Chapter Twenty
Her heart was breaking.
He could see it happening right in front of him.
How she seemed to hold her breath, waiting for the worst of whatever she was feeling to drain.
But it wouldn’t. Realizing her father might not have been the upstanding chief of police she’d believed him to be all these years was a hard pill to swallow, and Adrial couldn’t hold the distance between them.
To allow her to use him to stay standing.
“That’s a good plan, Red, but you don’t have to rush into it right now. You have all the time in the world.”
This was the pain he’d been too cowardly to witness firsthand all those years ago, when he’d been the one to break her heart.
He caught her bottom lip with his thumb, halting the slight wobble.
That was all she allowed herself, but he could feel the shift under her skin.
Feel the ramping up of something devastating and heart-rending just under the surface.
She was holding it together in front of him, but the minute she was alone, Winnie would break.
“You mean I’m not fit for public consumption in my current state.
” Her self-deprecating humor didn’t put a dent in the shadows swimming in her eyes.
Her entire world had been turned upside down in a matter of days, and she was in free fall, but he would catch her.
If she let him. “And…is there still blood on me?”
“A little.” Adrial skimmed his knuckles through the hair at her temples.
It was coarser than it should’ve been, frozen through, broken, frizzed and holding on to things he didn’t want to think about, but still beautiful and enthralling.
It’d always made him want to bury his hands in it, twist it around his fists and use it to guide her mouth to his. Mesmerizing. Like her.
He was careful as his hand slid down her jawline.
The bruise still took up one side of her face.
From what he’d read of her statement to the police, the killer had knocked her unconscious before dragging her into that boathouse, and he wanted nothing more than to erase the evidence so she didn’t have to recall those memories every time she looked in the mirror.
But that wasn’t possible. They were both going to have to learn how to deal with what’d happened and everything that came after, but Winnie didn’t have to do it alone.
She stared up at him with those hazel eyes, her mouth slightly parted, as she leaned into his hand.
As though she’d been starved of human touch, and that just made him angrier.
Knowing his decision to leave Black Hollow had been to protect her, to give her the chance to live a better life and realizing the man she’d ended up with hadn’t been smart enough to know how good he had it.
Winnie hadn’t told him what had brought about the divorce—something she obviously couldn’t talk about yet—but it’d been easy enough to put the evidence together with a cursory look at the man’s phone records and finances thanks to that contact Baxter had established inside BHPD.
Databases did wonders in the right hands.
Dan Reynolds had been sleeping with one of his coworkers upward of a year before handing Winnie the papers for the divorce, and Adrial wanted nothing more than to make the bastard hurt.
To take the anger he had for himself and shove it down Dan’s throat.
Adrial memorized her face all over again, counting the spread of freckles across her cheeks and nose.
It was a mistake, leaving her here. They could’ve gone to Chicago together.
He could’ve convinced her to elope, to forget the plans they’d made.
They could’ve sold the house he’d bought for her.
Hell, he could’ve told her the truth. Given her the choice instead of running like a coward, but he hadn’t.
He’d made the choice for her, determined she wouldn’t have been strong enough to come to the same conclusion then as she was now.
That the man she’d admired her entire life was a liar.
Adrial would spend the rest of his life regretting the time he’d wasted away from her.
Not Katie. Not their baby. Never them or the life they’d had for those short five years, the healing she’d helped him find and the future she’d laid out in front of him.
They would always hold significant space in his heart, and he would do whatever it took to find the person who’d taken them from him, but right now, there was only Winnie.
Right here in front of him, when he’d come so close to losing her.
His insides ached with something he hadn’t felt for another woman in a long time.
She was so damn soft—her skin, her curves, the way she bit that bottom lip that’d always driven him a little crazy—and he wanted it all again.
To chase that sense of feeling she’d elicited in the past few days.
But Adrial forced himself to take a step back and withdrew his hand.
A groan lodged in his throat as she leaned forward to follow, but she pulled herself back in time to save herself, blinking up at him in a kind of daze.
He threaded his hand through his hair to give him something to do other than to drag her against him.
Where she belonged. He hadn’t done the right thing by her when he’d fled to Chicago ten years ago, but he’d be damned if he took advantage of her emotional state now.
“You’ve been through a lot the past few days, and you didn’t eat very much in the hospital.
You go take a shower, and I’ll get us something to eat. ”
Winnie opened her mouth—probably with something entirely meant to flay the flesh from his bones on the tip of her tongue—but rolled her lips between her teeth instead. “I still need to find that death certificate.”
“We can get a copy from the medical examiner’s office.” The case. They had a case to work. A killer to find. Answers to uncover. But all Adrial could think about was the invisible sensation streaking across his knuckles from where he’d touched her. “You just have to pay a fee.”
“Oh. That makes sense. Okay.” She slid her palms down the fronts of her stained and torn jeans. “Thank you. For—for everything, Adrial. I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for you.”
Another crushing wave of need tore through him at that genuineness is her voice, and he fisted his hand to stop himself from reaching out for that mass of hair begging for his fingers, for that throat where he could feel her pulse speed up when he kissed her.
To show her just how grateful he was she was still here.
“Just doing my job. Can’t have my clients dying on me, can I? Not good for business.”
A flash of hurt exploded in her eyes. Like a shooting star he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen, there one second and gone the next, but he’d caught it.
“Right. Well, thanks.” She pointed down the hall, where the bedrooms, a bathroom and the door leading to the garage lined up. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”
“Take your time.” She didn’t look back as she headed toward the back of the house, and Adrial had never been more thankful.
He wasn’t sure what he might do if she hesitated.
His growl threatened to rattle the framed family photos off the wall.
What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t some unexperienced teen who’d never gotten to first base. He had control.
But did he really when it came to Winnie?
She’d been his first. His first everything.
First fantasy. First girlfriend. First kiss.
First orgasm. She knew him better than he knew himself in some ways, always keen on learning how to make him feel good, and he’d never—not once—felt the need to hunt for something different.
Seemed she hadn’t lost that little talent.
Only now, she had become far more dangerous, not even needing to touch him to get his blood boiling.
Adrial forced himself into the kitchen and took stock of the contents in the pantry and refrigerator.
It was obvious Winnie hadn’t been shopping since her return to Black Hollow, which didn’t leave him with a whole lot to work with, but he’d promised her food, and after everything she’d been through, she was going to get it.
He grabbed his phone, placing an order with the pizza place in town.
No one would know it by looking at her, but Winnie would fight dirty for a good meat-lovers pizza.
It would be the perfect comfort food and distraction from the rampant thoughts she had trouble shutting down.
Adrial collapsed onto one of the ugly floral couches, not overly surprised when a layer of dust shot up at the disturbance.
Arthur Hutton hadn’t done a whole lot with his life once his wife had died, especially when it came to Winnie, but could he really judge the man?
There’d been days Adrial couldn’t remember after Katie’s death, entire weeks he couldn’t recall more than a few memories, and most of them included a good bottle of whiskey and that photo he’d kept on the bookcase in his front room.
He’d gotten stuck there, in his grief. Day after day.
The department had put him on leave, slapped him with an order that kept him from working the case and told him it would get better.
Only Baxter had recognized his grief hadn’t been so much about losing Katie—though that hurt more than he wanted to admit—but the need not to feel a damn thing.
Adrial glanced toward the hallway where Winnie had disappeared.
That seemed impossible now. Within fifteen minutes, the pizza had arrived and was starting to go cold on the table as he waited for Winnie to finish with her shower.
At thirty minutes, he was ready to start climbing the walls.
Pulling up short from his pacing at the head of the hallway, he waited.
Another five minutes passed, that pressure in his chest nudging him toward something. And then he was moving.
He passed Arthur’s office and the room Winnie had grown up in.
He didn’t bother checking the hall bathroom or the guest room at the end.
He headed straight for the main bedroom with the king-size waterbed, dark bedding, old carved headboard and the air conditioner sticking out the single window.
The sound of the shower registered from behind the door on the other side of the room, the light bleeding through the crack between the wood and the floor.
Adrial grabbed for the door handle, then thought better of it.
Barging in on her would only put her on the defensive.
He knocked, every cell in his body ready to retreat if she told him to eff off. “Winnie?”
But she didn’t answer.
Concern hooked itself into his chest and refused to let go. He knocked harder, then tested the doorknob. Locked from the inside. “Winnie, open the door.”
No response.
And he couldn’t hold back that sick part of him that worried something had happened, that she’d needed him and he hadn’t been there for her. Again. “Stay back from the door. I’m coming in.”
Adrial pressed his good shoulder against the door. It didn’t take much to break through the sixty-year-old ravaged wood, and he had to catch the door before it hit the wall behind it. Steam soaked straight into his pores and blinded him for half a second. Just before he saw her.
Fully dressed. Huddled underneath the spray at the bottom of the shower pan.
Soaked through with her arms wrapped around her legs.
He didn’t think, didn’t give himself time to reconsider.
Adrial pulled the frosted shower door open, then stepped inside and was instantly doused in hot water.
It slicked into his boots as he took up a position next to her and hauled her into his lap.
“I’m here, Red. However you need me, I’m here. ”
Winnie peeled her face from his chest, raising her gaze to his.
And then she kissed him.