Chapter 18
Eighteen
River
My apartment looks exactly the same.
Vanilla lingering in the air.
Cheerful curtains hanging on the windows.
Books on my bookshelf, containers of flour and sugar on the counter, my Kitchen Aid taking up the bulk of the space beside them.
A basket of laundry that still needs to be folded and put away.
A few errant crumbs on the table. Some of my bras are hanging over the screen that hides my bed—which is unmade—where I left them to air dry.
Nothing has changed.
Meanwhile…everything has changed.
I exhale and move through the space, tugging the bras from the screen and stuffing them into the laundry basket, wiping the crumbs from the table, automatically checking the level of the air freshener to make sure it’s topped up.
My blue mug is still in the sink, so I rinse it, put it in the drying rack.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I say softly, glancing to where Thorn is standing by the door.
Staring at the chair I keep there. Or maybe glaring at it.
“Do you want me to wait in the hall?” he asks, looking up at me and there’s something in his expression I don’t like, something that has my stomach knotting.
I’ve been in knots all morning. Ever since—
“River?”
“Wh-what?”
His expression stays steady but the cool distance in his tone makes my temper spike. “Would it be easier if I gave you space to gather your things?”
“Have I asked you to give me space?”
A long pause. “No, little hen.”
“Exactly,” I mutter, picking up the laundry basket even as my insides twist, my temper grows…both of which are making me second guess far too much. “If I’ve overstayed my welcome, and you want me to go live with Brooks and Briar—”
“No, I don’t want that.”
“Then why—?”
Biting off my words, I shake my head and turn to the laundry basket again. I’m making something out of nothing. Who cares if he’s been off this morning?
Who cares if I woke up alone and then the first thing he asked when I came out was if I wanted to come back here?
Who cares if I thought it meant or means or—
Suddenly, he’s right in front of me. “Little hen,” he says quietly. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, start folding clothes.
He settles his hand on the side of my neck and I don’t flinch, don’t feel the slightest bit of fear.
I do, however, blurt out the idiocy in my brain. “I thought it was unsafe.”
His eyes widen. “What’s that, little hen?”
“I thought it was unsafe to leave the penthouse,” I whisper. “To come back here. So, I thought you bringing me meant…”
I can’t finish the rest.
Because suddenly, I feel like an idiot with him staring at me like this—his eyes soft, his face gentle, his body close, his tone sincere.
“No,” he says quietly.
“I asked you to sleep with me,” I go on, unable to stop the flow of words, “and used all your flour and messed up your kitchen and took over the TV.”
“Did I complain about any of those?”
No.
He’d watched the movie and ate the cookies and…slept beside me.
But he didn’t try to kiss me again, didn’t—
Need you to give me the words, little hen.
A sharp little laugh scrapes out of me as I realize what a mess I’ve made of this in my head. “Why are we here, Thorn?”
He studies me for a long moment. “So you can get more of your things.”
“No,” I murmur. “Why are we really here?”
“So you can get more of your things,” he repeats, and a blip of disappointment curls through me. At least until he adds, “And so we can check on the security we installed.”
I blink.
“And also to see if it will encourage the Lyons to do something stupid.”
Now my eyes go wide.
He touches my cheek. “Don’t worry. Pascal’s monitoring the feeds and has a whole team in the parking lot. Nothing bad will happen to you.”
“The f-feeds?”
He turns and points to a camera I’d missed that’s mounted above the door, to another that’s perched on top of the kitchen cabinets. “There’s one in your sleeping area too, but not pointed at the bed, and nothing in the bathroom of course.”
“Oh,” I whisper.
“And sensors on the windows, a doorbell camera, and…” A shrug. “Several placed in the corridors and near your parking space. It may not be safe for you to move back in until we can get you clear of the Lyons, but you’re safe right now, little hen. I promise.”
That’s all well and good.
But it doesn’t explain why he’s been acting so strangely this morning.
“Did something happen after I feel asleep last night to prompt this?”
“Yes,” he murmurs. “And no.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that things are still complicated and messy and dangerous, but that we’re getting closer to figuring it out.”
“Because of your connection with the Lyons?”
Any gentleness in his expression, in his deep green eyes, disappears between one heartbeat and the next. Then he looks away, clenching his jaw. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Because of my connection with them.”
I open my mouth to ask him what the connection is, why it seems to weigh on him so heavily, but the tension in his frame, the careful way he holds himself, as though bracing for my judgment…
God, I know that feeling.
I’ve lived it. Been suffocated by it. Been made small by it.
So, I again table the questions for another time, for another moment.
Then I do my best to make his pain go away.
“Okay,” I say brightly, clapping my hands together. “The mission—should you choose to accept it—is for us to gather clothes and books so I can pretend I’m a normal human adult who doesn’t need her personal emotional support billionaire to retrieve clean underwear.”
Thorn’s gaze flicks toward me. “Emotional support billionaire?”
“Okay, so maybe it’s more of me needing a personal security billionaire.”
He’s still for a long moment.
Then his lips twitch. “How about I pack up your mixer and those tools you were lamenting I don’t have in my kitchen and you take care of your own underwear.”
“You sure you don’t want to handle the underwear part?”
I mean it as a tease.
Okay, not that kind of tease.
A joke. That’s what I meant.
Until heat fills his eyes and I realize what I’ve said and desire slams through my body and I discover what I want—
For him to handle the underwear part.
Need gathers low in my belly and I press my thighs together, trying to ease the sudden ache there.
An ache I haven’t felt in a long time. Not since—
Fear hits and it does it hard, hard enough for me to freeze, my desire disappearing off into a puff of smoke.
“Ah, little hen,” he says, his voice edged with gravel, “as much as it pains me, I think I’d better stick to kitchenwares.”
A brush of his knuckles over my cheek.
Then he’s moving away.
Shame washes over me, but I shove it down. I’m doing good, dammit. I’m making progress, not hiding from what I want just because Preston was a dickhead who abused me.
I’m living.
Are you?
Yes. I lift my chin, continue my argument with…myself. At least for the last few days I’ve been living.
I move toward the tiny bedroom area and start pulling open drawers.
Socks.
Sweaters.
Jeans.
I am, I tell that inner doubtful voice.
Or I’m starting too, anyway.
And I’m going to continue doing it. Even if—I peek around the screen—see that Thorn has pulled out his phone and is surveying it as he grabs things from my shelves, almost like he made a list.
My heart pulses.
Not almost like he made a list. Thorn did make a list.
And he’s ticking the items off.
Items I mentioned in a rant. Items he took note of. Items he’s getting for me.
Yeah, so I’m not completely healed yet, so there are demons I need to deal with, so there are many more steps I need to take to settle fully back into my life.
But I’m not going to stop here.
And…I’m going to bring Thorn along with me.
Even if I have to do it, dragging him kicking and screaming.