With a final glare in Nate’s direction, the inmate began to meticulously fold the piece of paper, first in half, and then again and again, until it was a tiny square that he slipped into his pocket. The care with which he treated it made Nate wonder what was on it. He could have demanded to see it. But given the fact that Higgins had tried to gift it to him in the first place, it seemed like more energy than the fuss was worth when, in the end, it would probably wind up being a crudely written poem.
The buzzer sounded, signalling that rec time was over. In the bustle of escorting the inmates back to their cells, and then in the relief of his shift ending, the strange note faded from Nate’s mind.
He had promised to call Alexa the second he was done. It might have been egotistical of him, but... he’d kind of expected her to answer when he called.
Instead, he was connected to her voicemail. He hesitated for a moment, decided that he didn’t care if he looked like a besotted fool, and dialed again, thinking that maybe she’d been in the shower.
This time, there wasn’t even a ring, which meant that she was either out of range, or had turned her phone off.
For a moment rejection settled under his skin. He didn’t suffer from low self-esteem, and knew that what he and Alexa had was new but strong. But the fact remained that he was working through some hellishly big issues. They both were, and he wouldn’t blame her if she bailed.
Wouldn’t blame her, but he would be miserable.
Still... to just shut him out? That didn’t seem like the woman he was coming to know.
But calling her a third time... that was bordering on creepy. So he tucked his cell into his pocket, got into his car, and pulled out of the prison complex.
He’d resisted the urge to call a third time, but the short drive into town was just long enough to have worry settling like a stone. Call it a gut feeling, intuition, he didn’t care, but instead of heading home, he found himself parking in front of Estelle’s Blooms.
It was a Monday; the shop didn’t close until six. But here it was, five thirty, and the lights were off, the door locked.
Shading his eyes, Nate looked at the apartment above—a light was burning in the bedroom window, but he didn’t see any movement.
Any signs of life.
“Shit.” He knew he was likely overreacting—Alexa was a grown woman, and likely wouldn’t appreciate his interference—but he just couldn’t shake that heavy feeling in his gut. The one that told him that something wasn’t quite right here.
Calling her wasn’t working. On impulse, he knocked on her neighbor’s door, wincing a bit when he heard a cacophony of cat noises. After what seemed to be an eternity, an elderly woman answered the door, scowling when she saw him.
“Got the wrong door, don’t you, sonny?” She raised an eyebrow at him, then stopped to pick up a fat ball of fluff. Tucking said fluff under her arm, she eyed Nate suspiciously when he didn’t move. “I suppose you want to know where the Kendrick girl has gone.”
“She left?” Once again, the tendrils of doubt tried to grab hold of him, and once again, he yanked them out by the root. “Can you tell me anything else?”
“You know, my husband was just the same as you.” The old woman banged the cane she was clasping in one hand on the floor. “You men need to learn that we women just need a break from time to time. Away from your incessant demands. Always about your needs, you men.”
Nate refrained from rolling his eyes. “You’re absolutely right. But in this case, I’m more concerned for her well-being than in my, ah, needs.” He grimaced a bit, not wanting to dwell on that with the octogenarian.
The woman glowered at him. A second cat appeared to wind its way around her ankles, demanding attention, and she unceremoniously shoved the first one at Nate. “Here. Hold Muffy for me.”
“Ah...” Nate really had no choice but to catch the white cotton puff that was launched in his general direction. It looked up at him, batted at his nose, and told him with unblinking eyes that it wasn’t overly impressed with what it saw.
The woman caught the new cat up, gnarled fingers running through its fur while she stared at Nate, apparently contemplating his question. Not until the cat settled down into the crook of his arm did she nod, sniff, and reply.
“Girl piled a bunch of art supplies in her car about an hour ago. Took off like hellhounds were on her tale.” The woman gestured dismissively with her hand. “If I could go back a few decades, I’d get my husband to buy a building somewhere else. Comings and goings and drama, nonstop at that place. I’ve had about enough of it.”
“Did she... seem okay?” He was overreacting. Totally overreacting. But... something just didn’t feel right.
The woman rolled her eyes, dropped the cat she was holding, and grabbed the one cradled in Nate’s arms. It screeched and dug in with its claws, right over his stab wound, and stars danced in front of his eyes.
“Not every woman needs a hero. You remember that. She’s survived till now. She’ll keep on surviving.” Then the woman slammed the door in Nate’s face, leaving him wondering if she was maybe, possibly, just a little bit senile.
Frowning, he returned to his car. So Alexa had taken off with her paints. He supposed that an artist might get so inspired that she just had to go create, right that second—but the Alexa he knew wasn’t like that. She might have the sudden urge to go paint... but she’d make herself wait until her work day was over to do it.
Still... what was he to do? Like her neighbor had pointed out, she was a grown woman. Likely, she was fine.
But what he’d finally decided was his inner cop voice was still shouting at him, so instead of heading to the Chat ‘n Chew or home, he found himself driving up and down the streets of Florence. He’d feel like a slightly obsessive, overprotective ass later, but right now, it was the only thing that soothed his jangled nerves.
He didn’t see Alexa or her car anywhere in the town, and though he checked it continually, there were no calls or texts from her on his phone, either.
Dusk fell as he drove, widening his search to the area around town—the area that housed the prisons.
Still nothing.
Frustrated, feeling useless and with dread holding him firmly in its hands, he drove back to town, planning to do one last drive by of the flower shop, then head home to... he wasn’t sure.
The light in Alexa’s bedroom window was still on, but this time, he could see a figure moving.
Thank God.
Parking so abruptly that the tires squealed on the pavement, Nate jumped from his car and rushed at the shop. Stabbing his finger on the doorbell, he rocked back on his heels while he waited for Alexa to respond.
In his pocket his phone buzzed with an incoming text.
The door’s unlocked.
Those three words meant multiple things—not only that she was waiting for him, but that she’d expected him to be looking for her. Worrying about her and yet she hadn’t gotten in contact.
Grinding his teeth together against a sudden surge of anger, he opened the door—it was indeed unlocked—and made a point of locking it again behind him. The chilly air in the cooler did nothing to cool him off as he headed up the now familiar stairs, starting to speak as soon as he pushed into the apartment.
“Damn it, Alexa. I’ve been worried sick—” But she wasn’t in the living room. Was no longer in the bedroom where he’d seen her shadow. Following the faint sound of water running, Nate cautiously knocked on the bathroom door. The lack of response had his gut twisting yet again, so he twisted the knob and slowly pushed his way into the dense cloud of heavy steam.
“Alexa?” Nate blinked against the moist air, which clung to his hair, his clothes and his skin. Then he found her, wearing nothing but one of those damn cat T-shirts, perched on the edge of the toilet, arms wrapped tightly around her torso. Beside her, scalding water roared into the enamel tub, great billowing clouds of mist rising in its wake.
Wordlessly, Alexa looked up at him. Moist
ure clung to her eyelashes, to the tendrils of hair that had escaped from her ponytail, and despite the heat in the tiny room, her creamy skin was white as snow. When he stepped forward, clasped her hands in his, he found that her fingers, too, were icy cold.
“Alexa. Honey. What’s going on?” He made to pick her up, wrap her in his arms, but she shook her head and pulled away, which was like a knife slicing through his soul.
“This.” She rasped out just the one word, gesturing with a tilt of her head to the counter. There Nate found a yellowing newspaper clipping, its edges curling from the dampness in the air.
The headline screamed out at Nate as he carefully picked up the paper, and without reading anymore, he turned to Alexa and, clasping her under her arms and behind her knees, picked her up like he would a child.
“Oh, baby.” He crushed her to his chest, trying to convey with his body how very sorry he was. “Oh, baby. I am so sorry.”
The feeling of his arms around her finally seemed to stir a reaction in her; she buried her face in his neck, a shudder working over her body. “I wanted to know. I came here because I thought I needed to remember.”
Nate placed a kiss on the top of her head. Damn it, he wished he could take her pain inside of him, to deal with it himself. Anything would be better than the agony of watching her suffer.
“You couldn’t have anticipated this.” There were no magic words to make this better. Nate knew that all he could do was let her know he was here, that he had her back.
“I wanted to know,” she repeated, pulling back to look him in the eyes. The despair he saw there tore his heart in two. “I wanted to know. But this... this is worse. My father raped a woman and killed her. That’s in my blood. What does that make me?”
“No. Do not think like that.” Shaking his head firmly, Nate shifted, sitting down on the edge of the tub, arranging Alexa so that she was on his lap, facing him, his arms wound around her tightly.
“But it does. My father is part of me. So that... what he did... that’s part of me too.” Alexa started to shake, an unidentifiable noise starting from somewhere in the depths of her chest. Before he could tell her how very wrong she was, the dam overflowed, and he felt her tears, hotter even than the water still cascading into the bath behind him, burning his chest.
Ignoring it, he just pulled her even closer, murmuring words meant to soothe, running hands over her hair, her back, the way one would a skittish animal. She cried as though in a pain the likes of which he’d never seen before, and Nate—a man used to action, to fixing things, felt completely and utterly useless in the face of so much grief.
When the shaking slowed, and the flow of tears lessened—and Nate thought she was capable of hearing him again—he took her chin in his hands and tilted her head so that she was looking him in the face.
“It doesn’t work like that, Alexa.” He continued where their conversation had left off. “The person that you are inside has nothing to do with your father. That thing that makes us who we are—our soul—that comes from someplace else. But evil? That’s shaped by our flesh, by our experiences here on Earth, by our body’s limitations.”
Alexa looked up at Nate wordlessly, not blinking, but at least seeming to listen, which was a start. He continued, not realizing that he was repeating things that had been said to him throughout his years of Catholic schooling—things that had never really made sense until now.
“Being human can warp us. But that’s a choice. So now your choice is to let what you’ve discovered shape the rest of your life, or to realize that it’s on your father, and has nothing to do with you.”
“Do you really believe that?” Alexa’s voice was hoarse, as though she hadn’t spoken in years. Nate sensed that his answer would weigh heavily.
He thought back to that night in Los Angeles, to the memory of the life leaving his partner’s eyes. Of the young kid who had been so desperate that he’d made the wrong choice, and would spend the rest of his life paying for it.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I do.”
In his arms, Alexa stilled, then pushed herself in even closer to his chest. They sat still for a moment, the only sound in the room the rush of water behind them.
“I feel dead inside,” she finally whispered, and he could just barely hear her. He felt as though a fist was squeezing his heart.
“I know.” He did, he knew exactly. Just like he finally understood how important it was to go on living, to understand what a gift life was.
Finally, finally, Alexa relaxed in his arms. Burying her face against his chest, she seemed to be listening to his heartbeat, counting out the beats before meeting his stare.
“I’m, glad you’re here, Nate. I’m really glad that you’re here.”
* * *
Tracy had been doing her best to maintain radio silence, to give Alexa the space she needed to digest that certain things in her life had been a lie. The problem?
There was more that Tracy needed to share with her daughter. Now that she’d removed one log from the dam, it seemed as though there was no stopping the flood.
The rest of it? She couldn’t express herself via pen and paper, she needed to be there. To be a mother to her daughter when the tower of secrets crashed down onto both of their heads.
So she climbed into her car with only a hastily packed bag, and set off for the one place she’d sworn to never return to.
Chapter Thirteen
“Alexa. Alexa! Wake up.”
Alexa screamed and shoved at the solid length of muscle that pressed against her. It instantly pulled away, leaving her free to claw her way up out of the sheets, heart hammering so fast she felt sick.
“Alexa.” Swallowing past the sour taste of fear that coated her throat, she looked toward the sound of the voice.
Nate. Of course it was Nate. It had been just a dream, and she was here, safe, with Nate.
“I’m sorry.” This time, instead of mistaking him for the dark force in her dream and shoving him away, she launched herself at him, burrowing into his arms. “God, what a nightmare.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Pulling her into the vee of his legs, he settled her back to his front, fastening his arms securely around her waist. Letting her know he was there. As she nestled into him she felt his body react, his cock hardening against the small of her back, but he didn’t make a move, reinforcing to her that she’d found a good man.
Maybe even the right man.
He didn’t push her to talk, either, which was why she was able to. After taking a moment to bask in his warmth, the words that had been frozen by the icy fear in her dream thawed enough that she was able to speak.
“I think... I think I was dreaming about my accident. That’s the only reason I can think of for me to be that scared.” She swallowed, winced at how raw her throat felt. “Except I wasn’t in a car, didn’t hear anything like you’d expect—screeching tires, crumpling metal. It was just... dark. Except that I could see this line of barbed wire, stretched out across my vision.” She shuddered, nestling into the comfort of Nate’s arms.
“Do you think it was a memory coming back?” Nate pressed a kiss into her hair, the way he’d taken to doing—and the fact that it had already become a habit between them warmed her heart and gave her hope.
Alexa frowned at the question. “I think it must be.”
But that didn’t feel exactly right. There wasn’t that spark of recognition, that instant relief that occurred when the brain snapped two pieces of a puzzle together. But maybe that was because the memories had been buried for so long.
On the bedside table, Alexa’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. Leaning over to check it, she felt her heart sink when she read the illuminated message.
“Ellie’s coming home today.” She felt her stomach do a slow roll. Replacing the phone, she caught up the book that she cursed ever finding, holding it in her lap as she settled back against Nate. She’d pulled it from the pocket of Nate’s coat the night befor
e.
Twisting so that she could look up at him, she felt dread coil inside of her. “What do I do about this, Nate? The way I found it, the fact that she was defensive about me going up into the attic... my gut tells me this is about her.”
Nate grimaced. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“Then she knows something about it,” Alexa persisted, sitting up straighter, “and I know you think it was her, too. You just don’t want to say so until you have more evidence.”
“Old habits die hard.” He ran fingers through his hair, leaving messy spikes behind. “Which is why I don’t think you should say anything about it just yet.”
“How can I not?’ Alexa traced her fingers down the spine of the book. “Unless I go put it back where I found it and pretend that I never read it, she’s going to know I found it. She’s going to go check that it’s there, first thing.”
Nate sighed, seemed about to speak, when Alexa realized something else.
“Oh God, she doesn’t know about our dad, either. She didn’t even know he was dead, so I’m sure she doesn’t know.” Horror was red hot. “How the hell am I supposed to tell her that?”
Twisting in the sheets, she rose to her knees beside Nate, hoping he had an answer, but realizing that it was her decision to make.
“Remember some of what I said last night before you make yourself sick, okay?” Threading his fingers in her hair, he pulled her close for a kiss. The simple act of skin to skin contact with this man was enough to calm her.
“Worry about getting yourself through the day first, Alexa. Everything else will come from there.”
Sound advice, Alexa thought as she sank into the kiss. If only she had the slightest inkling of what that ‘everything else’ might entail.
* * *
Nate’s supervisor was waiting at the entrance of the prison when Nate arrived at work later that morning.
“Fury. The warden needs to see us in his office.” The man spun on his heel, clearly in a hurry and expecting Nate to follow. Nate was more than a bit startled by this announcement.
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