Limit

by McAdams, Molly

  “No.” Sutton’s mouth was wide with shock. “Over scones?”

  “Guy loves food. You’ve seen how much he eats.” My chest moved with a silent laugh at Sutton’s knowing expression. “Einstein lost it and tackled him, yelling at him. Which would have seemed reasonable since we lost data, and her entire world is computers and hacking. Except she wasn’t yelling at him about the computers, she was demanding he drop the scones.”

  “This is a serious war,” Sutton whispered.

  “Clearly.”

  “Now I know never to eat a scone in front of him.” She went back to cutting my hair with a sigh. “I don’t have anything nearly that fun. Oh, I did punch the runner-up at a pageant in the face once.”

  I didn’t think I could smile any wider. “She try to take your tiara?”

  “I found out right before we went on stage to get crowned that she’d been sleeping with my boyfriend. I waited until after the ceremony, I have class, after all,” she said with a wry grin. “Then I told her she could have him. I didn’t want a boy who lowered his standards to second-best because he couldn’t get into my pants. She called me a frigid virgin, so I took off my crown and punched her.”

  A loud laugh burst from me, filled with surprise and pride.

  “Class. Right.” I shot Sutton a wink through the mirror. “Tell me more.”

  And she did.

  She told me stories about sabotages in the pageant world and the drama between debutants, but she never once touched anything that had to do with Zachary or after their fake wedding.

  The smile that tugged at her mouth as she talked and worked was faint, but it was fucking stunning.

  When she’d finished with my hair and tilted my head back, her words died on her tongue. Slowly, she set the clippers down to pull her fingers through my beard, watching fixatedly as she did.

  My voice was rough when I asked, “Do you want me to keep it?”

  “Would you if I asked you to?”

  In a heartbeat.

  I’d keep the damn scruffy beard. I’d grow it back out for you. I’d alter my entire life to keep you in it.

  So far gone.

  So deep in dangerous territory.

  “Of course.”

  She studied me before pulling me slightly closer, the action hesitant before she closed the rest of the distance and pressed her mouth to mine.

  The kiss was hard and short and had a lingering taste of her pain from the unknown.

  Sutton didn’t say anything when she pulled away. She wouldn’t even meet my eyes.

  She just picked the clippers up and turned them on, answering my question with that action alone.

  Sutton

  I took a step back when I finished, my eyes bouncing over this new Conor who looked so similar, and yet, so incredibly different from the one I’d come to know.

  So handsome that it hurt to look at him.

  Or maybe that was the tension pressing down around us, the unknown questions resting in the air.

  “If I have you again, I won’t be able to let you go. Think about what that means for you and Lexi. What it means for me.”

  I carefully took the towel from around Conor’s shoulders as he stood and turned for the mirror.

  His words and his shuttered expressions played through my mind again and again as I cleaned up.

  How any time there was a mention of us past this case, unease bled from him and he shut down.

  Confirming what I’d feared when he had first said those words.

  “Sutton.”

  I looked up, trying not to let it show how much it affected me when he just said my name, and lifted my eyebrows in question.

  “It’s perfect.”

  The honesty in his voice filled my soul.

  I would never be able to repay him for this, for what he’d done for me.

  I hated that the night felt beautiful and passionate and tainted all at the same time.

  I couldn’t understand how we’d gone from him bringing me to a body-numbing high to a kiss that lacked any warmth or response from him.

  And it made it hard to breathe.

  Because I knew what he was doing.

  He was preparing me for a goodbye that he’d seen all along.

  One I thought wasn’t coming when we’d both willingly fallen into this.

  Conor crouched in front of me, stopping my hands. “Look at me.”

  I braced my heart and my jaw when I sat back.

  “Thank you for this,” he said slowly in that low, low tone that seemed to move right through me. “You did an amazing job.”

  “Thank you. I really do hope you like it.”

  His eyes searched mine, his mouth opened, and I knew whatever he was going to say I wasn’t ready for.

  Not with the roller coaster we’d already been on in the last hour alone.

  “Can you check on Lexi?” I asked before he had the chance to speak.

  He cleared his throat and nodded. “Let me help you first.”

  “No, I’d really rather you check on Lexi.”

  He hesitated for a minute, a war clearly waging within him before he pushed from the floor and left.

  As soon as I heard the bedroom door open and shut behind him, I sank back onto my heels and struggled to take a full breath. Tried not to make sense of what he was doing.

  I knew I couldn’t and trying to would only make this harder.

  By the time he came back, I had finished cleaning up the mess.

  He didn’t say anything, just leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest.

  “Lexi?”

  “Still asleep. Diggs is too. Maverick and Einstein are in the kitchen working.” From his gruff tone, it was clear he didn’t plan to let this go without saying his peace.

  I didn’t want to hear it.

  I wasn’t ready for it.

  “You said Maverick and Diggs were here to find Zachary, but they’ve been in the suite all day.”

  Conor rubbed a hand over his jaw as an aggravated smile tugged at his mouth.

  He knew what I was doing . . . I didn’t care.

  “They have reasons that I’m not getting into with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is not what we should be talking about right now,” he said, his tone at once pleading and frustrated. “It isn’t what you want to be talking about.”

  “I don’t want to talk about anything else with you.”

  “Sutton—”

  “No, don’t.” I held up a hand, begging him not to continue. “You can’t do what you’ve been doing to me all night and then talk to me like I’m the one causing this distance. You put it there, I’m dealing with it.”

  His head jerked back. “Distance?”

  A disbelieving laugh punched from my lungs. “Everything I said was the wrong thing tonight. Every time I opened my mouth, you shut down and put a step between us. That last kiss? It felt like I was begging you to respond, and there was nothing.”

  Conor looked dumbfounded.

  “You want me to think about what this would mean for Lexi and me?” I pressed a hand to my chest. “You said it like I had to think. Like I hadn’t already thought about it all. I thought that was what we both did after we slept together. Weighed the risks and decided that they didn’t matter.”

  Just like that, his entire expression shifted. Shuttered. Shut down.

  Pain spread through my chest, both cold as ice and hot as fire, stealing my next breath.

  “You want me to think about what this would mean for you?” The question was barely above a breath. “Apparently, I don’t know what it would mean for you, because you sounded unsure. It sounded like you were trying to convince me to stop and think—for you.”

  “Jesus, do you have any idea how wrong you are?” He tossed his arms in my direction, pleading with me in that single action. “Yes, Sutton, I want you to think. I want you to think about what being with me means. Wanting to be with me and deciding to stay wi
th me are entirely different. I want you to think, because I already don’t know how I’m supposed to let you go, and if I let myself have you again, I won’t be able to.”

  “Then you should’ve thought of that before tonight . . . or today.” I pressed a hand to my aching chest. “You should’ve thought of that before pulling me deeper and deeper in.”

  “I have been.”

  It would’ve been easier if he’d yelled the words.

  But the agonized whisper ripped through me, shredding me in the process.

  “Every time I look at you, I try to remind myself that I’ll lose you. Every time I touch you, I think of ways to prevent it, and every time you say something that involves us after this case, it eats me alive because I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything. And that scares the shit out of me because my gut instinct is to do anything to make an after happen. But I have a family I can’t abandon, and I can’t keep you.”

  “I don’t—what? Then why would you say you wouldn’t be able to let me go?”

  “Because I won’t,” he said, his voice twisted in torment. “The only way to stay with you is to be relocated with you, and that’s something I can’t do. So, I would try to keep you in a world we both know you don’t want Lexi or yourself in, a world you aren’t safe in. We both know how that ends.”

  My chest pitched with uneven breaths.

  “That’s it? That’s our only outcome?”

  His eyelids slowly closed, his head slanted in the faintest denial, but his mouth stayed firmly shut.

  “If you’d already counted us out, you should never have played with my heart. You should never have made me fall for you and want something with you only to rip it away.”

  “I don’t know how to count us out. I know the ending, I see it, and I can still see what we could be if that ending didn’t happen. Sutton, I want to give you everything. I want to give Lexi the fucking world. But you aren’t mine to keep.”

  “That isn’t for you to say,” I cried out. “It isn’t for you to decide what our ending is when you submerse us in your life and show me what it could be like. It isn’t for you to tell me that I wouldn’t fight to be with you. That I am not yours.” I turned to grip the counter, my head hanging so he wouldn’t see the embarrassment that went with my confession.

  “Being mine means pulling you into a world darker than you were ever in and having your eyes open the entire time. Being mine means you and Lexi will be in the open and still visible to the Tennessee Gentlemen.” When he spoke again, his voice was closer and wrapped in a plea. “Think.”

  I knew I couldn’t begin to understand the warning in that single word.

  I also knew I’d never been in as much danger as I had been these last weeks, just as I’d never been safer.

  “I need us to be safe, Conor. I need to know Lexi is safe.” I shifted my head to look at him. “I haven’t had that comfort since Zachary hid her from me five years ago. But I do when she’s with you. My decision was made when you told me about your past, about your life, and I still chose you. I took everything I knew into consideration when I made my choice. My daughter and I have never been safer or happier than we are when we’re with you.” A sad laugh forced from my chest as I let my head fall again. “I thought you’d already decided not to let me go. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  “Wrong? I—damn it, Sutton.” He released a slow breath, his alluring presence of peace and strength pressing closer around me as he stepped forward. “You say that like I don’t want you. Like it isn’t slowly killing me to keep myself from you for even a second. Like my blood doesn’t hum with the need to make you mine forever.”

  My eyelids shut with a weighted exhale when his body pressed against mine.

  A large hand slid slowly around my waist, gripping my stomach possessively. His forehead dropped to my head, and his mouth skimmed the shell of my ear.

  “Sutton, I won’t let you go.”

  A warning.

  A plea.

  His pains and his fears and his wants in a few words that moved through my veins and filled my soul.

  “Then don’t.”

  No sooner had the words left my lips than I was turned and his mouth was crashing down onto mine.

  Our kiss was all-consuming.

  Every brush of his lips and stroke of his tongue was a claim. Every revered grip on my body was a vow that left a trail of lingering heat.

  Nothing had ever felt like this. Too much and not nearly enough.

  As if each touch was another brand on my heart.

  As if I needed him to breathe.

  My fingers trailed through his hair as he lifted me onto the edge of the counter, my head tilting back as he made a slow descent down my neck.

  A whimper escaped me when he hitched my knees around his waist and stepped closer, giving me the slightest tease of pressure where I was aching for him.

  “Yeah, sorry . . .”

  I scrambled back, choking on the shocked cry when I opened my eyes to find Jess in the bathroom with us.

  “This can’t wait,” she continued with an unapologetic shrug.

  Conor’s body seemed to expand to cover mine, his back heaving with his exaggerated breaths.

  He didn’t turn to look at Jess. But I knew from the coldness in his eyes and the bite in his words that he was using the mirror to stare her down.

  “Better be a damn good reason.”

  “I said it couldn’t wait.” She looked at her nails before dropping her hand. “Besides, I was expecting to walk in on something different since I was told you were in here getting your hair cut.” Her mouth split into a wide grin. “Which looks amazing.”

  “Jess,” Conor growled.

  “Fine,” she mumbled with an eye roll. “But we need you now.”

  As soon as she left, Conor let out a slow breath and looked at me, hesitation warring on his features. “I have to go.”

  “I heard.”

  “Tell me that you know I don’t want to.”

  A faint smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

  I dragged my hands over his beard and pulled him closer to kiss him slowly, thoroughly.

  “I think we’re finally on the same page,” I whispered against his lips.

  He stole another quick kiss before helping me off the counter and stepping away.

  At the last second before he reached the door, he rocked back and ate up the distance between us. Curling an arm around my waist, he tugged me close and dropped his mouth to my ear.

  I was blushing and aching and had an appeal for him to stay on the tip of my tongue when he left.

  His hushed words of making good on his earlier promise and what he planned to do to me lingered behind while I cleaned the shears and clippers with a lazy smile.

  That smile and warmth gave way to a sickening and cold fear when I left the bathroom and saw Conor’s bag on the dresser in the bedroom.

  Next to it were the crumpled papers and my ring.

  Let’s play a game.

  Let’s play a game.

  Let’s play a game.

  Over and over and over again.

  “How did you find us?” I breathed, as if Zachary would be standing behind me and about to answer.

  The way I couldn’t stop shaking and the chills that flashed across my skin made it feel as if he might be.

  I wrapped my arms around my body and turned, wanting to get away from the sight of anything that had to do with him when a thought slammed into me so forcefully I thought I might be sick.

  Those notes had been on every one of my and Lexi’s clothes, my ring had been tied to the belt of my robe.

  Conor’s clothes had gone out and come back with ours.

  I ran across the room and hurried to open his bag, my trembling hands making it difficult to work a simple zipper.

  I thought through today, through the packing and the outfits. Conor had changed since we’d moved suites—I was positive he’d changed clothes this evening.

 
But when I finally got into his bag, all the cleaned laundry was still in a haphazard lump from when he’d rushed through packing, still in their bag and untouched.

  “Please no, please no, please no,” I breathed as I ripped the bag off and hurried through item after item of clothing.

  Nothing.

  Not a single sign of Zachary having left anything for Conor to find.

  I was so dizzy with relief that I wasn’t sure what relieved me more.

  If it was because there weren’t any more notes or because he wasn’t targeting Conor.

  Maybe it was because he hadn’t left something for Conor to find that would ruin everything . . .

  I tried to calm my racing heart as I placed the clothes back into the bag and attempted to recreate the same haphazard lump they’d been in before.

  Once I had his bag zipped back up, I hurried away from it, from the ring and the notes that felt tainted and evil, and out of the room.

  Only to enter into a tension-filled room full of doubting stares.

  Conor

  “Nice,” Diggs said as I jogged over to where they were all huddled around the kitchen table, running his hand over his hair. “I dig it.”

  “We have a problem,” Kieran said irritably.

  I cut a look at Jess. “I figured.”

  “A your-new-girlfriend-is-lying kind of problem,” Einstein added without looking away from her laptop.

  I slowed in my last steps toward them, doubt for both Sutton and what they were saying swirling through me. I made my way over to a chair and gripped the top of it, needing to grasp something. “Listening.”

  “Phoenix had files from the Tennessee Gentlemen’s attorneys in the black folder,” Einstein began.

  I nodded, already knowing this.

  There was a long list on their payroll of attorneys who helped with legal matters . . . and with hiding information.

  “I found something in one of those files that didn’t match what Sutton had told us, and then Kieran and Jess finally found all the real blueprints tonight.”

  We’d been waiting on the blueprints. The twins had been waiting on them.

  I had a feeling I didn’t want to know what they’d found.