My high heel twists in a sewer grate, and I yelp as I start to fall.
Stone catches me, pulling me into his arms before I can land on the street. One shoe stays stuck in the grate. The other flies off and lands on the pavement. I’m barefoot, and my feet don’t hurt for the first time all night. It’s enough to make me laugh. I must look like a maniac, wearing a ten-thousand-dollar gown while he has on a leather jacket with a T-shirt and jeans. Happiness courses through me, the certainty that I’m doing something right, even as I make the biggest mistake of my life.
Sirens sound in the distance. Liam hadn’t been bluffing about the cops, but then that doesn’t surprise me. But they got here fast.
“Sirens,” I whisper. Meaning, we have to hurry.
The tender look he gives me melts something deep inside my belly. He opens the door and carefully sets me in the truck. It’s not a limo, but it might as well be. It’s better than that. He buckles me in, heads around to his side, and we pull out.
We’re halfway down the block when I see the flash of lights bouncing off the buildings to the right of us. They won’t catch us. Affection fills me as I look at Stone’s hard profile. They won’t catch him.
“You came for me,” I say, still stupidly excited about that.
He grunts, turning onto the freeway and merging with the other cars and trucks.
I run my bare feet along the rough carpet at the foot of his truck. There aren’t any old wrappers tossed into the bottom, but it’s not exactly clean either. There are too many rips and burns in the fabric for that. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quiet. We need to talk.”
It’s ridiculous, but my mind goes to the silver foil in my clutch. I have a condom. Protection. This was the night when I would lose my virginity, and now I’m with a man who can take it.
“Talk about what?” I ask in a voice I hope is seductive.
He gives me a sideways look, dark and severe. “Your father.”
My mouth goes dry. I look down, twisting the soft part of my clutch. I’m not good at hiding my emotions. And right now they’re lit up like a neon sign, flashing guilty guilty guilty. “My father?” I say as lightly as I can. “Why would you want to talk about my father?”
“It’s serious, what I have to tell you, little bird.”
The sirens get louder. Closer. I give him a frantic look. He glances in the rearview, once, then again. His voice calm and steady as he says, “We’re okay.”
“You sure?”
There’s a grim look on his face. What does he know about my father? Does he know he’s the Innkeeper? Keeper? Is he going to hurt my father? I’ve gone from joy to dread in the space of a heartbeat.
He’s pulling off the highway. It’s the Big Moosehorn Park exit. But instead of heading down to the river, we go the other way, up a road that turns into dirt and rough gravel. It’s a bumpy ride up here, jolting me out of my panic.
“Where are we going?” My voice comes out small.
“A place I like to sit to think.”
Ten minutes through the woods, twisting and turning through it all, and he’s pulling over in front of a tiny cottage. Ten minutes of wondering what Stone could possibly want to say to me except the worst thing in the world. Ten minutes of wondering how I can plead for my father’s life.
He looks over at me. “You can’t tell anyone this is here.”
“How would I even find it again?” Except I remember the path by heart.
He leads me around to the back, to a door with the hinge broken off. “This used to be a ranger station before they built the nice one down by the road. I fixed it up two summers ago.”
It’s old but clean. He lights a gas lamp, and then another. “Remember my friend Grayson, who was framed for murder?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Your friend in jail.”
The place glows, tiny and cozy. A red plaid blanket is thrown over a small couch. There are books and papers around.
“Well, he’s out now.”
I turn to him, forgetting my nervousness. “They let him go? That’s great, Stone! You were so worried about him. He was like a little brother to you.”
He tosses me a bottle of water. “Let him go…that’s not exactly how I’d put it, little bird.”
“Oh my God.” If they didn’t let him go, that means he left on his own. A prison escape? Stone’s expression is unrepentant, which means he probably helped.
“It’s all good.” He grabs what looks like a giant sketch pad from the table and settles down on the old couch, sinking into the cushions. It looks like the most comfortable place in the world.
I sit next to him. It feels strangely natural, like I’ve been here forever.
He sets the pad on his lap but doesn’t open it. He just slides his hand over it. Thinking. There’s something different about him, but I don’t know what.
“It’s amazing to have Grayson back,” he says finally. “I didn’t let on to my guys how worried I was about him. Things are…different with Grayson. Not really in a bad way. I think he grew up a little. Calling his own shots in some ways…”
He looks over at me, pinning me with that intense gaze, eyes deep pools of green that seem to go on forever. It comes to me that what he said about Grayson calling his own shots is significant in a way I don’t understand. Like maybe it changed something for Stone, too.
Or maybe for us. Because something is definitely different. It’s been a year and a half since I saw him last, but it’s not just that. He doesn’t look different, but he feels different. Stronger and more solid. More purposeful.
The air seems to heat and thicken between us.
“But he’s back,” I supply. “I'm glad. However he got out, I'm glad, Stone.” I find that I mean that.
“Me, too,” he says. My breath stutters as he reaches up and slides a strand of hair from my face, grazing the side of my forehead with his knuckle. The small touch burns, sends waves of heat through me. “You look beautiful tonight,” he says. “So goddamn beautiful, it kills me.”
“You look beautiful, too.”
He narrows his eyes, as though I said something silly. He tugs at the frayed collar of the soft-looking green T-shirt under his leather jacket. “Good, because this is my best T-shirt. Special occasions only.”
He’s being sarcastic, but the T-shirt goes with his eyes, and it looks soft, and the collar is perfectly worn below his thickly muscled neck. His pulse thrums beneath his jaw line, and for a moment, I imagine pressing my lips to it. Would his skin feel warm? “I mean it, Stone.”
He keeps his gaze on me for a long time, and I’m acutely aware of us alone, here in this simple, masculine space that feels so much like him.
He seems to remember himself. “There are things I need to tell you, Brooke.”
I nod, tense again.
“We…had a talk with the man who helped to frame Grayson,” he says.
A sense of something darker—something unsaid—arrows through me. Had a talk. They’d do more than talk with the man who helped to send Grayson to prison.
Is the man still alive?
“We got some new info. It’s bad.” He pauses, runs his hands over the pad. “There are other boys out there—right now. Being held, just like we were.”
My stomach turns over. “Where? Right now? Can you get them out?”
“We don’t know where they are. Yet,” he growls.
There are kids being held in a basement like the one I saw. Touching a burning hot rivet as their only sign of hope. I can imagine the heat against my finger. “Did you tell the police?”
He looks at me like I said something outrageous. Like I asked whether he told the Martian delegation or something. “This city, you have no idea, do you? The police have been the best protection these guys could ever have.”
“Oh.”
“It’s up to us,” he says. “They’re out there, being kept in a hole like we were, nobody giving a fuck. Or at least, that’s what they’re thinking
. But they have us. They don’t know it, but they do.”
He’s silent for a bit, staring down at that pad.
They have you, I think. And it makes them amazingly lucky. I don’t know where the thought comes from, but I’m thinking it with all my heart.
“We’re going to find them,” he continues, “and we’re going to make everybody who put them down there sorry they were ever born.”
I nod, swallow past the dryness in my throat. I can’t believe my father would knowingly be involved in the horror of boys being imprisoned like that. But what do I say if he asks me point-blank about Keeper? I can’t let him hurt my dad.
There’s no way my dad is a part of this. Even if he let someone rent a property way back when, there’s no way he’s helping keep kids captive right now.
Stone opens the pad. “I need to show you this.”
My pulse races as he turns to a page full of pencil scribbles—words in circles with lines connecting them, a massive, tangled web, like a flowchart or mind map or something. “They’re going to see that somebody gives a shit. Finding out about these kids has changed everything for us.”
“And you’re sure about…more boys being held?”
“Oh yeah. It’s from somebody who wouldn’t have lied.”
I focus back down on the chart. It reminds me of the kind that police make when they’re trying to solve a crime, but instead of photos, there are names. Madsen is scribbled in one circle. Governor Dorman. Shock squeezes my chest. “The governor was involved?”
“That’s who we had a talk with,” Stone says. “That’s who helped to frame Grayson.”
“He died recently. It was in the papers. He had a heart attack.”
“Wasn’t a heart attack,” Stone says simply. He points to a small image. A house—the house. “Whoever owned the house we were kept in, that information is lost. Or more accurately, it was destroyed. We’ve been looking at all the big players in real estate from around that time. We’ve run down their information. Questioned a few…” He doesn’t elaborate on questioned. He means tortured. Maybe killed. “It’s a lot of dead ends. Nobody wants to talk. But then we were looking at who was small potatoes back then. Your father was just starting out as a real estate broker twenty years back.”
My pulse races. “Was he?” I say, as if the timeline has just occurred to me. Inside my organs have shriveled and tangled up, torn apart by guilt, but who do I feel guilty toward? Stone, for keeping information from him? Or my father, for even thinking of betraying him?
“I know it’s a long shot, but maybe he could remember something from that time. Maybe somebody asking around about abandoned places.” He points to a circle with Keeper written in it. “Or maybe he knows who this guy is.”
“Twenty years ago,” I say.
“It’s a lot to ask, but I wanted to show this to you, so that you’d know everything I do. And maybe you could talk to him. Even if he doesn't know this guy Keeper, he could know something important. If you could get even one piece of the puzzle. Like, maybe he knew Dorman back then. Or maybe he remembers something Madsen said, or somebody else who’s involved.”
My heart’s pounding like a jackhammer. “So you don’t know who Keeper is.”
“No, but see how many lines connect him to the other players?”
So many lines. Was my father really connected to that many players in this horrible underground kidnapping ring? How is it possible he had that many connections without knowing? “My father might not have known,” I say, but my voice is shaky. “He didn’t.”
“He knew something,” Stone growls, more impatient now. “Even if he doesn’t know Keeper, he has to know something. You don’t work in real estate in this city for this long without hearing something.”
Oh God. “He’s more on the construction side now.”
“Still want to talk to him.”
I nod, but there’s a lump in my throat. “Because boys are out there now.”
“Not for much longer.”
“You’re going to free them.”
“Fucking right we are.”
I reach up and straighten his collar. He really does seem different. It’s this new focus on saving those kids. I like it. I love it. But how can I keep something from him?
But God, how can I turn over my father on a silver platter?
I’ve seen my father come home, exhausted to the bone from trying to keep his company afloat. And I’ve seen him smile at me, asking to see the poem I’ve written or watch my new gymnastics routine. He always found time for me, no matter how young and silly I was. He could never be involved in something that hurt children. Not knowingly.
And Stone won’t ask questions. He won’t care about nuance. He’ll question my father using every method of torture he knows. Something tells me it’s a lot.
“I’ll talk to him,” I say, my throat tight. How am I going to ask something like that? Hey, Dad. Do you remember anything about selling young boys on the black market? That will be a fun family conversation, but it’s better than Stone doing it.
“Thank you,” he says softly. “This is important.”
I reach over and take his hand. Warm and soft. Heavy on mine, years of rough living forming calluses. I squeeze. It’s like holding a tiger by the paw. “Of course it’s important. You are important.”
He shakes his head. “The kids.”
Doesn’t he see that he’s one of them? Even after all these years. But then he never thought of himself as one of them. Even when he was locked in that basement, he saw himself as the caretaker. The one responsible for the children like Grayson. His guys, he calls them.
“Where is Grayson?” I ask, looking around the small cabin. “If this place is safe, why doesn’t he stay here?”
“Oh, we have somewhere else in the city. It’s secure as hell. Completely off the grid. This is a place that only I go.”
And now me. His guys are like little brothers to him. And he doesn’t bring them here? My heart seems to expand, imagining him trusting me. And then pop like a balloon. I’m betraying that trust by not telling him everything I know.
The cabin has one main room with the sofa that we’re on. Off in the corner I can see a rudimentary kitchen, a hot plate and a freestanding stainless steel sink. There’s a door that I assume leads to a bathroom. I wander toward it, because I can’t bear to be so close to Stone—and so far away, at the same time. It’s ripping me in two.
Instead of a bathroom, I find a bedroom with an actual bed with white sheets and a navy-blue wool throw over the top. Walls of rough pine. Does Stone sleep here? He said he only comes here to think, but I realize he means for longer than an hour. Maybe even days.
“Why did you come to prom?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the bed. I’m avoiding something, not looking at him, but I don’t know who it’s protecting really—me or him.
I hear him come up to the door. He stops there, staying behind me. Even so, the air seems to crackle between us.
“Are you sorry I screwed up your date?” he asks, his voice neutral.
Shivers go over me. “Are you?”
“Hell no. That fucker didn’t deserve to touch you.”
That makes me smile, even though it feels a little sad. “Who deserves to touch me?”
“No one,” he says with such stark honesty that tears prick my eyes.
I turn to look at him, then. His worn leather jacket hangs open, revealing the soft green T-shirt over faded jeans. He’s fully clothed but strangely naked to me.
Because I can see him.
I can see that there is a gaping hole in his chest, a place where pride and safety and self-respect should go. It was ripped out of him a long time ago, but I only see it now. He couldn’t let Liam touch me, but he can’t bring himself to touch me either.
My feet move on their own, crossing the small space. And then I’m kneeling in front of him. It’s a position of supplication, but one of strength.
He looks down at me. For once I can’t
read his expression. But I read his body. He’s aching, wild with fury and loneliness, an abandoned bear cub.
Completely dangerous. Completely unused to affection.
I thought I was the innocent one. Never had sex. Barely even kissed a boy. But how many times has Stone had sex with tenderness? Maybe never.
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask softly.
There isn’t jealousy inside me—not knowing what he’s suffered. I want him to have found love, a hundred times over. He deserves a thousand lifetimes of it.
“Yes,” he says, his voice hoarse, gazing down at me with raw pain in his eyes.
I hate the pain I see there. Is that what love means to him? Suffering?
I may be naive, but I know love doesn’t have to be about suffering. And it doesn’t have to be about drunk boys in dark alleys.
There’s something better in the world—I know it as sure as I know I’m kneeling in front of this strong, beautiful man who sees himself as a monster.
“Did you go to prom?” I whisper.
He laughs, uneven. “Fuck no.”
“You were still…” In the basement. The words are etched into the air.
“Nah, we were out by then. On the run. Definitely not worried about being tardy to class.”
“Did you miss it?” Maybe it was good that he came to prom night. Like some sad little replacement for what he never had, except I remember how he looked in that alley. Forlorn. It didn’t replace anything. It just highlighted what he never had.
“No,” he says, but I can tell he’s lying. “I knew that shit wasn’t for me. None of it. Tuxedos and flowers. What the fuck would I do with that? It’s not for me. I can never have a normal life.”
The statement rings inside me like a bell; I’ve been made hollow.
I reach out a hand, slide the pads of my fingers along the side of his wrist. His whole body vibrates under my touch like he’s about to shatter. Like he’s made of glass, even though I know he’s got strong bones and hard muscles and an unbreakable spirit.
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 100