12. Nolan
NOLAN
Ipromise you that.
The words hung in the air between us, and I meant every one of them, but it was the way she was looking at me that really did me in.
Like she believed me.
Like she knew I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
My bear’s rage melted away at that look too. Until we took in how pale she was and how quickly she was breathing. She was terrified, and every inch of me hated that for her.
I handed her the phone back because I was scared I might crush it as my bear’s rage continued to build.
Her fingers clenched around it after she took it from me like she was afraid to put it down and afraid to hold it at the same time.
She looked smaller than usual in the low lighting of my living room, and my bear’s desire to protect her at all costs flared even more because of it.
“Do you want some tea?” I asked, not knowing why.
She was terrified her psycho ex was going to come after her, and here I was asking her if she wanted some tea?
What the fuck?
“Sure,” she whispered, surprising me. “Thank you.”
I headed into the kitchen and felt her following.
“Sit,” I said, nodding to the small table and chairs against the wall.
She didn’t hesitate. Honestly, it looked as though she was relieved to be off her feet.
I grabbed a small pot and filled it with water.
After I placed it on the stove, I grabbed two mugs and the box of Earl Grey I’d bought the other day without thinking too hard about why.
She didn’t say anything, and neither did I.
I watched the water come to a boil and then unwrapped two tea bags.
Once I poured the hot water in the mugs, I grabbed them and sat with her at the table.
I placed one of the mugs in front of her. She immediately wrapped her hands around it but didn’t take a sip. I stared at her, noticing the color had come back to her face. That had to be a good sign. Maybe she wasn’t in shock anymore.
“I knew this would happen,” she said quietly, staring at the mug. “I knew he’d look for me.”
“He’s guessing, though. He doesn’t know where you are.”
“Not yet.” She licked her lips. “But he will. You don’t know him like I do.” She shook her head. “I was stupid to think I could outrun him.”
“You’re not stupid,” I said. “You got out. That’s the opposite of stupid.”
She didn’t look convinced.
“You packed a bag and left a man who was hurting you. You came somewhere he couldn’t find you. That took guts.”
Her chin trembled. She pressed her lips together and stared at her tea. I wanted to reach across the table and take her hands, to make her feel the certainty I had that nothing was going to happen to her while I was breathing.
“He doesn’t know where you are,” I said again. “And even if he figures it out, he has to go through me to get to you. That’s not going to end well for him.”
She looked up. Her eyes searched my face the way they had on the patio—looking for the crack, the place where the words would fall apart.
“You barely know me, Nolan.”
“I know enough.”
I didn’t say anything more. I waited because something in the way she said it told me there was more, and I’d learned by now that Rose gave things to me in pieces, in her own time, and pushing only made her fold back up.
She took a small sip of her tea and then set the mug down on the table. I waited for her to say something, but instead, she just sat there, her thumb tracing the rim.
“Do you want to know what he was like? At the beginning?” she asked.
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“He wasn’t always like this,” she said, her gaze locked on her tea.
“That’s the part nobody gets. In the beginning, he was...
good. Kind. Attentive. He remembered things.
The little things—my favorite flowers, the way I liked my tea, how I hate the way cantaloupe tastes.
” She swallowed. “I thought that meant he loved me, but it took me a long time to figure out he was just taking notes.”
My hands curled under the table where she couldn’t see.
“It started small. Comments about what I wore. Who I talked to. How long I was gone when I ran errands.” Her voice was flat, like she was reading from a list she’d memorized. “By the time it got bad, I didn’t even recognize what was happening. It was just... normal. My normal.”
She dropped her hands to her lap, and I noticed the way she chewed along her bottom lip. This was hard for her. I needed to remember that. While it filled me with a rage, it also made her feel things too.
“The first time he hit me, he cried after. He told me he didn’t know what came over him, and that he was under a lot of stress at work. He told me he was sorry and that it would never happen again. I believed him.” She swallowed hard. “The second time, he didn’t cry.”
My bear rushed to the surface, and I had to force my eyes away from her so she wouldn’t see.
My nails dug into the palms of my hands while I struggled to gain control over him again.
I could barely breathe. Every instinct I had screamed at me to get up, to move, to do something, but Rose wasn’t finished with her story, and this was the most she’d ever given me.
I wasn’t going to interrupt.
“Neither did I, honestly. Some days were harder than others, and I know how that makes me sound, but he spent a long time making me believe I couldn’t do any of this on my own. That I needed him. That I’d fall apart without him.”
“Seems like you’re doing just fine without him.”
Her eyes locked with mine then, and she smiled. “Yeah. I am.”
She took another sip of her tea, even though it had to be cold by now. I took a sip of my tea too, which was a bad idea.
How the hell could she drink the stuff on the regular? It tasted awful.
“Not a fan?” she asked, nodding to my tea.
“No. Can’t say that I am.”
She smiled. “It’s an acquired taste.”
“Definitely,” I said, holding her stare.
Our eyes held. The air between us thickened the way it had at her door after the burgers—that same pull, that electric sensation I kept trying to pretend wasn’t there, filled me. Her lips parted like she was about to say something, but then she blinked, drew back, and the moment was broken.
“I should head back. Get some sleep,” she said, walking her mug to the sink. “Thank you for the tea, and thanks for listening and calming me down too.”
“Of course. Anytime.”
I walked her to the door and watched as she slipped inside Alister’s place for the night.
My bear wouldn’t let me go home after that, though.
Instead, he demanded I set him free so he could work through his pent-up energy and anger at learning everything we had tonight about Rose’s past and her asshole of an ex.
Honestly, I needed the release too.
The beach was empty. Dark. The waves crashed against the sand, and the wind pushed against me. I stripped down and folded my clothes into a neat pile on one of the rocks far enough away from the tide that I knew they’d be waiting when I came back.
Then I let my bear out.
The shift ripped through me—fast, hard, fueled by every ounce of rage I’d been swallowing for the last hour.
One second I was standing on the sand, and the next I was on all fours as my bear, massive and heaving.
He released a roar that tore out of him but was swallowed by the wind and waves before breaking into a run on the shore.
I retreated, letting him take over fully so I’d hopefully get some sleep tonight after.
Sleep never came, though.
I stayed up practically all night. By the next afternoon, I was dragging ass so badly, I stopped by Delilah’s for a coffee.
The lunch crowd had cleared out, and the café was mostly empty.
Delilah was wiping down tables. She looked up when I came in, and the expression on her face shifted into something I couldn’t read.
She set the rag down and walked toward me.
There wasn’t a smile on her face, or a sparkle to her eyes, nothing like normal.
Something was wrong.
“I’m glad you came by. I was planning on reaching out if I didn’t see you today,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“There was a man in here today. He was asking around about a woman—showing people a picture on his phone of her.”
That mother fucker found her.
My hands balled into fists at my sides.
“The woman was Rose,” she said, oblivious I’d already figured it out myself. “And I don’t mean to judge, but I didn’t care for him. Something about him rubs me the wrong way.”
I was sure. After all, Delilah was a fox shifter. She could smell a snake out from a mile away.
“What’s he look like?”
“Tall. Thin. Clean-cut. Nice clothes, good smile.” She paused. “The kind of smile that’s a little too good, if you know what I mean. Like he’s practiced it.”
It had to be Evan.
“Did you tell him anything?” I asked.
“Honey, please.” She gave me a look. “There’s no way I would have given that sweet girl up to a man like that. Darren was here having breakfast, though. He talked to him.”
Every muscle in my body tensed.
Darren was no good. He’d give someone up in a heartbeat if there was something in it for him.
“When the guy walked away, Darren was counting some cash.” Delilah’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “You know that vulture swung that situation to play in his favor and made some money passing off her location.”
My bear lunged forward, and I barely held him back.
“Nolan, I’ve been running my mouth all over town about the romance writer staying at Alister’s place. I thought it was charming. If that man found her because of me—” She shook her head. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“This isn’t on you. It’s on Darren,” I ground out. “I have to go.”
I started toward the exit.
“Be careful,” Delilah called after me. “I’ve been around long enough to know when a smile is for show, and that man’s smile is nothing but.”
“It’s not me you need to worry about.”
I was out the door before she could say anything else.
The drive home took less than five minutes but felt like a damn year. I kept both hands on the wheel and ran through what I knew—Evan had somehow found out Rose was here, he was in town, and Darren had given him the address of where she was staying.
Which meant he could already be there.
He could have shown up hours ago.
I pulled into the driveway. Her car was there. The lights were on. She was home. Which meant she was safe.
Right?
I bolted out of my truck and straight to her door.
My heart pounded in my chest and my bear paced while I knocked and waited for her to answer.
I heard her inside, making her way to the door, and forced myself to breathe and calm down.
When she opened the door, she had her reading glasses on and a mug of tea in hand.
Had she been writing?
She looked relaxed. Happy, even. I frowned because that was about to change.
“Hey,” she said. Then she noticed my expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Can I come in?”
She stepped back, and I walked inside. The desk by the window was covered in pastel sticky notes, and her laptop was open. I turned to face her and made myself deliver the bad news I was here to tell her.
“He’s here, Rose. Evan’s in Driftwood Cove.”