Chapter Eight Grayson
Chapter Eight
Grayson
She had smelled like fear. But not the kind that disgusted me. It was an aroma that called something dark and primal in me.
Something that made me want to protect her.
As soon as she walked away, I sat there and just breathed in her absence. It made me feel some kind of way, a way I’d never felt before. It was discomfort that I didn’t completely hate.
Her presence still filled the space beside me. Her voice, the way her pulse beat erratically at the base of her throat . . . it all called to me. I still remembered the way her fingers trembled slightly when I handed her the pen and notebook.
I felt like I was high.
She’d been lying. I was good at reading people’s body language, and hers screamed that she was keeping things from me. I needed to convince her that the only way I could help her was if I knew everything, but she was fragile and I hadn’t wanted to frighten her further.
More importantly, she had come to me.
Violet had opened herself up—even if she’d been lying about the details—because she trusted me.
I hadn’t realized how deeply I needed that. And that realization shocked the fuck out of me. She could have gone to anyone, but she chose me.
It was a heady sensation to know someone had that kind of faith in you.
I waited until she disappeared down the path before standing, sliding the notebook and pen into my coat pocket, and walking in the opposite direction, back toward my motel.
I should have gone straight to the station and logged this recent development with them, because no way this wasn’t all connected.
But all I could think about was her.
The way she looked at me with barely hidden desperation. The tiny hitch in her voice when she asked if the world was just . . . evil now.
My head was becoming too full of her. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Not this fast.
I’d spent years training myself to stay clean, clinical—names on reports, faces in photos, nothing more.
But every time she moved behind that counter, every time her eyes flicked to mine and then away again, something slipped.
A memory of her voice saying my name. The way her fingers had curled tight around the coffee mug like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
The faint tremor in her lower lip when she thought I wasn’t looking.
I caught myself replaying those fragments when I should have been reviewing crime scene photos. I caught myself wondering what her hair would feel like under my palm instead of cross-referencing timelines.
Minimal conversations. Barely an hour total in her presence. And already she was carving out space inside me that had always been sealed shut.
She was becoming a complication to my purpose here, which was to solve the case and finish this chapter of my life.
I rubbed a hand over my jaw, hard, like I could scrub the thought away.
It didn’t work.
I wasn’t supposed to get pulled in. I’d spent my entire career avoiding that. I always kept things clinical. Measured. I didn’t get romantically involved. That just led to complications. I wasn’t in the habit of forming connections with people. I’d always been content with just myself.
But Violet . . .
Something about her drew me in like no one else—nothing else—ever had. I wanted to throw my plans out the fucking window and figure out how to help her—heal her.
Whatever I was feeling was real. And that was a problem.
I headed home, needing silence, needing space, but she followed me anyway. Not physically. Emotionally, like a shadow latched onto my back. Her voice still echoed in my ears.
Inside my place, I dropped my coat over the back of the kitchen chair and went straight to the window. The woods behind the motel were quiet. But the stillness felt unnatural because of all the horror circulating around this town.
I ran a hand through my hair, pacing the length of the room as if movement could shake off what was building under my skin. Obsession, maybe?
I didn’t just want to help her. I wanted to know her.
Not the way you got to know a witness or a potential victim. I wanted to know what her heartbeat sounded like when she trusted someone. When she trusts me wholly and completely.
I wanted to know the pitch of her voice when I made her laugh, or if she furrowed her brow when she was concerned or confused.
But more than anything, I wanted to be the one she turned to when the silence got so strong that all she heard was her own screaming in her head.
I pulled the notebook from my coat pocket.
Her handwriting was faint, as if she were afraid to press too hard.
I read what she wrote. Then went back and reread it again until I had memorized every word.
The way she described things told me she was observant and noted even the minutest detail, even if she thought she had missed something.
I ran my fingers over the lines she’d written, remembering her sitting beside me, gently biting the inside of her cheek, her eyes trained on the lined paper as she jotted it all down.
The fact she seemed hesitant, maybe even afraid, to come to me with her worries told me she didn’t expect to be believed.
But I believed her.
There was just something in the way she carried herself that told me this woman was honest and genuine. She kept to herself until she knew the darkness needed to come to light.
I looked back out the window and stared at the scenery. There was something wrong in Sweetwater Lake. Whatever it was had sunk its claws into the very marrow of this town.
I could hear the whispers, and I knew Violet did, too.
I was lost in my thoughts when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked at the screen to see a message from my organization—a new file had been uploaded to an encrypted server.
It was the autopsy photos, case notes, all the standard follow-up from the latest victim. I opened the report without enthusiasm, scrolling mechanically through the text.
The heart was missing.
I reread the report, then scanned what Violet had written on the notepad.
An animal heart.
I tucked my phone and the notepad back into my pocket and closed my eyes as I exhaled slowly. It confirmed what I already suspected the moment Violet spoke.
She’d been withholding the entire truth. But not maliciously—I didn’t get that sense at all. She was terrified.
The package hadn’t been a sick fucking prank. And it hadn’t been an animal heart left for her. It was far more nefarious than that.
It had been a message, and it had done its job of scaring the shit out of her. But it hadn’t silenced her. Violet hadn’t folded. She’d reached out. To me.
I’d never wanted someone more. Not for what she might know, but for what she wasn’t sharing with me.
I wasn’t supposed to want to know.
I’d spent years making sure I never did.
People were easier when they stayed two-dimensional.
They were nothing but witness statements, body-language tics, and predictable patterns.
I liked it that way. I lived alone, worked alone, and kept everyone at arm’s length, because closeness was messy and dangerous and unnecessary.
I’d told myself so often I didn’t need anyone that it had calcified into truth.
Until her.
One guarded glance across a counter, one flicker of recognition in her eyes when she saw the symbol, and something in me had shifted, as if a locked door I didn’t even know existed had just creaked open.
I found myself cataloging the way she worried her lower lip, the way her shoulders curled inward when she thought no one was watching, and the way she poured coffee like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.
I wasn’t supposed to get close. I knew better.
But I was already leaning toward the crack in that door, drawn to whatever was waiting on the other side.
And the more I learned about her, the less I cared about violating my rules.
I didn’t want to fix her. I wanted to pull her closer. Fuck me.
This was need. Slow and consuming. I wasn’t thinking about the job anymore, I was thinking about the way her body barely touched mine as she sat on the bench beside me. I thought about the way her lips moved when she said my name, confused if she was asking for help or begging me to get closer.
I didn’t know what fear was, but I knew one thing. Whatever this was with Violet, if I kept down this path, nothing could keep me from touching her.