“It’s better this way.”
“Demitri.” Pain bled from her. After a moment, she stood with a sigh and turned to face me. Grabbing my shoulders, she pled, “Don’t let what happened before stop you from loving again.”
“Love isn’t something people like us have the luxury of. It’s used against you. It’s used to slowly destroy you over years. I was ignorant enough to think I could have it, and it ruined me. I won’t make that mistake again.”
They’d come.
The Borellos had come, and they’d left Holloway untouched except for the guesthouse.
Not one person had a suspicion it might’ve been someone else. Not one person was under the delusion they’d come looking for anything or anyone but me. Not one person planned to retaliate, in fear it would provoke them to come again and again until they had what they wanted.
While the men continued to argue over what to do with me, I’d sat silently between them in the conference room, determined to force all memories of Dare from my mind.
Something I’d naively believed would’ve been easy.
Turns out determination is just a word if your heart isn’t in it . . . and my heart was back in an alleyway, being asked “truth or dare.”
My heart was in Brooks Street Café, begging a stranger to cross that invisible line.
“She can’t stay in the guesthouse,” Kieran said decisively, pulling my thoughts from demanding eyes and soul-freeing kisses.
“’Course not. Not anymore,” Beck added. “They went right to it.”
“How they knew . . .” Mickey began, then sighed. “I’m not putting her in Soldier’s Row. It’s empty too often when the guys are at work. She’s moving back in the house. All of you—”
“No,” I said suddenly, sounding too horrified to try to explain myself.
Every man in the room stopped talking to look at me, waiting for a reason for my outburst.
I started blankly ahead, trying to think of something to say, and finally stuttered out, “I’m not staying in this house again.”
“You don’t have much of a choice,” my dad reminded me, that razor-sharp bite present in his words.
“I can’t. Not after what happened with Aric.”
Not when I won’t be able to get away . . .
Although I couldn’t see him, I could feel the tension radiating off Kieran from where he stood behind me.
It’d been that way ever since he’d come screeching to a halt where I’d waited outside a coffee shop downtown. He hadn’t grabbed me and kissed me. He hadn’t thanked God I was alive. He’d thrown open the passenger door in a silent demand to get in and had sped off as soon as I’d shut it.
But as soon as we’d crossed onto Holloway lines, he’d skidded to a stop and thrown the car into park. I’d barely settled back into my seat before he was tearing off my seatbelt and pulling me onto his lap, his arms wrapping around me like steel bands.
Minutes passed with no words spoken. They would’ve felt wrong in that moment as my normally calm assassin held me in his arms, tremors rolling through his body so forcefully that they felt like my own.
“You’re dead, Lily,” Mickey’s advisor said with a frustrated laugh. “You don’t have many places you can go other than this house.”
“I have the guesthouse.”
“No,” he and Mickey said at the same time, but I noticed Conor, Beck, and Kieran were silent.
They knew how difficult it had been for me to go back into the house after Aric died—knew how rarely I’d set foot in here since—but they didn’t understand my need to be able to leave the property.
They didn’t know about Teagan and Brooks Street. They didn’t know what missing a week with her would mean to her or to me.
And I needed those few stolen moments with—well . . . I had needed them before this afternoon happened.
“If the Borellos came looking, then they already know I’m alive. If they know I’m alive, they’ll come back. It doesn’t matter where you put me on this property, they’ll find me.” I stood from the chair and turned to leave, catching Mickey’s glare as I did. “They won’t find me in this house.”