Page 103

This summary of his last visit home wasn’t what I needed. I wanted to know what the hell I’d be walking into once we got there.

“Trace… what are you saying?” I repeated, wishing he’d just spit it out already.

“I’m saying I haven’t told them you’re coming,” he blurted out.

The trapped fly ticked harder in the rear window, punctuating the stunned silence with its desperate buzzing.

“They don’t even know you exist.” His voice was softer now. His eyes never left the road stretching out in front of us. “Well, except for my dad. He knows everything, but I asked him to keep it quiet.”

The air in the car suddenly felt too thin to take a breath without choking on it. I pulled my hand back from his thigh, my mind racing through a dozen disastrous ways this could play out.

“Don’t you think that’s a little problematic?” Fear and incredulity pitched my voice into an octave I wasn’t familiar with. “I’m about to walk into your mother’s house as a total surprise?”

“Not— not a total surprise…”

I slapped his arm, and the car gave a small jerk. “I’m not just the girlfriend she doesn’t know about. I’m the girlfriend she told you not to get. What were you thinking? How was this ever going to end well?”

“Please don’t make it worse,” he pleaded, his voice cracking slightly. He risked a glance at me, and the vulnerability in his eyes broke the protest rising in my throat. “I’m worried enough as it is.”

“And you’re the only person in this relationship?”

His lips pulled into a tight line.

“That’s what I thought,” I said, facing forward in my seat again, arms crossed. “It’s one thing not to tell her about us, but you should’ve told me she doesn’t know. I deserved that much.”

“What difference does it make?” He shook his head slowly, the look of defeat on his face deepening.

“Well, for starters, I would’ve built up the appropriate amount of panic.”

His hand fumbled over the center console to find mine, our fingers lacing together. “The last thing I want is for her to scare you off, Dakota. I can’t afford to lose you.”

The confession hit me square in the chest. I wasn’t even upset about the lack of a heads-up anymore. Hearing him admit out loud that he was afraid of losing me changed the gravity of the situation.

We had survived Delaney, school pressure, and a football season for the books. But this? This was the last hurdle that would decide whether we made it out in one piece.

I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze that was as much for me as it was for him. “I don’t scare easily. I’m a journalist, remember? I deal with difficult subjects for a living. I dealt with you…”

“That you did,” he said with a soft chuckle, pulling my hand up to his lips. He kissed my knuckles. “But she’s not just a subject. She’s my mom.”

I looked out the window as we turned onto a tree-lined street that could’ve made a postcard for a town that time forgot. It held the bleak quiet of January, where the holiday magic had crusted over. The once-white snowbanks, now gray and jagged, were piled high against the curbs. Skeletal branches, stripped of their leaves, clawed at a heavy zinc sky.

It sent a chill through me that settled in my bones, and I hugged myself tighter, willing my thudding heart to calm the hell down. I’d spent the last few months trying to uncover Trace Prescott’s secrets... only to discover that I was his biggest one.

We turned into his driveway, and he revved the engine a little. Within seconds, his whole family poured onto the front porch.

He took the key from the ignition, and the doors automatically unlocked. “Ready?”

“No.”

“Great. Me neither.”

I’d barely planted my boots on the salted driveway when a blur of motion came flying off the porch.

“Hey, guys!”

The young teen practically tackled me into a suffocating hug, her hair tickling my nose.

“Uh, Dakota, meet my kid sister, Rachel.” Trace laughed nervously.