Out of Love, page 19
“Neither do I,” he whispered. I didn’t think he meant for me to hear it, but I did.
The second he stopped the vehicle in the driveway, I tried to hop out, but he grabbed my arm. “I go first.”
“You go first where?”
He opened his door. “Everywhere.”
On a huff, I followed him and Jericho to the back door. He unlocked the door and reached behind him as he opened it slowly. His hand wrapped around a gun that he slid out of the waist of his jeans.
What the hell …
He had a gun. I knew he had many weapons, but never on him. I held in my gasp, my string of questions, and my fear as he and Jericho stepped inside. I slinked behind them, holding my breath. He turned and held up his hand for me to stay.
Jericho led the way, and they scoped out the main floor before going upstairs while I remained cemented to my spot just inside the back door.
“We’re good,” he said as he reached the bottom of the stairs and tucked his gun back into his waistband. Not just his waistband … I narrowed my eyes. He had a holster. This wall in my brain kept him separated from his profession.
I’d never seen him take a life.
I’d never seen him hold any of the weapons in his dungeon.
Until then.
Something changed when I watched him grip that gun with ease and comfort, when he moved through the house with it pointed ahead of him—on guard yet perfectly calm at the same time.
Slade Wylder took lives, and he did it like an afterthought.
“What’s happening?” I whispered, afraid to move an inch.
“I don’t know yet.” He cupped my neck with both hands, his thumbs caressing my throat, and he kissed the top of my head.
“W-why do you have that gun? Am I in danger? Have you …” I glanced up at him, my hands grabbing his arms as he continued to cradle my neck in his protective hands. “You’ve put me in danger.”
Wylder grunted a laugh and released me. “No.” He turned, leaving me frozen in place while he opened the fridge. “Tell me about your dad.”
“What? Why?” I squinted. My thoughts spun, making me dizzy as I wobbled on listless legs to a kitchen chair. “What did you do? Why are you carrying a gun? Why did you have to check the house? Tell me what’s going on.”
“Is your family rich?”
“What?” My face contorted as I shook my head, trying to sort through everything jumbled in my mind. “No.”
“Influential?” He turned, opening a bottle of beer.
“No. Why are you asking me this? Whatever this is … whoever is coming after you … it has nothing to do with me. That night at the convenience store was random, not calculated. It could have happened to anyone.”
“Has your dad done anything to piss anyone off? Does he have any enemies?”
“No. Slade … why are you asking me about my dad?”
He took a long swig and set it down. Then he rested his hands on the edge of the counter and dropped his head. “You said he’s a computer geek. What does that mean? Is he a hacker? Does he work for the government? A big corporation?”
“He’s a computer engineer. He doesn’t work for the government. His job is boring, without influence, and for a midsized company. His hobbies include playing the piano, exercising, overprotecting me, and missing my mom. That’s it. What is your point?”
With his head still hanging, he shook it slowly. “The men you’ve dated … anything notable about them? Have you ever been with a married man? When you saw Abe, did anything about him look familiar to you?”
“Jesus, Slade. What’s happening? I’ve not knowingly slept with a married man. Nothing about Abe looked familiar. And the most notable thing about any of the men I’ve dated is my most recent guy is an assassin.”
Ignoring my jab, he lifted his head and reached for his beer. After another long swig, he exhaled slowly and pinned me with a hard expression. “Shortly after we met, Abe gave me a new assignment, something I don’t usually do, but I do what he says, so …”
My eyebrows lifted. “So?”
“He told me I needed to look after you. To make sure you were safe … protected.”
Protect me.
I should have felt safe. After all, a man with a slew of weapons was living with me. Protecting me. But I didn’t feel safe. The only time I’d felt that vulnerable—that exposed—was when I had a knife to my throat while a terrible human tried to rape me.
“How could I be so stupid?” I whispered. “You said it wasn’t your job to … fuck me.” My gaze lifted to his. “But I was your job.”
“Livy—”
I shook my head, closing my eyes for a few seconds. “That’s what happened. That’s why you went from clearly hating me to …” I opened my eyes as tears filled them. “Might as well get a little action, huh? The closer you drew me in, the easier it was to protect me. Oh my god …” I wiped the tears as soon as they fell from my burning eyes. “We’re nothing.” My words fell out like someone shot them. Lifeless. Monotone. Numb.
He set his beer down and his boots ate up the distance between us. Hunching in front of me, his hands rested on my hips. “We’re everything.”
I shook my head, closing my eyes as silent tears spilled out, down my cheeks to my lap.
“Look at me.”
I shook my head relentlessly, keeping my chin to my chest, my bottom lip quivering as I clenched my teeth to keep from sobbing.
“Look. At. Me.” He framed my face with his hands and forced my head up.
I blinked open my eyes, big tears clinging to my lashes.
“It wasn’t my job to touch you the way I’ve touched you. I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to … even when I knew it wasn’t a good idea. So I did it anyway. And I knew it wasn’t my job to love you. Again, I couldn’t stop myself. I did it anyway. Protecting you is no longer my job. It’s what I do because I love you.”
I couldn’t find words. No matter how much I wanted to believe him, it was impossible to dismiss the arsenal below me, the gun in his holster, and his questions. More than all of that, it wasn’t what he did say. It was everything he didn’t say.
“Why did Abe hire you to protect me? Protect me from what? From whom?”
“I can’t say.”
“No.” My head whipped side to side as I tried to stand.
He grabbed my wrists. “Livy—”
“Let. Go. Of. Me!” I tried to wriggle out of his hold.
He released me, holding his hands up in surrender while still kneeling before me as I stood.
“You can’t protect me with lies,” I seethed.
“It’s the only way I can protect you. And I’m sorry it sounds so fucked-up, but that is the truth. I know it’s an unimaginable leap of faith I’m asking, but I need you to trust me and do everything I ask.”
“I should call my dad … Jessica …”
He shook his head. “You. I can protect you. I can’t protect everyone you drag into this mess. Not until I get things figured out. Please.” His hands eased to my hips, eyes pleading as I peered down at him. “Let me love you back.”
A new round of tears emerged. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
“I’ve got you.” He rested his forehead over my heart, arms encircling my waist.
“Promise?” I eased back into the chair.
He moved several inches forward on his knees, hands finding their way into my hair, lips brushing mine. “Promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jackson Knight
“When’s the last time someone kicked your ass?”
I glanced up from my computer. My twin, Jessica, sauntered into my house with her gym bag. “No one’s ever kicked my ass. So the answer to your question is never.” I returned my attention to my computer.
“Working? Obsessing? Or stalking?”
“Obsessing? Stalking?”
She took a seat at the dining room table across from me. “Obsessing over Ryn’s death, which … for the millionth time … was an accident. Or are you stalking Livy and her new boyfriend?”
I flitted my gaze to hers for a second time. “She told you about Slade?”
“Slade.” She grinned. “You know and remembered his name. That’s something.”
My dead stare remained glued to her until the light went on in her head.
“Of course, you know his name, and you know it well because you’re stalking him. I knew it.”
“His record is clean.”
“Great! Case closed. Well wishes to Livy on her new relationship. Now, let’s go spar. My boss was an asshole today. I need to hit someone.”
“It’s too clean.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s in his twenties. Maybe he comes from a nice family. Clean record.”
“There’s not a father’s name on his birth certificate.”
“It’s not a crime to be raised by one parent.”
I nodded slowly. “I know. But he has no social media accounts. And he dropped out of college for three years before going back to finish his senior year.”
“Family emergency? Health issues? Second thoughts on his future? Money issues? Seriously, Jackson, you’re looking for something that’s not there.”
“That’s my point. He’s too clean. Not just squeaky clean. I’m talking unrealistically clean.”
“So what are you going to do? Go to LA, tie him up, and interrogate him?”
I cork-screwed my lips. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “It’s a horrible idea. The kind of idea that ruins your relationship with your daughter.”
With my thumb and middle finger, I rubbed my temples, staring at everything I could find on Slade Wylder in multiple screens. “The day Ryn died … I was uneasy all day. I couldn’t explain it. A sixth sense feeling. I must have messaged her twenty times, checking on her, checking on Livy.”
“You said that. It’s not unheard of for people to have a feeling that something bad is going to happen, but it still doesn’t mean that it was anything other than an accident.”
I leaned back in the chair and laced my fingers behind my head. “I’ve had the same feeling for several days about Livy. You don’t know how many times I’ve considered getting on a plane to go check on her in person. Stay there until the feeling goes away. In the fall, I had the same feeling.”
“You did?” Jessica narrowed her eyes, an odd expression morphing her face.
“Yeah. I tried messaging her a million times, and I was ready to head straight to the airport when she texted me back, confirming she was fine.”
Jessica rubbed her lips together, forehead tense. “Did you have this feeling before the house fire?”
I shook my head. “Clearly she wasn’t in danger. She was at his house doing God knows what.”
When Jessica didn’t jump at the chance to make a joke about all the times I was doing “God knows what” in my twenties, I knew something wasn’t right. I sat up straight. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She pinched her bottom lip, gaze aimed off to the side. “What can you find on a Stefan Hoover from Nevada? Two kids and a wife. He was killed in LA after attempting to rape a college girl.”
“Why?” I asked, my hands already moving over the keyboard to look up his information. “Over a hundred K in credit card and gambling debt. No prior record. But yeah, he was found dead after attempting to rape a girl behind a convenience store in Septem—” My gaze shot to Jessica’s.
She swallowed hard.
“This is when I had that feeling.”
Another hard swallow as her eyes remained unblinking, like prey would eye its predator.
“Jess.” My fists clenched on the table, jaw set. “So help me God, if this was Livy …” I couldn’t even say it. My chest filled with rage and fear of something I didn’t want to be true.
“She told me over a month later when I was in LA for business.”
“Why the fuck am I just now hearing about this?” I stood, sending the chair backward with my violent outburst.
Jess held up her hands. “Let me explain.”
“EXPLAIN?” I took my water glass and pitched it into the wall, glass, ice, and water flying everywhere. “How the fuck are you going to explain not telling me that some guy tried to rape my daughter?” I moved around the table so quickly she flinched, and my sister never flinched. “If it were one of your girls, what would you do?”
She stared at my chest, holding her own in posture, but shame filled her eyes. “You know what I would do,” she whispered. “She made me promise not to tell you. He didn’t rape her. Had he … I would not have kept her secret.”
“That’s fucking great, Jess. You’ve just kept it a secret that she’s in LA, dating some guy I know nothing about, and completely defenseless.”
Her eyes shifted upward. “Not defenseless. I’ve been training her.”
I squinted. “Training her? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t. You’re her aunt. Period.”
Her jaw flexed along with her hands. “You taught her how to punch and run. How to use a bottle of pepper spray.”
“Because that’s what I told Ryn I would teach her. That’s it. A normal college student with a normal upbringing. Everything we didn’t have.”
“Well, after her incident, I decided she deserved a normal adult life. A safe adult life. I decided no man would ever pin her to the ground … would ever leave the kind of scars that never heal.”
Emotion crushed my chest. It wasn’t the life I wanted for Livy. “How long?”
“Three months.”
“That’s not enough.” I shook my head.
“I’m not done.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “How much? What have you trained her to do?”
Jessica tipped her chin up, lips in a firm line. “I’ve trained her to bleed.”
“Fuck … Jess …” I winced thinking about my little girl experiencing the things I experienced, the things Jessica experienced. Even if it was a fraction of it, it was too much.
Jessica tipped her chin up another inch, shoulders back, reminding me of everything she’d survived in her life. “I trained her to get up. I trained her to feel the pain and channel it into one thing …”
“Her next breath,” I whispered the words that were repeated to us over and over.
She returned several slow nods. “This feeling …”
I shook my head. “It’s probably nothing.”
“But what if it’s something?”
“You mean Slade?”
Jessica shrugged. “Slade. Stefan Hoover. The house that burned down. The cause of the fire was not determined for certain.”
“You think it was meant for Livy?”
“No,” Jess said as a knee-jerk reaction to keep me from losing my shit. “Maybe.”
I grabbed my phone. “She’s at Slade’s.”
“You’re tracking her?”
I frowned at Jessica and her stupid question. “I bought her a new phone after the fire. Of course I’m tracking her. I track her Jeep too. If I could have gotten away with chipping her, I would have.” I called Livy and put the phone on speaker.
“Hey, Dad,” she answered on the third ring.
“Livy. How are you?”
“Um … fine. Why? What’s up? Is everything okay?”
I listened for odd inflections in her voice, strain, unusual hesitation. “Yeah. Everything is fine. Just wanted to call my daughter.”
“O … kay. Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Absolutely.” I shifted my gaze from the screen to Jessica, her face was unmoving—focused on every word, just like mine. “What are you doing?”
“Slade and I just got home from surfing.”
“Sounds fun. Do you surf with your friends anymore, or are you glued to a guy?”
“I surfed with the girls last week.”
“When are you driving home for Christmas break?”
She paused, hesitated. My eyes locked with Jessica’s again.
“Um … I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, when is your last day of classes?”
“Um … Friday.”
“Great. So I’ll see you when? Saturday?”
“I’ll let you know when I check with Slade.”
“Why do you need to check with him? Is he coming home with you? Surely he’ll be spending Christmas with his family.”
“Yeah, uh … I’m not sure yet. We haven’t really discussed it.”
“It’s a week away and you haven’t discussed it? That’s not like you.”
“He might have to work over break. And if that’s the case, then I might stay here with him.”
“What do you mean stay there with him? Miss Christmas with your family?”
“Well, maybe. It’s just one Christmas. You’ll get invited to Aunt Jess’s, right?”
“Right,” I said slowly.
“But I mean … nothing’s set in stone. I’ll let you know when I can.”
“Yeah. You do that. Let us know when Slade knows his work schedule.”
“Totally. Bye, Dad. Love you.”
“Liv …”
“Yeah?”
I wanted to say something. The need clawed at my gut, sending a physical pain shooting up my chest. I wanted to tell her I knew what happened to her—almost happened to her—and how sorry I was for not being there, for not doing more to protect her.
“Love you too.” I pressed End.
“We need to go to LA.”
“Me. Not we.”
“Jackson …”
“We don’t even know what we’re looking for yet. And maybe it’s nothing. I’ll go check things out and let you know if I need anything.”
On a slow exhale, she relinquished a slight nod. “I’m sorry for not telling you.”
“Did you tell her about you?”
She nodded. “The PG-13 version.”
“When you made her bleed, did she …” I rubbed my hand over my mouth. It killed me to ask it, but it also killed me to not know.
“She broke my heart. That moment … when you know that you’re changing someone forever. When you’ve made a mark that will be there forever even if it’s invisible. She cried. She begged me to stop.”
The second he stopped the vehicle in the driveway, I tried to hop out, but he grabbed my arm. “I go first.”
“You go first where?”
He opened his door. “Everywhere.”
On a huff, I followed him and Jericho to the back door. He unlocked the door and reached behind him as he opened it slowly. His hand wrapped around a gun that he slid out of the waist of his jeans.
What the hell …
He had a gun. I knew he had many weapons, but never on him. I held in my gasp, my string of questions, and my fear as he and Jericho stepped inside. I slinked behind them, holding my breath. He turned and held up his hand for me to stay.
Jericho led the way, and they scoped out the main floor before going upstairs while I remained cemented to my spot just inside the back door.
“We’re good,” he said as he reached the bottom of the stairs and tucked his gun back into his waistband. Not just his waistband … I narrowed my eyes. He had a holster. This wall in my brain kept him separated from his profession.
I’d never seen him take a life.
I’d never seen him hold any of the weapons in his dungeon.
Until then.
Something changed when I watched him grip that gun with ease and comfort, when he moved through the house with it pointed ahead of him—on guard yet perfectly calm at the same time.
Slade Wylder took lives, and he did it like an afterthought.
“What’s happening?” I whispered, afraid to move an inch.
“I don’t know yet.” He cupped my neck with both hands, his thumbs caressing my throat, and he kissed the top of my head.
“W-why do you have that gun? Am I in danger? Have you …” I glanced up at him, my hands grabbing his arms as he continued to cradle my neck in his protective hands. “You’ve put me in danger.”
Wylder grunted a laugh and released me. “No.” He turned, leaving me frozen in place while he opened the fridge. “Tell me about your dad.”
“What? Why?” I squinted. My thoughts spun, making me dizzy as I wobbled on listless legs to a kitchen chair. “What did you do? Why are you carrying a gun? Why did you have to check the house? Tell me what’s going on.”
“Is your family rich?”
“What?” My face contorted as I shook my head, trying to sort through everything jumbled in my mind. “No.”
“Influential?” He turned, opening a bottle of beer.
“No. Why are you asking me this? Whatever this is … whoever is coming after you … it has nothing to do with me. That night at the convenience store was random, not calculated. It could have happened to anyone.”
“Has your dad done anything to piss anyone off? Does he have any enemies?”
“No. Slade … why are you asking me about my dad?”
He took a long swig and set it down. Then he rested his hands on the edge of the counter and dropped his head. “You said he’s a computer geek. What does that mean? Is he a hacker? Does he work for the government? A big corporation?”
“He’s a computer engineer. He doesn’t work for the government. His job is boring, without influence, and for a midsized company. His hobbies include playing the piano, exercising, overprotecting me, and missing my mom. That’s it. What is your point?”
With his head still hanging, he shook it slowly. “The men you’ve dated … anything notable about them? Have you ever been with a married man? When you saw Abe, did anything about him look familiar to you?”
“Jesus, Slade. What’s happening? I’ve not knowingly slept with a married man. Nothing about Abe looked familiar. And the most notable thing about any of the men I’ve dated is my most recent guy is an assassin.”
Ignoring my jab, he lifted his head and reached for his beer. After another long swig, he exhaled slowly and pinned me with a hard expression. “Shortly after we met, Abe gave me a new assignment, something I don’t usually do, but I do what he says, so …”
My eyebrows lifted. “So?”
“He told me I needed to look after you. To make sure you were safe … protected.”
Protect me.
I should have felt safe. After all, a man with a slew of weapons was living with me. Protecting me. But I didn’t feel safe. The only time I’d felt that vulnerable—that exposed—was when I had a knife to my throat while a terrible human tried to rape me.
“How could I be so stupid?” I whispered. “You said it wasn’t your job to … fuck me.” My gaze lifted to his. “But I was your job.”
“Livy—”
I shook my head, closing my eyes for a few seconds. “That’s what happened. That’s why you went from clearly hating me to …” I opened my eyes as tears filled them. “Might as well get a little action, huh? The closer you drew me in, the easier it was to protect me. Oh my god …” I wiped the tears as soon as they fell from my burning eyes. “We’re nothing.” My words fell out like someone shot them. Lifeless. Monotone. Numb.
He set his beer down and his boots ate up the distance between us. Hunching in front of me, his hands rested on my hips. “We’re everything.”
I shook my head, closing my eyes as silent tears spilled out, down my cheeks to my lap.
“Look at me.”
I shook my head relentlessly, keeping my chin to my chest, my bottom lip quivering as I clenched my teeth to keep from sobbing.
“Look. At. Me.” He framed my face with his hands and forced my head up.
I blinked open my eyes, big tears clinging to my lashes.
“It wasn’t my job to touch you the way I’ve touched you. I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to … even when I knew it wasn’t a good idea. So I did it anyway. And I knew it wasn’t my job to love you. Again, I couldn’t stop myself. I did it anyway. Protecting you is no longer my job. It’s what I do because I love you.”
I couldn’t find words. No matter how much I wanted to believe him, it was impossible to dismiss the arsenal below me, the gun in his holster, and his questions. More than all of that, it wasn’t what he did say. It was everything he didn’t say.
“Why did Abe hire you to protect me? Protect me from what? From whom?”
“I can’t say.”
“No.” My head whipped side to side as I tried to stand.
He grabbed my wrists. “Livy—”
“Let. Go. Of. Me!” I tried to wriggle out of his hold.
He released me, holding his hands up in surrender while still kneeling before me as I stood.
“You can’t protect me with lies,” I seethed.
“It’s the only way I can protect you. And I’m sorry it sounds so fucked-up, but that is the truth. I know it’s an unimaginable leap of faith I’m asking, but I need you to trust me and do everything I ask.”
“I should call my dad … Jessica …”
He shook his head. “You. I can protect you. I can’t protect everyone you drag into this mess. Not until I get things figured out. Please.” His hands eased to my hips, eyes pleading as I peered down at him. “Let me love you back.”
A new round of tears emerged. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
“I’ve got you.” He rested his forehead over my heart, arms encircling my waist.
“Promise?” I eased back into the chair.
He moved several inches forward on his knees, hands finding their way into my hair, lips brushing mine. “Promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jackson Knight
“When’s the last time someone kicked your ass?”
I glanced up from my computer. My twin, Jessica, sauntered into my house with her gym bag. “No one’s ever kicked my ass. So the answer to your question is never.” I returned my attention to my computer.
“Working? Obsessing? Or stalking?”
“Obsessing? Stalking?”
She took a seat at the dining room table across from me. “Obsessing over Ryn’s death, which … for the millionth time … was an accident. Or are you stalking Livy and her new boyfriend?”
I flitted my gaze to hers for a second time. “She told you about Slade?”
“Slade.” She grinned. “You know and remembered his name. That’s something.”
My dead stare remained glued to her until the light went on in her head.
“Of course, you know his name, and you know it well because you’re stalking him. I knew it.”
“His record is clean.”
“Great! Case closed. Well wishes to Livy on her new relationship. Now, let’s go spar. My boss was an asshole today. I need to hit someone.”
“It’s too clean.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s in his twenties. Maybe he comes from a nice family. Clean record.”
“There’s not a father’s name on his birth certificate.”
“It’s not a crime to be raised by one parent.”
I nodded slowly. “I know. But he has no social media accounts. And he dropped out of college for three years before going back to finish his senior year.”
“Family emergency? Health issues? Second thoughts on his future? Money issues? Seriously, Jackson, you’re looking for something that’s not there.”
“That’s my point. He’s too clean. Not just squeaky clean. I’m talking unrealistically clean.”
“So what are you going to do? Go to LA, tie him up, and interrogate him?”
I cork-screwed my lips. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Yes.” She laughed. “It’s a horrible idea. The kind of idea that ruins your relationship with your daughter.”
With my thumb and middle finger, I rubbed my temples, staring at everything I could find on Slade Wylder in multiple screens. “The day Ryn died … I was uneasy all day. I couldn’t explain it. A sixth sense feeling. I must have messaged her twenty times, checking on her, checking on Livy.”
“You said that. It’s not unheard of for people to have a feeling that something bad is going to happen, but it still doesn’t mean that it was anything other than an accident.”
I leaned back in the chair and laced my fingers behind my head. “I’ve had the same feeling for several days about Livy. You don’t know how many times I’ve considered getting on a plane to go check on her in person. Stay there until the feeling goes away. In the fall, I had the same feeling.”
“You did?” Jessica narrowed her eyes, an odd expression morphing her face.
“Yeah. I tried messaging her a million times, and I was ready to head straight to the airport when she texted me back, confirming she was fine.”
Jessica rubbed her lips together, forehead tense. “Did you have this feeling before the house fire?”
I shook my head. “Clearly she wasn’t in danger. She was at his house doing God knows what.”
When Jessica didn’t jump at the chance to make a joke about all the times I was doing “God knows what” in my twenties, I knew something wasn’t right. I sat up straight. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She pinched her bottom lip, gaze aimed off to the side. “What can you find on a Stefan Hoover from Nevada? Two kids and a wife. He was killed in LA after attempting to rape a college girl.”
“Why?” I asked, my hands already moving over the keyboard to look up his information. “Over a hundred K in credit card and gambling debt. No prior record. But yeah, he was found dead after attempting to rape a girl behind a convenience store in Septem—” My gaze shot to Jessica’s.
She swallowed hard.
“This is when I had that feeling.”
Another hard swallow as her eyes remained unblinking, like prey would eye its predator.
“Jess.” My fists clenched on the table, jaw set. “So help me God, if this was Livy …” I couldn’t even say it. My chest filled with rage and fear of something I didn’t want to be true.
“She told me over a month later when I was in LA for business.”
“Why the fuck am I just now hearing about this?” I stood, sending the chair backward with my violent outburst.
Jess held up her hands. “Let me explain.”
“EXPLAIN?” I took my water glass and pitched it into the wall, glass, ice, and water flying everywhere. “How the fuck are you going to explain not telling me that some guy tried to rape my daughter?” I moved around the table so quickly she flinched, and my sister never flinched. “If it were one of your girls, what would you do?”
She stared at my chest, holding her own in posture, but shame filled her eyes. “You know what I would do,” she whispered. “She made me promise not to tell you. He didn’t rape her. Had he … I would not have kept her secret.”
“That’s fucking great, Jess. You’ve just kept it a secret that she’s in LA, dating some guy I know nothing about, and completely defenseless.”
Her eyes shifted upward. “Not defenseless. I’ve been training her.”
I squinted. “Training her? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t. You’re her aunt. Period.”
Her jaw flexed along with her hands. “You taught her how to punch and run. How to use a bottle of pepper spray.”
“Because that’s what I told Ryn I would teach her. That’s it. A normal college student with a normal upbringing. Everything we didn’t have.”
“Well, after her incident, I decided she deserved a normal adult life. A safe adult life. I decided no man would ever pin her to the ground … would ever leave the kind of scars that never heal.”
Emotion crushed my chest. It wasn’t the life I wanted for Livy. “How long?”
“Three months.”
“That’s not enough.” I shook my head.
“I’m not done.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “How much? What have you trained her to do?”
Jessica tipped her chin up, lips in a firm line. “I’ve trained her to bleed.”
“Fuck … Jess …” I winced thinking about my little girl experiencing the things I experienced, the things Jessica experienced. Even if it was a fraction of it, it was too much.
Jessica tipped her chin up another inch, shoulders back, reminding me of everything she’d survived in her life. “I trained her to get up. I trained her to feel the pain and channel it into one thing …”
“Her next breath,” I whispered the words that were repeated to us over and over.
She returned several slow nods. “This feeling …”
I shook my head. “It’s probably nothing.”
“But what if it’s something?”
“You mean Slade?”
Jessica shrugged. “Slade. Stefan Hoover. The house that burned down. The cause of the fire was not determined for certain.”
“You think it was meant for Livy?”
“No,” Jess said as a knee-jerk reaction to keep me from losing my shit. “Maybe.”
I grabbed my phone. “She’s at Slade’s.”
“You’re tracking her?”
I frowned at Jessica and her stupid question. “I bought her a new phone after the fire. Of course I’m tracking her. I track her Jeep too. If I could have gotten away with chipping her, I would have.” I called Livy and put the phone on speaker.
“Hey, Dad,” she answered on the third ring.
“Livy. How are you?”
“Um … fine. Why? What’s up? Is everything okay?”
I listened for odd inflections in her voice, strain, unusual hesitation. “Yeah. Everything is fine. Just wanted to call my daughter.”
“O … kay. Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Absolutely.” I shifted my gaze from the screen to Jessica, her face was unmoving—focused on every word, just like mine. “What are you doing?”
“Slade and I just got home from surfing.”
“Sounds fun. Do you surf with your friends anymore, or are you glued to a guy?”
“I surfed with the girls last week.”
“When are you driving home for Christmas break?”
She paused, hesitated. My eyes locked with Jessica’s again.
“Um … I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, when is your last day of classes?”
“Um … Friday.”
“Great. So I’ll see you when? Saturday?”
“I’ll let you know when I check with Slade.”
“Why do you need to check with him? Is he coming home with you? Surely he’ll be spending Christmas with his family.”
“Yeah, uh … I’m not sure yet. We haven’t really discussed it.”
“It’s a week away and you haven’t discussed it? That’s not like you.”
“He might have to work over break. And if that’s the case, then I might stay here with him.”
“What do you mean stay there with him? Miss Christmas with your family?”
“Well, maybe. It’s just one Christmas. You’ll get invited to Aunt Jess’s, right?”
“Right,” I said slowly.
“But I mean … nothing’s set in stone. I’ll let you know when I can.”
“Yeah. You do that. Let us know when Slade knows his work schedule.”
“Totally. Bye, Dad. Love you.”
“Liv …”
“Yeah?”
I wanted to say something. The need clawed at my gut, sending a physical pain shooting up my chest. I wanted to tell her I knew what happened to her—almost happened to her—and how sorry I was for not being there, for not doing more to protect her.
“Love you too.” I pressed End.
“We need to go to LA.”
“Me. Not we.”
“Jackson …”
“We don’t even know what we’re looking for yet. And maybe it’s nothing. I’ll go check things out and let you know if I need anything.”
On a slow exhale, she relinquished a slight nod. “I’m sorry for not telling you.”
“Did you tell her about you?”
She nodded. “The PG-13 version.”
“When you made her bleed, did she …” I rubbed my hand over my mouth. It killed me to ask it, but it also killed me to not know.
“She broke my heart. That moment … when you know that you’re changing someone forever. When you’ve made a mark that will be there forever even if it’s invisible. She cried. She begged me to stop.”
