“Why would he after taking her?”

“Ask her yourself, since Chief told me you didn’t stay for the entire interview. But think about it, Kash . . . We were in gangs and helped some girls escape too. Did that never once cross your mind yesterday?”

I wanted to argue that we hadn’t kissed them. But we’d always had to do whatever was necessary to make our story believable for the gang we were in. My eyes shot up to Mason’s, and he gave a sad laugh as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“God, you’re so dense sometimes. I believe Rachel’s story, I don’t think he was an undercover, but I wouldn’t doubt for a second that he didn’t want to be in Juarez’s gang. I’ll admit, seeing her with him was weird, but you need to think about the whole situation. I don’t know what it is about her, but you seem to forget everything when it comes to her.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Mason?”

He started ticking off points on his fingers. “We think she’s been raped and you automatically want to kill anyone that’s come near her before we even know for sure that it happened. The guy that raped her, and that she was terrified of, forces her to leave you . . . and you just automatically believe that she was really lying to you the entire time and wanted to be with him. A guy that has protected her in captivity kisses her right before they thought they were entering a suicide mission, and without a second thought you think she didn’t want to be rescued anymore?”

I really need to stop telling Mom and Dad what I’m thinking. They always fucking tell Mason.

“She’s been missing for thirty-six days and underwent some pretty shitty things from what I heard in the interview, and she goes to bed early and you take that as a cue to sleep on the couch?”

I groaned into my hands and sagged into the back of the couch. “Mase—”

“You know I love you like a brother. You know I trust you with my life. You’re one of the smartest guys I know, and not just when it comes to our job. But when it comes to your future wife you are dumb as shit.”

“Tell me, why is it that you’re the dumbest guy I know, and you’re always the one trying to show me how stupid I’m being?”

A cocky smirk crossed Mason’s face and he shrugged before turning toward the front door. “It’s because I’m fucking awesome, bro. Go make sure she’s okay.”

“I can’t get the sight of them kissing out of my head,” I admitted.

“There’s a lot of shit we will never get out of our heads, Kash. Don’t let this one ruin the best thing you’ve ever had.” He opened the front door and looked back at me one more time. “You should really watch the entire interview. What we saw yesterday wasn’t a normal occurrence for them.”

I watched as he walked out the front door, and I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees, and my head in my hands. I knew he was right. It didn’t make any of this easier though.

Mason had taken this case about as hard as I had, and he’d seen every part of it just the same as me . . . but it wasn’t the same for him. He wasn’t in love with Rachel, he hadn’t been planning his wedding and about to marry her, he hadn’t had to watch his fiancée kiss her kidnapper.

So different.

Still, I knew I had reacted the wrong way yesterday. I should have tried to understand, I should have just been there for her. I should have sat down and listened to her side when detectives weren’t interviewing her. And I should have fucking held her last night. She was finally back and I didn’t even try to be near her. I’m such a dick.

Standing quickly, I walked down the hall, toward the closed bedroom door. I raised my arm to knock before I realized how fucking ridiculous that was and just opened the door. The bed was empty, so I walked into the bathroom and called out her name. When I didn’t get a response and didn’t find her in the bathroom or the closet, fear surged through my veins and I ran back into the bedroom calling after her.

“Rachel! Rach!” This isn’t fucking happening. “Rachel!”

I’d just started to turn to run back to the living room in search of my phone to call 9-1-1 when I saw the paper and ring sitting on the nightstand. My stomach dropped and I stared at the nightstand for a few moments before I could force myself over to it. Grabbing Rachel’s engagement ring, I fisted my hand around it and tried to make sense of the words on the paper.

I understand, and I don’t blame you. I’m sorry.

“Understand what?” I whispered to the empty room.

The sound of pounding feet on the hardwood had me turning just as Rachel entered the room.

“Where the hell were you?” I yelled across the small space.

She flinched back into the wall near the doorjamb and her eyes darted around the room as her mouth opened and shut. “I-I-I, um . . .”

“Rachel, you can’t disappear like that after what we just went through, okay? Fuck!” I stalked over to her and for the first time in over a month, I brought my mouth down onto hers. “I thought—Jesus Christ, I thought you were gone again,” I choked out and started to kiss her but stopped abruptly when I realized she was cringing into the wall. “What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?” I took a step back but kept the hand that wasn’t clenched around the ring on her waist.

She kept her eyes on the ground, and I watched as her chest rose and fell roughly before she finally shook her head.

My eyes fell over the bruised parts of her body that I could see, and I wondered again how she’d come to get those. I hadn’t stayed for that part of the interview yesterday. Like Mason, I knew the sexual assault exam showed nothing, but why was she shaking . . . Oh my God. I’m scaring her. My fiancée is scared of me . . . after being kidnapped and held captive for over a month, she’s scared of me. Son of a bitch.

Strike one.

“Rachel,” I said softly, making sure to keep my voice low and even. “Am I scaring you?”

Her eyes darted up to mine quickly, but long enough for me to see the moisture gathering in them.

“Damn it,” I whispered, soft enough that I’m not sure she even heard me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry for yelling at you, I was just fucking terrified when I walked in here and couldn’t find you,” I explained to her as I slowly brought her body closer to mine. “Please don’t be scared of me, I honestly don’t think I could deal with knowing that I am what scares you after everything you’ve been through.”

“I just—I just didn’t want to be in a bedroom anymore. I’m sorry. I went outside to write, you were still asleep, and I didn’t think you would go looking for me . . . I just wanted to be outside.”

Slipping the ring into the pocket of my jeans, I cupped her face, lowered my forehead onto hers, and watched the few tears slip down her cheeks. “Shh, no it’s okay. Don’t cry, Rachel. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled.” Jesus, of course she wants to be outside, she was in a room for thirty-six days! “Let’s go back outside, we’ll talk out there, all right?”

She swallowed audibly and nodded her head as I pulled her away from the wall. When she didn’t make an attempt to go back down the hall, I grabbed her hand and started leading her down it. I didn’t understand why she kept walking directly behind me instead of beside me, and I shot her a confused look when she grabbed onto the back of my shirt with her free hand, but she wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring down at the ground.

I opened my mouth to ask what she was doing, when a flash from yesterday hit me hard. The way she’d been following Trent down the hall as Mason and I waited in the rooms. I heard her say in the interview that he would take her to a bathroom that was at the other end of the building. Is this how she always walked with him? Stopping suddenly, I turned to her and noted that she looked calmer now than she had since we first found her yesterday. But I couldn’t let her do this; this wasn’t normal.

“Rachel, does this feel right to you?”

Her eyebrows scrunched together as I loosely grabbed the hand holding on to my shirt. “What?”

“Does this feel right to you? Normal . . . walking like this, holding on to my shirt?”

“What? No, I—” Her eyes widened and she quickly released my shirt before taking a step back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I—”

“Don’t apologize, Rachel. You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, okay?” Bringing her back to me, I made lazy circles on her back and waited until she was looking up at me. “Is that how you had to walk with him?”

Rachel’s eyes turned pleading. “Yes, but it was only because he needed to make sure no one took me! He didn’t do it—”

“It’s fine,” I assured her. “I’m just making sense of it, but we’re going to fix it, okay? You’re going to walk the rest of the way in front of me without any physical contact from me. You already went through the hall a few times alone, and you know this hall well. No one is going to come after you in it, there’s no one here but you and me.”

Instead of the tears or fear I had been expecting, her eyebrows slammed down and her mouth formed a tight line before she sneered, “Don’t treat me like I need to be fixed, Logan! Don’t talk to me like I’m going to fall apart. Don’t act like you know how to make it all okay again. You have no idea what happened there, and you are the last person I need treating me like I’m a broken child. I know how to walk down a fucking hallway without touching someone, it was just instinct!”

She pushed past me, and my head dropped as my shoulders sagged in defeat. Bringing my hand up to the back of my neck, I rubbed over it and squeezed it hard once before turning to follow her.

Strike two.

At the very least, I should be happy that Rachel still had her fire. It may be buried deep under confusion and . . . whatever else she was feeling. But it’s there. And I was determined to uncover the rest of it.

19

Kash

I FOUND RACHEL sitting out on the porch in her favorite chair with her arms crossed under her chest, and her knees bent with her feet on the cushion of the chair. With a deep breath in, I made my way to the chair near her and automatically grabbed her ankle to bring her feet onto my lap.

My eyes shot up when she quickly pulled her leg back, but there was no lingering anger in her action. She had this anxious look about her, as if she wasn’t comfortable with me taking her out of the position she was in. Without a word, I sat back and decided against asking what was so essential about staying like that.

“Where’s Trip?”

I tried not to roll my eyes at her attempt at pushing aside the awkward tension that had just formed between us, and cleared my throat. “He’s at Mason’s. He came and picked him up before we got home yesterday. We both felt it would be better to not have any distractions between you and me for a while.” And then I’d gone and slept on the couch.

Rachel pursed her lips and started involuntarily picking at her nail polish. I started to ask her how she’d gotten it while she was gone but decided I might not want to know.

“Do you feel better being out here?”

She nodded mindlessly for half a minute before clearing her throat. “I was thinking earlier how funny it was. Trent’s room and mine felt safe there. Like if we weren’t in one of them, anything could go wrong. I hated the walks to and from them, and once we were back in one, I could finally breathe again. But now, all bedrooms just seem like a cage.”

I had to shut my eyes and breathe in and out through my nose for a few seconds before I could look back up at her. Every time I thought about him with her, and every time she talked about him, was like tearing my soul open all over again. I played Mason’s words over and over in my mind and waited until I knew I could speak without gritting out the words.

“Do you want to tell me about what happened? Tell me about him?”

“Why?” she asked on a pained laugh. “I know what you think, it’s all over your face what you think I feel for him . . .” She trailed off before whispering, “What you think happened.”

“I’m giving you a chance to talk about him without feeling like it’s an interrogation instead of an interview.”

Her head turned quickly to face me, and the same anger from earlier was back and covering a deep ache. “Or maybe it’s because you’re looking for a more concrete reason to tell everyone else the wedding is off?”