“Are you okay?” As soon as the question left her, she wanted to take it back because she’d already asked him that. Twice. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—”
“Do you ever feel like you’re out of time?”
A chill went through her, and she blurted her biggest concern: “Are you all going back to the prison camp? Is that where you’re going next.”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie.”
“That’s not what’s on my mind.” He rubbed his face. “There’s something I have to do after this. And you know what it is…”
“Cordelhia.” When Kane looked up, she shrugged. “You don’t need to explain. What’s changed, really.”
Except for everything, she tacked on to herself.
“I want to clean the slate,” he said. “And find her killer.”
“You sound apologetic. And that’s totally unnecessary.” When he started to shake his head, she interjected, “We had sex today. A couple of times. It’s not surprising yourshellanis on your mind.”
When he didn’t reply, she felt like she was losing him, even though he was right in front of her.
“I made a vow to myself,” he said. “That I’d find her murderer. The only thing I know is that it wasn’t me.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’ve got to start somewhere. I think I need to go to her brother’s. Assuming he’s still alive.”
As pain speared through her, Nadya stood up and wandered around, looking at the tools and oil cans, the gasoline jug, the spare tires and chains. Inside her chest, she was arctic cold, but she tried to stay grounded in what they’d found together. The closeness. The connection.
Plus his mate was dead.
So why did she feel like the two of them were suddenly going their separate ways? And wasn’t that what she had wanted, what she had demanded of him before she had taken his vein?
“Do what you have to do.” She turned back to him. “And listen, if you really want to go down to Caldwell and ‘start somewhere,’ there’s no time like the present. We’re safe here. Plus it’s clear none of you are going anywhere tonight, and there’s a good number of hours before dawn left.”
He stared at her. “This is not about you.”
Trust me, she thought.I know that.
“It’s all right.”
To his credit—or maybe his guilt—he didn’t leave right away; he stayed where he was, on a folding chair that didn’t look like it could support his full weight, his gaze still staring off into space.
“I just want the past to leave me,” he said abruptly. “I want it gone,out of my head. And not only Cordelhia, but the prison camp, too. I don’t want to ever think about that place again. I don’t want to go back there and I sure as shit don’t want to think about how I ended up in that pit of suffering.”
She understood that, better than he knew.
“I need answers, Nadya. I feel like if I had them, I’d be able to let it all go.”
When he looked over at her, she took a deep breath and nodded. “I get that. Like I said. Do what you need to do.”
Fools’ paradises were good things.
Until the real world came back.
As Kane stared across the hood of an old, beat-up car, he knew he was fucking Nadya’s head up. But when he’d been on the mountain, making the decision to go back to the prison camp, he’d realized in a stark way that as long as the past was not behind him, he was not fully free.
The prospect of returning to the place he’d been sent to for a murder he did not commit had brought everything to the forefront.