Chapter Eleven

Safiya

H e drove.

He drove and he did not speak, and I did not question him any more because despite his words—ones he had never, ever said to me—despite his sentiment about not lying, and despite his one truth about safety, which I did believe, it hurt. It all hurt.

An ugly kind of hurt that had another name, one I could not let go of but one that now felt selfish and avaricious.

How did I hold on to betrayal if all he was doing was saving other women?

But how could I not when I saw the young woman throw her arms around him and whisper in his ear while he held her?

Hugged her .

And let her touch him—his face, his hair, his neck, his arms.

The betrayal crawled into every corner of my conscience as I watched the landscape change from swaying palms to pine trees to thick forestlike vegetation that may as well have shouted the inescapable truth of the remoteness we were driving into.

After this, I would not be seeing him for a while.

I felt it in my bones, deep where this connection to him had fused so long ago, I no longer knew what it meant to not be this chess piece in his game of life.

Wary, I thought of when he had first brought me to the oceanfront house. His cryptic instructions, his seemingly disconnected emotions, how overwhelmed I had been about everything. Then I remembered how it had felt when he had left me there that first night—and every night after, but especially that first night.

How could I condemn his behavior with the young blonde woman if she was like me?

How would I have felt if he had given me that hug, if I had stolen that hug from him like she did when he was leaving me?

And that was the problem.

Because I knew what it was like to have this man's arms around you. I knew how it felt to have his hand on you. I knew how the sound of his heartbeat or even a whisper of his scent was unlike any other soothing balm that I had ever experienced, and I could not hate her for it.

But I wanted to.

I wanted to blame him, I wanted to blame her, and I wanted to feel righteous in my covetous ownership and jealousy of a man I had no claim to. But all I felt was this punishing hurt as he pulled off a long, isolated road and turned down a dirt lane.

He drove so deep into the woods that I did not expect the flash of a house in the headlights.

Not even a house.

It was a log cabin.

I should not have been upset, let alone disappointed or even touched by antipathy that it was small, dark, and not oceanfront. I had no right. I should not have been anything except grateful, because whatever emotions I was harboring, the irrefutable truth was that Grayson had always done two things, and he had done them well.

He kept me safe, and he provided for me.

He would not be moving me, or the other woman, if there was not an urgent need. I knew that about him. I knew he was protective to a fault. He was also not an overreactor, nor was he an alarmist. If we were here, there was a reason for it, and I already owed him for my life. I should have been unreservedly grateful to him for that.

But in that moment, I was not.

I was silently staring and feeding on a buffet of betrayal and self-pity as he cut the engine and let the stillness around us become its own stifling oppression.

Except, maybe it was not crushing to him.

His gaze cutting back and forth across the property and the small clearing around the cabin as if he could see through the dark to every sinister intent lying in wait, he scanned from north to south, then west to east.

Then, in his measured tone that was always quiet, unwaveringly calm, and controlled to the point of being lethal, he gave one of his resolute edicts. "Wait here."

Without any more noise than the brush of air moving around particles too small to grasp, he was out of the SUV.

Belatedly, I noticed no interior cabin light illuminated when he exited, nor did he make a sound when he closed the door without securing it.

One moment, he was striding across grass that needed tending, the next, his broad shoulders and muscular frame were a ghost.

Narrowing my eyes, remembering how he had trained me to look for what was not there, I still could not see where he had gone.

But I could see the phone he had left in the center console.

A second phone he had not used since we had been in the vehicle.

I stared at it.

I had never breached his privacy—not that I believed I could if I tried. I was certain that if I picked up that cell and swiped, it would have a lock screen. And if by some chance it did not, I knew there would be nothing damning, telling, or even remotely incriminating to find on it.

But I thought about it.

Glancing up at the cabin again, I looked out across the yard and forest beyond. No lights had come on in the house, no movements rustled the trees, no unusual sounds like twigs snapping or leaves crunching came from the barely there crack of an opening left between the driver door and the frame of the SUV.

I picked up the phone and quickly swiped.

No lock screen.

My breath caught, and I immediately wondered if he had some sort of security feature on his phone that would tell him every swipe that was made and when. If he did, he would know I had looked.

My hand froze.

Did I care?

I glanced at the property again. No movement.

Looking back at the phone, I brought up his contacts list.

None.

For a single breath, I sat there, thinking. Then I swiped to recent calls.

There was one number with an area code I recognized.

Miami.

Where he could have been keeping the young blonde woman who was also wearing a sundress—a dress he may have bought for her.

My heart fractured and my stomach plummeted on that last thought as my faithless mind memorized the number. Then I dropped the phone, and a mere second later, the driver's door opened.

He reached inside for the key fob he had left next to his cell phone, and my face flamed in guilt and crushing jealousy.

As his long fingers grabbed both the phone and keys, he began giving instructions. "House and property are clear, and the alarm is back on. The main control panel is to the left of the front door, secondary panel is in the primary bedroom, rear of the closet, right side. Your usual security code is programmed, and both panels have a panic button. The primary bedroom closet is your fortified safe room with a steel-reinforced door. Engage the home and perimeter security at all times when you're inside the residence. If you use the hot tub on the deck, make sure the perimeter security is active."

Safe room. Fortified. Steel-reinforced door. The words dancing on my nerves meant only one thing.

"Safiya."

I could not look at him, and it was not a question. My name had been a statement as it crossed his lips. "Yes?"

Those same long fingers reached across the interior, and he brushed a knuckle under my chin with just enough force to tilt my head up and toward him.

I met his almost gray eyes in the darkened cab where only moonlight fell across his face. In that moment, I did not know if I resented him for saving me, wanted to anathematize him for how beautifully stoic he was, or wished he was any other kind of man than who he was.

"Do we need to talk?"

His question, the look in his eyes, what they conveyed was an illusion. There was no we . A simple no would have been easiest for both of us. It was what I would have given him a few months ago, a year ago, eight years ago. I would have done anything for him. I would have said anything that would have made his life easier. But today, tonight, the blonde woman, this new place with its safe room, the one number on that cell phone that I knew would be disposed of before the end of the week, if not by sunrise, it all accumulated.

I did not give him an easy out. "Do we?"

With no change in his expression, not even so much as a blink, but also without hesitation, he dropped his hand and shut his door.

Emotions I had no business owning welled, but before a single damning tear could escape, my door was opened and he was there.

In the very next breath, his arms were around me, my body was pulled from the vehicle, and his voice was in my ear as his warm breath coated my skin better than the balm of any ocean breeze. "I know this is hard on you."

I did not let the tears fall. I set them free.

All of them.

They ran down my cheeks without hope like my heart ran from my mind without preservation. "Do not comfort me." My voice charred like burnt wood, my will frail, I let him hold me. "Do not give me this moment." Please do not let go of me .

"I'd give you every moment if I could."

My insides only crushed further because we both knew it was not true. Or perhaps it was, but it meant nothing past this very second. In the next breath, if another catastrophe arose, if another victim needed saving, if another bullet flew, he would be there, in that space, not here in mine. There was no corralling this man. There was no permanency.

There was only him. Lethal, elusive, and dominantly, resolutely, unwaveringly committed to his own agenda.

I had asked to leave, but he was the one who had never stayed. With that thought, I pulled away and reached for my bag. "I am to go inside now?"

He said nothing, and it was answer enough.

I glanced at the new house that, from experience, I knew would be furnished, and stocked and supplied with everything I would need to survive. There would also, most likely, be an envelope on the counter. Once I opened it, I would become a new person. Again.

Resigned, I turned to go inside, but I did not make it one step.

"Safiya."

I glanced back.

Tall, striking, muscled arms and thighs that tested the confines of his clothes, but not to the point that he could not blend into any crowd, and blend he did—when he wanted to. He also had the uncanny ability to look unassuming and less than lethal, so much so that I knew firsthand how underestimated he had been by truly evil men right before they drew their last breaths.

But that was not the man I was looking at right now.

With one hand in his pants pocket and his whisper-of-blue eyes regarding me with an intelligence few possessed, he was not looking at me through the lens of his training or his years of violence and experience.

He was looking at me how a man looks at a woman.

In that moment, I had never trusted him less. I also knew what I had to do.

I knew what came next.

It was inevitable. It had been since he had shown up on the lanai this morning, but I still stared at him as if I did not know what was coming.

As if this was something new.

As if I did not know how to do this.

But I did.

I was intimate with exactly this.

Hello, goodbye, they did not matter. Time was relative. He came, he went. He was here, he was gone. His work, his calling, the military, some government, a mission, a purpose, an emergency, an assignment, another victim—it did not matter who or what it was. It always took him away.

He took himself away.

He did this because he never stayed, not in one place, not in his mind, not in his countenance.

There was only one constant about him, and that was his absence.

He was the ghost.

You could not hold on to that, and I needed to let him go. I needed to say the words. State the inevitable. It meant nothing anyway. Just say it. Two words. Speak them with conviction. Look him in the eye and say—

He reached for my face.

The backs of his fingers ghosted over my cheek, and just like his namesake, his caress was so soft, it was almost an illusion before he tucked my hair behind my ear and pulled my thoughts from my mind as if he had a right to them. "This isn't goodbye."

Turning into his touch and away from his scrutinizing gaze, I shook my head once. "Do not lie to me." He had not left me anywhere with a safe room before. Not one he had purposely mentioned was fortified and reinforced. Those were not the words of a man who planned on returning any time soon, if at all.

"Last time I'm asking, Safiya. When have I ever lied to you?"

"When have you not?" It was not an insult. It was who he was. He never spoke the whole truth. He never said where he went, what he did, when he would be back, if he would come back. That was not truth. And while he may not outright lie to me, his unyielding aloofness was no different than had he spoken a falsehood and intentionally misled me.

His gaze steadfast, he did what he did best. "I'm purposely not leaving a car with you because there's no garage to conceal it. If you need to reach me, you know what to do. I shouldn't be long, but I need you to maintain protocols. Especially right now." He paused as if weighing something he wanted to say. "I need you to be safe, Safiya. Please understand that."

I gave him the respect his protection deserved. "All right."

His gaze held, but he did not speak again, and I knew it was time.

With one last inhale, I breathed him in deep.

Then I turned and silently slipped into the dark night.