Chapter 16 Hope
Hope
Bellamy is curled against my side with her frog tucked under her chin.
But sleep won't come for me. That low-grade roll in my stomach is back, and officially feels like morning sickness now.
Ironic that it’s keeping me up at night.
I don’t know how I’ll hide a pregnancy for long.
I pick up the phone Zane gave me. It still feels like a ticking time bomb when I hold it, but I’m not stupid. I know how to open an incognito browser window.
I do a pregnancy calculator from my last period, which confirms that I’m about nine weeks pregnant. Another month until I start showing.
Tonight at dinner, Luna surprised me by asking if I want to stay longer and save up more money.
I surprised us both by saying yes, I’d like that. But for how much longer can I pretend that I’m not hiding a big secret?
If my due date is December, then I need to have us settled somewhere by September, probably, at the latest.
The growl of an engine in the driveway interrupts my spinning thoughts and makes my heart leap into my throat. I have a sudden appreciation for Zane’s point that my phone can track his family members, because who is driving in at almost midnight?
It turns out, it’s my cowboy himself.
He’s not your cowboy. And that’s another reason not to stick around too long.
That doesn’t stop me from staring at his name on the screen. Zane’s dot is right outside, where the truck lights are shining against the side of the barn.
The truck turns off, then the yard goes dark, and a minute later the front door opens and closes softly. He takes off his boots in the foyer, a strange sound to be able to identify so clearly, before his quieter footsteps disappear toward the back of the house. To the library.
I shouldn’t slide out of bed and head to the stairs. After what we shared in the barn, another late night private conversation in the library might not be wise, but I’m drawn to him, and I can’t deny that magnetic pull.
Part of me was relieved when he disappeared and wasn’t around for dinner, but another part of me is very happy he’s returned now.
I follow the glow of the light he’s left on and knock on the wide open door.
"Hey," I say quietly.
He's standing at the window, one hand braced against the frame, looking out into the darkness. He turns his head, but not sharply, and nods.
"Long day?"
"Something like that." He drops his hand and turns to face me fully. In the soft lamplight, his jaw looks harder than usual. "Come in, though. How was the rest of your day?"
I step inside. “Very puddle oriented. And we were very careful not to track mud inside. I think your mom appreciated that?”
He huffs a quiet laugh that does something warm and inconvenient to my chest.
I take a deep breath. “Luna’s suggested we stay a few weeks more.”
His head snaps up, his gaze sharpening. “Did she? And what did you say?”
“I think it’s a good idea.” And then I rush past that, because what if it’s not? It’s what I want anyway. “I made hamburger soup for dinner, by the way, if you’re hungry.”
He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”
It occurs to me that he may have had dinner somewhere else, may have been out all night for personal reasons, and that makes my cheeks burn.
His gaze narrows, as if he can read me like a book. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Not nothing,” he growls. I shrink back, and he swears under his breath. “Jesus, Hope, don’t be afraid of me.”
“I’m not,” I stammer.
He gives me a look that verges on tortured. “This might be hard for you to believe, but Zane Kincaid doesn’t growl.”
I blink in surprise.
He shoves his hand into his hair, making it stand on end. “I’m the civilized brother, the one who always knows what to say, and in this moment, that’s fucking hard. So sometimes I growl, because there’s something about you that makes me feel completely uncivilized.”
“Me?”
“Jesus.” He covers his face with his hands, then leans against his desk. “Yes, woman. You.”
“Zane Kincaid doesn’t growl?” I repeat what he said as a question, just trying to catch up. He’s on edge, and I don’t know how to manage that.
He stares at me.
My heart trips double-time against my ribcage. “But he does refer to himself in the third person?”
The stare intensifies. Then he cracks, barking out a surprised laugh. He nods, his big body shaking. “He apparently does.”
I exhale in relief.
Slowly, he comes around the desk and sits on the edge of it. "Hope…I need to talk to you about your car."
Ice water floods my veins. "Is it worse than they thought?"
"Cash can fix it. That part's not the problem." He crosses his arms over his chest. Not to intimidate—I can read his body language well enough by now to know he's bracing himself. "When he was working on it today, he found something."
The room shrinks and my pulse roars.
“There was a tracker wired into your battery.
Small. Cash said it was well hidden—he only found it because he was looking for it.
It's been dealt with," he adds quickly. “He pulled it out this afternoon and I drove it to a truck stop north of Calgary.
Put it on a northbound rig and waited to make sure it got on its way.
Whoever is tracking you is going to think your car is on its way to Edmonton and beyond by morning. "
I hear his words through a thick wall of icy panic, distorted and distant.
Every stop I made. Every hour I drove, thinking I was that much closer to freedom.
Derek knew where I was the whole time. He knows where I am now.
“I can’t stay,” I whisper.
“No, that’s not—” He pushes off the desk, approaching me slowly.
Stopping just shy of where I’m clutching a bookshelf like it’s a life raft.
“You’re safe here. We’ll keep you out of town for a bit, but there’s nothing connecting you to this ranch.
Mercy and Cash are the only ones who know where you are, and they would never tell a soul. ”
"You don't know what he can do." The words come out ragged. "You don't know him."
"No. I don't. But I think it’s time you tell me more about him so I can be prepared.”
"Oh God." I press my fist to my mouth.
"Hope—"
"I thought I was so smart." My voice cracks and I hate it. "I thought I was—I watched his patterns for months. I timed everything. I checked for trackers, Zane. I checked. And the whole time he could just—he could see—"
A sob tears out of me, so unexpected and violent that my knees buckle.
Zane catches me in his arms, scooping me up.
"Hey. Hey." His voice is low and close to the top of my head. The room spins as he turns, carrying me across to the big leather chair behind his desk. His grip doesn’t lessen even after he sits down.
"Listen to me. Whatever he knew before? He doesn't know now.
The tracker is gone, I made sure of it. Tell me who he is, Hope. Trust me with this, please."
I shake my head, but he waits me out. He rubs my back, his hand big and sure and warm through the soft cotton of his t-shirt that I’ve claimed as my own.
But then his hand curves down to my side and I suck in a breath, wincing even though the bruises there are mostly faded.
He goes still, then shifts me off his lap, ever so carefully, and sets my hips against the edge of his desk, bracketing my legs with his. “Hope?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Are you hurt?” He reaches for the hem of my shirt. His shirt.
I go to push his hand away, and he catches my fingers in his. Just holds on, patiently waiting, but refusing to pull away.
Pressing my lips together, I close my eyes and let him pull the shirt up enough to reveal the ugly yellow and bluish bruise that mottles my skin.
“Fucking hell,” he breathes as his fingers trace the sensitive edges of my greatest shame. “Who did this to you?”
I shake my head.
“He’s never going to touch you again, I promise.
” His voice is so tight, so dangerous, it should scare me.
But when I finally lift my face, the fury blazing in his eyes, the hard set of his jaw—it doesn’t frighten me.
It surrounds me, because it’s not directed at me, but for me.
It's something fiercer than anger, more primal and protective, and it drives my panic to the far recesses of my mind.
He nods as he watches my face. “That’s it. Tell me what you can,” he says softly. His gaze never wavers. “Trust me with his name. And I’ll keep you safe from him.”
“His name is—” I take a deep breath, my voice shaking.
“Derek Hitchkoff.” And then the rest spills out, as if finally naming him tears off a seal.
“He often goes by DeHitch online. He’s a hacker, I think.
He never let me see much of what he does on the computer.
He has an off-grid homestead on Salt Spring Island.
I was sleeping in my car. He said he could use a roommate who could garden.
I—I didn’t tell him I was pregnant at first, because I could tell he was—”
I break down, the memory of his early attraction to me making my skin crawl in a way that’s hard to escape. It threatens to drag me into the dark, murky history I’m fleeing.
“Okay. You’re okay.” Zane pulls me back into his lap and rubs my back as he nods, his jaw flexing tight.
“You did a lot of things right. You kept yourself and your daughter hidden, better than you thought.
You kept your trust circle small. Mercy won't talk.
Cash won't either. You're invisible to the outside world here.
The only thing that fucker had on you was a piece of hardware, and it's gone. "
I stare at his profile, so close to my face. That fucker. To hear someone else put a pin in Derek so succinctly shifts something inside me, something that needed a shove.
Zane shifts his hand from my back to curve around my bare arm, his thumb rubbing up onto my biceps, under the loose sleeve of his rodeo shirt. A micro-movement that he may not even be conscious of, but I feel it everywhere. It’s protective and soothing, but it’s also startlingly intimate.
I don’t…hate it.
I squirm closer.