Page 163 of Only Be Mine

I nodded once. “Okay.”

Seth reached across the space between us and covered my hand with his.

“When you want the rest,” he said, “I’ll tell you. All of it.”

I squeezed his fingers back, grateful.

I wasn’t weak or broken. I just needed time to… gather myself.

Because now I knew something important.

John didn’t vanish, and he didn’t leave me.

Someone took him.

Chapter 60

Cate

Present

Seth’s hand was still on mine when the first real tremor hit. Not the kind that shook my body, but the kind that shifted the room.

Like something inside me had stood up.

I pulled in a breath through my nose, slow, the way I used to when a client changed their mind mid-install and I had to keep my voice even. The way I used to when John teased me for being “too intense” about throw pillows. The way I used to when I didn’t need anyone’s permission to be angry.

I looked at Seth.

“Okay,” I said again, but this time it meant something different.

His expression changed, subtle, but I caught it.

“Tell me,” I said. “How.”

He didn’t answer right away. He stared at the floor like the carpet might offer him a better version of this conversation. When he finally looked back up, his eyes were full of pain, a fear I hadn’t seen in ten years. I suspected he wasn’t afraid of the truth, just what the truth would do once he spoke it to life.

“You said you didn’t want details,” he reminded me quietly.

“I don’t,” I said. Then, after a moment, “Not the… the worst parts. But I need to understand what they’re saying. I need to know what’s real.”

Seth’s jaw flexed once, then he nodded.

“Marshal thinks John was taken at that park just down the street from the house,” he said. “The night he went for that walk.”

My stomach clenched, but I stayed still.

“The file from ten years ago, what was left of it anyway, had notes about blunt force trauma. The autopsy photos showed a bullet wound in his stomach, but no mention of it anywhere else,” he continued. “It wasn’t an accident or a fall. It was… intentional.”

My fingers tightened around the edge of the couch cushion without me meaning to.

“They believe he was hit hard enough to incapacitate him,” he said. “Then he was moved. Fast.”

The word felt wrong. Moved - like furniture or an object. Like something you did to make a mess disappear.

I swallowed. “So, he didn’t… he didn’t die there.”

Seth shook his head once. “No.”