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“I can explain,” I said, holding up a hand, wanting to de-escalate this before it got bad.
“I don’t know if you can.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Vienna
I was just trying to steal one of his hoodies because they had that super soft, worn-in feel that came from years of washing, and all of my clothes were kind of stiff and new still.
It was innocent, going into his wardrobe.
I wasn’t snooping.
I had no reason to snoop.
We were open with each other about everything.
Or so I thought.
Until I spread his hangers on the bar, trying to get my chosen hoodie off.
And I saw something odd, something that my mind immediately said didn’t fit.
It was wedged back in the corner. Like something forgotten.
Like something hidden.
It was that sudden, gut-punch of realization that had my hand shooting out, had me snatching at the ball of crocheted material.
“No,” I said to myself as my hand grabbed the long strap and watched the purse fall open, a memory crashing into my present. “No no no.”
Why did he have my purse?
The one that I’d lost in the scuffle with my kidnapper on that one awful, fateful day? The one I figured was lost to space and time.
But here it was.
Shoved in the back of the wardrobe I built for the man I was falling wildly in love with.
I didn’t even have to open it to know it was mine, that it didn’t just belong to some other woman.
Because I’d found it in my grandmother’s basement. It had been my mother’s when she was a teenager. And my mom had told her to throw it out, that it was out of style. My grandmother insisted that everything always came back into fashion if you waited long enough, so she’d stashed it away for that eventuality.
I’d pulled it out and taken it when I’d been clearing out her house after she passed.
I knew the zipper that didn’t close all the way, allowing some of the fun bright pink silk lining to show through. I knew the snag near the bottom that I once got caught on someone else’s keychain.
This was my bag.
But how was it here?
My mind flashed with a thousand possibilities that included him being a witness to the kidnapping to him stalking me or something until rationality finally took root.
No.
No, it wasn’t as insane as all of that.
He’d gone back.
