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Regardless, I still slipped out the door of my room with my keycard clutched in hand like I was sixteen, checking the hallway in both directions and ignoring the camera at the end of the corridor that wasn’t recording anyway.
It couldn’t be, when I was around. They made sure of it.
A familiar pressure built in my throat as I closed the door gently to an empty hallway. I made it all the way to the end, so ready to taste outside air, and walked straight into a familiar checked shirt and an unforgiving chest that most definitely wasn’t that hard last time I had intimate contact with it.
“Your father is right behind me.” Nash’s brusque voice sent a riot of sensation along my skin in every direction, sweeping away the pressure and replacing it with something different. A shot of adrenaline I hadn’t felt in far too long. His hands directed my body to turn, and I did, back the way I came. “Move it, Bonnie, or we lose any chance we have.”
I quick-stepped it halfway up the hall, unsure if he was directing me back to my room or his, when his arm braced the wall before me and suddenly I shifted sideways into a stairwell I previously ignored.
“Fire escape.” His lips brushed my ear. “Keep moving. Next landing, then stop. Okay?’
I nodded, my lips as unable to move as they did on that truly hideous cocktail earlier, or over that stilted dinner that killed every fraction of freedom Nash and I displayed before with our lies.
But this felt nothing like either of those moments.
A breath later and the fire escape door shut gently behind him. Nash’s feet moved soundlessly to where I stood on the next landing under the cement stairs below. His fingers flickedsideways and I started on the next flight downward, halting in the shadows when he held up a hand.
My feet stalled. I froze as he took the next stair, stopping just above me, waiting.
Nothing. The door didn’t open, nor did my father seem to know where Nash disappeared to, or that I was with him.
I opened my mouth, but his hand pressed to my stomach in a light touch. Light, but a warning all the same.Count, he mouthed to me.
I bit my lip, watching him, and counted in my head.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi…
By the time I got to five, Nash’s body heat met mine on the same step. He wasn’t bulky by any means, but his sort of muscle was still the solid sort, the type of man who’d be impossible to outrun.
This was Nash Mercer. If ever there was someone in this world to be terrified of, it was him. Because he knew me, and I couldn’t hide from him.
But I wasn’t terrified. Much.
My fingers brushed his collar, reaching up to find a few days’ growth on his chin. “I like you like this,” I mumbled into the darkness, unable to see his full face.
His hands braced against the wall behind me over my head. “I was gonna take you outside. Wanted to walk somewhere. But it’s kinda freezing.”
“I like freezing.” My head tipped back as I searched for his eyes, twin pinpoints of onyx in the roiling shadows he wore like a cloak. “Nash, what did he tell you?—”
“Nothing.”
“Oh.” I swallowed, both relieved and back to being a little terrified at once.
“It’s your story to tell, Bonnie Lawson.”
Shit.My language really was going to get me into trouble with this man as I mouthed the word. His fingertips followed, tracing the movement of my lips. “What if I don’t want to tell you?”What if I can’t?
He shrugged. “Then you don’t tell me. It’s been a long damn time, Bonnie. Trust is built. Earned.”
I could see the pain it cost him to admit that, but this wasn’t just his story. “I broke that trust when we left. When I left.”
“You were seventeen. There wasn’t exactly a lot of choice. You were at school, Bonnie. A kid. We all were.”
“I had to grow up pretty fast.” I played with his buttons on his shirt, accidentally popped the top one open.
“Yeah?” His breath came fast, a little less regular against my cheek. “You sure as hell look grown up to me now, Bonnie.”
“I don’t know if I am,” I whispered back. “It’s been a long time living like this, place to place, never stopping or settling…” I squeezed my eyes shut, but hot tears escaped anyway.
