I’d been asking myself the same question and hadn’t come up with an answer I liked.
“Because he knew what he did was fucked, that’s why,” Brayden said. “He could’ve killed you and he knows it. That’s why he yelled at you, why he wanted you gone. He doesn’t trust himself to be alone with you.”
The blood rushed in my ears as my heart pounded. That’s not true. It isn’t. It can’t be…
A humorless smile curved Brayden’s lips. “See? Even you know it. And you didn’t want to go home, because not only did you not want to be alone, you didn’t want to be where he could find you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” He crossed his arms, daring me to say otherwise. But nothing I said was going to appease him, not right now, anyway. I knew he was just looking out for me, but he didn’t know Tor like I did. The man was crazy about me. We’d just gotten lost in the heat of the moment.
“Look, we’re not going to agree on anything tonight, so why don’t you just sit back down and help me eat some of this. You can even turn on football if you want.”
Brayden’s mouth quirked. “It’s not football season.”
“Fine, then basketball or hockey or whatever else you like that’s on.” I needed something other than his judgment to fill up the vast room or I was going to go insane. Anything to get my mind off what had happened in the last few hours.
Brayden’s eyes narrowed, and then he pointed at me and said, “This isn’t over.”
“Fine. You can talk my head off tomorrow.”
“Fine.”
He sat back down at the opposite end of the couch, kicking his feet up to rest on the coffee table, and then hit a button on the remote. As the loud chatter of commercials kicked on and Brayden began to flip through for something to watch, I let my mind wander.
What was Tor doing now? Was he still all alone in his empty condo? Or maybe he’d gone down to the Wolfe’s Den. He’d been angry, so angry, and what better way to work off aggression than to whip someone, right?
I didn’t want to think about that. The thought of him touching someone else made my stomach twist into knots and had bile rising in my throat. But as I looked back down at my phone, the blank screen taunted me. He hadn’t called. Hadn’t texted. Not a word in hours. When would I hear from him again?
“Is that okay with you?” Brayden asked, and I looked over to him.
“Uh, sorry. Is what okay?”
“Enter the Dragon is on, is that cool?” When I stared at him blankly, he said, “Dude, Bruce Lee. You’ve never seen it?” I shook my head and his mouth fell open. “What the… Okay, yeah. We’re watching this.”
Shrugging, I grabbed another sandwich. I didn’t care what he wanted to watch; I was just grateful for the subject change.
Martial arts movies for me were as brain-numbing as it got, and even as I tried to lose myself in the film, my mind drifted, only to be snapped back into sharp focus as one of the characters greeted the lead, calling him Lee.
I’ve got you, Lee…
My hand froze as the words Tor had spoken right before I lost consciousness emerged full force. I’d forgotten, or maybe I thought I’d been hearing things, but now I remembered with clarity Tor saying those words. Lost in the moment, he’d called me Lee. Wasn’t that what the nutso woman at the café this afternoon had said her brother was named? Lee…Wood, was it?
Suddenly, I had to know. Dropping the rest of the sandwich back on the tray, I threw off the blanket and got to my feet. “Where’s your laptop?” I asked.
“Charging in my room. Why?”
I took off up the stairs and grabbed the laptop from his desk, and when I came back down, Brayden eyed me curiously.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I remembered something someone said to me today. I just need to check and see…” I opened the laptop, and when I saw it was password protected, I handed it off to Brayden.
“You’re not emailing him, are you?”
“No, I’m not emailing him.”
He typed in his password and gave it back to me, and as I brought up a search engine, I realized my hands were shaking.
There’s nothing to be worried about. She was just talking nonsense. But it doesn’t hurt to check.
I sucked my lower lip into my mouth, and it still smarted from where Tor had pierced the skin earlier. What had she called Tor? Something Covington? Todd?
I typed out Todd Covington and hit enter. Scrolling through the pages of articles and websites related to the search, I didn’t see anything that would be remotely related to Tor, and after several minutes, I relaxed a little.