Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
“No. This needs to be buried. It has to be.”
I swallow. “Okay. I’ll help you.”
He drags my hands between us. “Ending this case completely will help me. Cat’s going to release her article tomorrow. I know you know that.”
“You asked her to write it. I know. I was afraid it would get her the wrong attention.”
“I agree,” he surprises me by saying. “I regretted the request for that very reason. When I came out of the meeting with the ADA, it was with one certainty. Four women are dead and more could die and law enforcement isn’t going to do anything. Using a reporter to pressure the DA isn’t an abnormal action, but this is Cat we’re talking about.”
“And?”
“And Reese said that Cat decided to write the article before I requested she do it. Unlike me, with my past, which I did not share, they don’t feel like her doing her normal job is a risk beyond anything we already do. He said she’s not going to back down. This is why she does what she does. To make a difference. I need you to talk to her.”
“I already tried, despite your request, Cole. She’s writing the article. She’s a champion of right over wrong. It’s one of the things I love about her, and you. She’ll be fine. This isn’t like with your father where he named the killer, or I assume he did.”
“He did,” Cole confirms.
“This person is in hiding, and the truth is, Cat might be driving him back into a deeper hole as we speak. What option remains but to do just what your instinct said to do? We have to pressure law enforcement. And you—you can’t start second-guessing yourself. If you do, that monster in the bathroom wins.”
He presses his hands on the window on either side of me. “Right. Right. You’re one hundred percent right.”
“What happened to the man in the bathroom?”
“He was stabbed to death in prison the year after he was put there,” he says. “Which is one of the reasons I was able to bury this so damn deeply. I didn’t have to think about parole. It was over. I need this case to be over and now I have this idiot attacking you in a bathroom while a real killer runs free.”
I press my hand to his heart. “We’ll make it go away together. All of it.”
He covers my hand with his and just stares at me, his expression so damn unreadable that I want to reach inside him and strip away the past. I’m contemplating how I might do that when he suddenly scoops me up and starts carrying me up toward our bedroom. I curl into him, reveling in the fact that instead of pulling away from me, he’s pulled me closer. He’s let me inside and while it felt like it took forever, it was only a few days before he opened a closed door and let me inside.
We enter the bedroom, our bedroom, and he sets me on the bed, coming down on top of me, the heavy, perfect weight of him comforting. He’s here. We’re here. He kisses me, and it’s not long before his shirt that I’m still wearing is gone, and he’s kissing me everywhere. He is tender and sweet, but when he too is naked and buried inside me, the demons of the past are right there with us, driving his every move, and the tenderness is gone, a rough, hard need in him taking control. I am right there with him, driving away those demons, or trying.
Hours later, he finally sleeps, but I don’t. I lay in the darkness of our room, listening to Cole’s steady breathing, thinking of the way he took control of my financial struggles and while it had seemed controlling at the time, I realize now there was so much more to those moves he’d made. He has a deep need to protect those he loves, and Cole made sure he loved no one. Until me. This moves me in ways that I thought impossible. How could I be moved more than I already am by this man? He’s everything to me. But I am. And I am also certain the storm has not passed, but it will. I won’t give up until it does.
Chapter sixty-four
Cole
Iwake Sunday morning, groggy, and to a beam of light, Lori’s soft curves are pressing into my body, and my cellphone buzzes on the nightstand. I reach for it and eye the screen to find Reese’s number. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Because something has to be wrong for you to call me this damn early.”
“It’s eleven o’clock,” he says. “It’s not early. In fact, I gave you time to sleep. Get your ass up.”
Lori raises up on her elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” I repeat to Reese, letting her know that I have no answer to that question.