Chapter 26
KIERA
To answer Elli’s question, no, there were no naked photos of me flying around the internet. No real ones, anyway. I’d never once sexted an old boyfriend.
But there was such a thing as AI.
So, hours later, it was no real surprise I was having trouble falling asleep. My brain just wouldn’t shut down. Too many thoughts ran together like:
Someone, presumably someone related to a certain bag of cash, had moved on from threatening my brother’s life—if my brother’s life had ever been in real danger, and I was starting to wonder if Braden had sold me a pile of goods—and had moved on to shooting at someone outside a bodega—someone I was trying very hard not to think about—trashing my apartment, scaring my very new friends that I would very much like to keep, forcing me to impose myself on Elli and Lukas’s honeymoon stage, and now making obscene threats against me on my very own page, a page that could get shut down if the platform found communications that went against their decency policies.
I’d worked my ass off to build up my social platforms to where they were, even if I was still living paycheck to paycheck, and if I could just focus on my concerns about a possible shutdown rather than the absolute terror that this guy—or God forbid, guys, plural—could make good on their threat, I might stand a chance of not losing my ever-loving mind.
God, there could be strange guys out there, right now, running my photos through those disgusting apps that removed clothing.
Or worse…
Maybe the threat meant they’d get me naked for real. Shit. I hadn’t even thought of that.
They’d abducted Elli before. I wouldn’t put it past them, whoever they were.
If they did that, it wouldn’t just be my reputation on the line, it would be my body, and…
Oh, God…
See? My mind was way too busy for sleep. I’d had no expectation of ever finding it. Which was why I was surprised to discover myself jerking awake.
At first, I assumed more intrusive thoughts had shocked me out of slumber.
Then, I felt another presence in the bed.
My blood ran cold.
Whoever it was, he wasn’t touching me. But I felt the weight on the mattress. Heard the shallow breathing. Smelled the freshly showered scent.
I held myself perfectly still and tried not to hyperventilate.
“Kiera?” Sean said, his voice low and steady.
This had to be a dream. I was still sleeping.
“Kiera, I know you’re awake.”
I breathed in through my nose and let it out slowly, not making any noise and trying to still my heart, which seemed to be beating inside my ears.
What was he doing here? That is, if he was here. He still wasn’t touching me. His touch would break whatever spell this was.
“I know you’re mad at me,” he said. “That’s the only explanation for why you haven’t been taking my calls.”
His calls? What calls?
Ah, yes. I got it now. This was more evidence of the dream theory.
“Slap me.”
“What?” he asked. “I’m not going to slap you.”
“Then pinch me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just do it!” I needed something to wake me up and drag me out of this dream. The pain of hearing his voice, so loud and clear was too much to bear.
“Um… Okay,” he said. “Like…here?”
“Ow! I cried, feeling the sting on the back of my arm. I flipped over and punched his shoulder.
Sean pushed himself away from me, closer to the edge of the mattress. “You told me to do that!”
“Because I thought I was dreaming!” Yeah, okay. I heard it now. It had been a stupid theory. I’d never dreamed with so much clarity.
“Why would you think that?” Sean asked.
I stared at him, taking in his handsome face while trying to catch my breath.
My eyes felt hot, and my sinuses burned. I knew what that meant. But there was no way he was going to see me cry. I didn’t cry.
I blinked, and a tear rolled out. Damn it.
“I thought that because the only reason you should be here…was if I were dreaming.”
There was a beat of silence, then I saw Sean’s throat convulse. “I made you think I wouldn’t be coming back?”
I didn’t understand why he sounded so surprised. He’d only done what I’d expected, right from the beginning. Him being here now was the confusing part.
“You heard Loretta. I’m trash,” I explained as if that needed explaining.
“You’re not trash, Kiera.”
“You know I come from trash. Same difference. So, you don’t have to stick around and watch the dumpster fire that is my life—” I took a ragged breath and finished. “—burn. Because I’m fine. Really.”
Another beat.
“I don’t understand,” he said, staring at me in the dark with so much remorseful intensity that I wished he’d just go.
I couldn’t take it. Seeing him. Having him here in my bed. It was cruel. Why did he have to drag out the goodbye?
“You met Loretta,” I said, giving him the only explanation there was.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“So, you know,” I said, my exasperation growing. “I told you right from the start that you and I weren’t a match. We have nothing in common. I come from her, and you…”
I couldn’t finish my sentence. My face felt hot, and my nose stung.
“What about me?” he asked, and it looked like he was bracing.
“You’re perfect. You’re beautiful. You’re strong. You’re kind. You’re a good friend who attracts people to him. And all of that makes sense because your mother is beautiful, and strong, and kind, and loving, even to a stranger like me.”
A sadness washed over his face.
“Kiera,” he said softly, “you told me once that someone had come along with a shovel and severed your roots, leaving you all alone. Well, I’m alone, too.”
“Don’t.” He didn’t need to lie to make me feel better. He had his whole team. Those guys were like brothers they were so close.
“I’m a dryad,” he said, “meant for a community of other dryads, but my father didn’t know the meaning of loyalty and was killed for it. My mother—so stuck in her grief—preferred to abandon her child rather than stay and grieve with him.”
Oh my god. Sean’s dad was murdered? And here I was blathering on about my unfortunate family?
“You’re not alone, Sean. You have Lukas and Rafe and—”
“I’m the only dryad on my team,” he said. “I’m like a single oak growing in the middle of a pine forest. I lose my leaves every year while everyone around me carries on—evergreen—as if all was right with the world.”
I blinked, clearly not having understood the significance of any of that.
“I don’t want to be alone, Kiera. Then I met you, and I recognized another oak tree.”
“What?” I wasn’t a dryad. He knew that. I was only human.
“You,” he said. “Standing alone. Without any family that I could see. The new member to a friend group that had been together for years. Working hard to make your life beautiful—with your fancy blue apartment and designer clothes. Kind enough to help a friend with moving—”
“I just brought over a couple boxes.”
He ignored me and kept on talking. “Kind enough to take risks for a brother who would never do the same for you. Standing strong and unfazed by danger. And finally, kind enough to protect your friends from worry.”
I pressed my lips together to keep myself from saying anything more. At least for now.
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “We are alike, at least in each other’s estimation. And like recognizes like.”
“That’s why you’re here?” I asked.
“I was planning to give you space—just until tomorrow when I could get to the bottom of why you weren’t taking my calls.”
“I didn’t get any calls from you.”
“Kiera, I called you twice before the game and once right after.”
I shook my head, but only slightly because it was pressed against the pillow.
“I did,” he insisted. “Check again.”
I would. But not right then. “This doesn’t feel like giving me space.”
“I couldn’t afford to wait.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’” he asked. “I saw the comment.”
I drew my eyebrows together in confusion. “You saw the comment?”
“On your bathing-suit photo. I thought it might scare you.”
Why, or rather how would Sean have seen that? He didn’t get notifications for my accounts.
Then the answer occurred to me, as unlikely as it was because that post was buried deep. “You were scrolling through my posts?”
A sheepish expression crossed his face. “I was totally scrolling. The whole way back on the plane actually. You’re very easy on the eyes. But I doubt I would have found it that way.”
I stared at him for a few more seconds, then read the answer in his face.
Oh. Of course. “Elli.”
“Elli,” he said. “She texted Lukas. He told me. I flipped through all of your photos from last summer until I found it. I didn’t need Elli or Lukas to tell me that the threat flipped you out. So, I’m here.”
“You’re here,” I said.
“I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“I wasn’t alone,” I reminded him. The whole point of me staying with Elli was so that the two of us wouldn’t be alone.
“Correction,” he said. “I didn’t want you to be alone without me.”
“Two oak trees in the middle of a pine forest.”
He smiled. “Exactly.”
“I want to hear more about your family.”
The corners of his mouth got tight, but he said, “If that’s important to you.”
“It is.”
“We’ll talk more about that tomorrow. Right now, I’m more interested in how you’re dealing.”
He didn’t have to be more specific.
“It scared me,” I admitted.
“It should have scared you. It was scary.”
“If they make good on their threat, it could ruin my career. It could ruin me.”
“Are there photos of you floating around?”
I shook my head. “Not real ones.”
He seemed relieved. “You have nothing to worry about. Mark my words.”
“How can you promise that? You don’t even know who they are.”
“I don’t,” he said, “but I know someone who might.”
“Who?”
“Rogue. If we can find him.”
“He wasn’t at the game,” I said, telling him something he already knew.
“No, and there’s going to be hell to pay, if it hasn’t already been paid.”
“He’s in trouble,” I concluded.
“With Coach? Yes. In life? Still yes. We need to find him, then we’ll find all the answers we need.”
I bowed my head forward and tucked it into his neck. “I thought you were done with me.”
He stroked my hair. “Because of your mother?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a trip, for sure, but babe… Look at you. It would take a lot more than a crazy bitch to tear me away from you.”
“I’m not sure it’s cool for you to call my mother a bitch. I can call her that, but—”
“Babe. She’s a bitch.”
I decided not to argue. He wasn’t wrong.
“Sean?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you kiss me now?”
“Hmmm. I might be persuaded to give that a try.”
He slid his hand over the back of my head, then stroked his thumb along my jaw, tipping my head back.
“Even in the dark,” he said, “your hair is pure sunshine.”
I wanted to laugh at that. My hair had always been one more thing that made me the odd-man-out. Too many colors. Too many textures. Though I’d grown to like it in the years since middle school, leave it to Sean to make me feel beautiful.
His firm lips touched mine.
I pressed my body into his.