger would come pity, and I didn’t want pity. I’d gotten out. I’d lost almost everything in the process, but I’d gotten out, and that was something to be proud of.

“It stopped after that,” I continued. “I was so hurt and he felt so guilty that we agreed to no more casinos.” That was back when Brandon was agreeable. Time had changed him slowly, the way a weed creeps up around the trunk of a tree in slow suffocation.

And then the pressure in my chest started again.

“I’m guessing by your line of questioning that that was a lie, too.”

I’d never not notice the way Dare hesitated before telling me something he knew was going to hurt me. The kind of care this stranger took with me was something that could easily overwhelm me to the sweetest of tears if I dared to let it.

“From what we’ve uncovered, your ex-husband is significantly in debt. Some on online gambling sites, but we’re pretty confident he owes a significant sum to a loan shark in Sacramento.”

A year ago, the news would’ve brought me to my hands and knees. To know the man I thought I was going to spend my life with—the man who promised he’d forever pick me over the thrill of a card game—betrayed me would’ve broken my already breaking heart. But now…I wished I was surprised.

I wished…but I wasn’t.

“What is significant?”

“Well, the biggest online site blocked his account fifteen months ago and started pursuing legal action for debts owed.”

A year ago… “The house… ”

“He refinanced your home twice to fund his habits?—”

“No.” I stopped him. “I mean where I live now—my mom’s house. A year ago, he wanted me to sell it. Demanded, really. He said we were never going to live there, so it wasn’t doing anything for us.” I swallowed through the tightness in my throat. “That was the final straw. That argument. He was so cruel, but now I see…” It wasn’t cruelty, it was desperation. “He needed the money.”

“We’re still trying to get a final figure that he owes the loan shark, but it’s at least seven hundred thousand.”

“Seven…hundred…” It was the extent of his addiction—his betrayal—that shocked me. The sheer sums of money he tried to win…and couldn’t fathom he’d lose.

“Athena.” His husky voice corralled my thoughts. “Did you tell him you wanted a divorce before you filed?”

“Yes, that day. I told him I didn’t recognize him anymore, and I wanted a divorce.”

“When was that?”

I thought for a moment. “The end of August?”

Another pause. “Brandon took out the life insurance policy on September first.”

Air whooshed from my chest. “And I filed on the fourth.”

The implications of the timeline hit me like a hurricane; he’d taken out the policy in the gap between when I told him and when I’d filed. My heart hammered in my chest. I was literally blind, but I could see the truth so clearly: he knew what I was going to do, and he’d been desperate.

“The policy only pays while you’re still married.”

“Which is until this coming Friday.” I sounded hollow. I felt hollow.

Two days.

“Athena… ”

“How long—” My voice cracked, so I started over. “How long was he gambling online?”

There it was again—the rough rumble as Dare cleared his throat. His tell. I’d first noticed the sound right before he’d told me there was a bomb planted in my car, intending to kill me. It happened again right before he’d shared that Brandon was a degenerate gambler who placed a wager on my life. And now…

“Two months after your wedding.”

Years. My husband—ex-husband—had been gambling for years and had started only weeks after promising me he’d never do it again.

Asshole. My eyes welled with tears. Not for Brandon. Screw Brandon. Tears because I’d been so blind—a painful irony given my current circumstances.

“I’m sorry.” I reached for my cheek, feeling one tear that escaped underneath my mask. “I’m just…” Shocked. Hurt . “A fool.”

His hands on my shoulders slid to my face, holding my chin up as though I were looking straight at him. One after another, his thumbs swiped away my tears. His tenderness was overkill for my pain—like knocking down a sand castle with a wrecking ball.

“You’re not a fool.”

“No?” I choked on the question. “I married a man—trusted a man who just tried to kill me to save his own skin.”

At this point, I’d have to be more than a fool—I’d have to be brain-dead to not make the connection between his gambling debts, the insurance policy, and the car bomb.

“This isn’t your fault,” Dare growled, his deep insistence painting something else in my mind—a different story than the one I was trying to tell myself.

“Have you found him?”

“Sacramento PD has been looking for him for the last day and a half, but nothing yet.”

“When they do, I want to see him.” I winced. “Talk to him.”

“We’re going to get to the truth, I promise.” He paused and then added in a rough whisper, “Trust me.”

Trust him. It should be easy, right? He might be a stranger, but he’d saved my life. Except knowing now that the man I’d loved and devoted my life to had betrayed the years of trust I’d built in him…

“How can I trust anyone anymore?”I asked brokenly, my mind as tangled as my strained voice.“I’m sorry. I just wish…”

My throat wouldn’t work to swallow. What did I wish? What did I need? It was all locked in darkness until he spoke.

“Tell me.”

My lips peeled apart, and somehow my tongue found its way over my words. “I wish I could see you.” An impossible wish.

The heat of his exhale reached my cheeks, quick and coarse.And then his big hands found mine, capturing them and lifting them higher and higher until he pressed my fingertips to his face.

Dare .

The ground solidified. The air stilled. The sounds—all of them—silenced. Nothing was left for me to focus on except him.

Stubble and warm skin pressed to my fingers. I splayed my hands, feeling the muscles of his jaw fire instantly under my touch, but he didn’t pull away—and neither did I. Slowly, with the precision of a surgeon, he drew my fingertips over his face, letting me chart his harsh cheeks and square jawline.

I managed to hold back a sound of surprise when I felt the puckered ridge of a scar running down his left cheek .

What happened? When? Who did this to you? Questions filled my mind. How many times have you been hurt? What other scars do you have?

I searched out the spot where the scar originated, right underneath his left eye, and followed it all the way along his cheek, and then it cut sharply toward his mouth. My pulse picked up, and suddenly the weight of the jacket on my shoulders felt too much. Too warm.

But that was as far as Dare’s guiding hands let me go. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to feel his mouth until he wouldn’t let me.

Instead, he repositioned my hands at the edge of his nose and then lowered his away, allowing me to explore as long as I obeyed his boundary. And I would, because I didn’t want to lose this.

I mapped the slope of his nose up to the ridge of his brows, higher over his forehead. Was he bald? Buzz cut? Did he have long hair? Was it curly? Short? Thick, I realized whenmy fingertips breached his scalp. His hair was thick and soft, collected in unruly waves on his head.

Scarred and unruly. That was who this man was. And it was something that was as equally safe as it was dangerous to me.

I threaded my fingers into his hair as though I were going to pull his head to me—his mouth to mine. His kiss wouldn’t fix this, but somehow I knew it would at least let me forget.

Dare made a low noise—something between a plea and a warning—and I realized just how close our faces were.

My heart thudded wildly, and I quickly returned my hands down to the slash of hair marking his eyebrows and then lower to his eyes. The soft brush of his eyelids as they closed teased my fingertips. Men always had the nicest lashes, and Dare was no exception .

I wondered what color they were but didn’t ask. It was too much. Too…intimate.

With every touch, I created a portrait of him, one I painted with my fingertips on the blank canvas of my mind. Shading in the handsome, rugged contours of his face until I reached the perimeter of his lips—lips that let out the low voice that haunted my dreams.

“Athena,” he rumbled in a warning I thought I could obey, but I couldn’t.

So, I first traced the valley that bracketed his mouth, giving him plenty of time to pull away and stop me himself. But he didn’t.My heart did laps inside my chest, circling this moment again and again and again until I had myself in knots. Air vaulted into my lungs as I slid my hands toward each other, feeling the corners of his mouth and then the fullness of his lips.

My jaw went slack, and brushing over the soft swells made my body feel all the things it shouldn’t.

Dare had lips made to do damage. Full and firm, I imagined their press on my fingers was on my palm. And then my neck. And then my mouth. I shivered, wanting more than to know their shape; I wanted it memorized. I wanted him to be more than a voice inside my head when I slept at night—I wanted to imagine those lips rumbling my name even if I’d never see it.

The shallow rush of his breaths greeted my fingertips when they landed on the seam where his scar met the border of his lip.

Who hurt you? The question was right there on the tip of my tongue—but so was the urge to kiss it. To kiss him. To trace my tongue along the tiny ridge and make it better.

Oh god. What was wrong with me? Was this a new symptom of the blast? A fresh indication of my broken brain—lusting over the man who’d saved my life ?

Dare groaned low, the sound pure pain.

I stilled. “Are you okay?”

“Stop licking your lip.” The order was gruff and filled with hunger.

I bit down on the side of my tongue, not even realizing I’d been doing that while I’d imagined licking him. “I’m sorry.”

He shackled my wrists in his grip and carefully peeled my hand from his face as though he were pulling a knife from his body. Necessary but painful.

“I…thank you.” Maybe if touching his face had been as simple as creating a blueprint, that would’ve been the right thing to say, but it wasn’t. I knew it wouldn’t be. One touch and I knew I’d been crafting a fantasy.

And he knew it, too.

Embarrassment seeped into my cheeks. His face—his expressions might be hidden from me, but mine were an open book to him. He’d watched the blush form in my cheeks. He’d watched the swipe of my tongue over my lips. He knew he saw the moment the veneer of exploration—the need for information—dissolved into something far less appropriate.

“It’s going to rain. We should go back inside.” His gruff command seemed to have power over nature because, an instant later, the cold splat of a raindrop landed on my nose.

He released my arms and brushed my side as he stepped behind me. Like a puppeteer with his marionette, he held my shoulders and guided me to the only place left to go—back inside the safe house.

At least now, the darkness there was a little less dark—Dare’s handsome, scarred face burned into my mind so bright it was impossible to ignore.