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“Cool.” Planny reached back over the seat, offering his fist to Brennan for a bump. “Welcome to the club.”
I wasn’t so sure how Dayton would feel about that. I didn’t particularly feel comfortable with it. But since I was on the outs, I supposed it didn’t really matter. Once we were at the club, Planny ushered Brennan away with promises of video games—a promise I knew he meant, since tech was his passion, including first-person RPGs.
Pleading a migraine, I headed to my room, knowing Brennan was safe and well taken care of. I needed to think and plan, and it would take awhile. Then I’d settle in back here at the club.
And that’s how it went for the next day and a half. I walked around like a ghost, epitomizing the club’s name. There was no word from Day, not that I figured he’d call me. But neither Brennan nor Kale heard from him, either.
It was the next night when a haggard-looking Dayton startled me from sleep, haloed by the bedside lamp, the circles beneath his eyes purple with fatigue and stress. His haunted eyes searched me while I stared up at him.
He was here. Day was in my suite at the club, sitting on the side of my bed.
“You almost died five years ago.”
“I did die.”
His throat worked as he stood. I fought the urge to reach for him and draw him back. My chest ached, and tears threatened. Again.
He stared at the ground with his hands shoved in his pockets. “I… Melonie? You’re Melonie? I want to believe it. I really do. I just… I don’t understand. How? I—”
“It’s Vale now,” I interrupted gently. “I was her. I was. But I’ve changed too over the past five years.”
“Your heart is the same. The sweet way about you.” He sighed. “I should known.”
“How could you? It’s not what anyone would ever expect.”
His head tilted. “Yeah, well, that’s true. But you know… All the bricks have been piling up, one after the other. A million little things I refused to acknowledge. Then yesterday morning took me by surprise. I’m sorry I called you a liar.”
“You believe me now?”
Tears glistened in his eyes, startling me. I’d only ever seen him cry one time—at his parents’ funeral.
Climbing off the bed, I tentatively wrapped my arms around him. When he didn’t pull away, I held him tighter and could have cried, too, when his arms closed around me, holding me like a lifeline in a hurricane.
“Why?” he whispered.
“Why what?” I asked, confused.
“I mean… How?”
“That’s probably easier to explain. But geez, Day. Don’t you want to quiz me or something? Test me?”
He shook his head. “No. You gave me almost everything I needed to…finish this.”
My brow furrowed.
“Finish this?” My voice cracked as my eyes burned, and my heart severed from my body.
“Oh my God, baby girl! Not us,” he exclaimed, my desolate tone revealing my misunderstanding.
He swung me up into his arms then settled on the bed I’d just left, cuddling me to his chest. “I meant you gave the clues I needed to nail Dutch. I talked to Kale before he showed me up here. He told me his theory about why Dutch did what he did. It’s not gonna work the way he planned.”
“He got in because he flashed his badge at a client who was leaving,” I said. “He told me that while he held the gun on me. It felt like an eternity, waiting for him to kill me, but it was so fast I didn’t have time to even think. He was your partner. I thought he was coming to tell me something had happened to you. I was so scared you’d been hurt, and then he laughed at me. And I realized I needed to be scared for me.”
“You don’t have to tell me right now,” Day murmured, rubbing his hand up and down my back.
“I need to. I haven’t told anyone. I’ve keep the secret bottled up inside me all this time. Wrapped up tight with my love for you.” Closing my eyes, I pressed my face into his chest, breathing in his warm, pine and citrus scent, recentering myself.
When I’d calmed slightly, I pulled up the words, forcing them out. “You wouldn’t think it could happen, but I was panicking. Clinging to my body. There were forces there that tried to pull me away, but I refused to leave you. I couldn’t… I was still there with my body when it got to the hospital, even though I was dead.”
