There’s a several-beat pause before Tyler says, “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m trying to reach her. If I hear anything I’ll call you.” He hesitates. “I wasn’t wrong tonight. Talk sense into him or I will before he self-destructs.”
My agitation with Tyler is real. He pushed Dash tonight and he knew what he was doing. Or perhaps he didn’t expect to push Dash as far as he did. I don’t know what to think at this point.
I slide my phone into the pocket of my jeans. Dash catches my hand and walks me to him, the heat in our touch as addictive as I fear it is radioactive. We’re still all taut anger and attraction, mixed together in combustible heat. His fingers slide under my hair and he drags my mouth to his. There’s a pulse between us and then he’s kissing me, a deep, demanding, angry kiss before he says, “You aren’t staying here. You’re coming home with me.”
I could tell him that we can’t pretend tonight didn’t happen. I could remind him that we just talked about me moving in with him, and recap all the reasons I said no. I could tell him that when I saw the Russian Beast beating on him, the idea of him being hurt, destroyed me.
There are so many things I could say, but right now, in this volatile state that defines us, I decide that less is more. “Yes.” That is all I say. Just yes.
“Can I have a word, Dash?”
At the sound of Jack’s voice, Dash strokes my hair. “Go pack.”
“I already have my things at your place. I really don’t need anything.”
He turns me toward the bedroom. “Take more,” he orders softly, which could mean he still wants me to live with him, or maybe he just wants to get rid of me to talk to Jack. The reality here is that after tonight, I don’t know where we stand, what he wants, or even what I want.
For now, a reprieve is welcomed and the truth is, I do need to pack. I quit my job and I’ll have to move anyway. I don’t know what that means for the charity event or my involvement, but I know that my working for Tyler is causing trouble. Ironically, I think as I step into the bathroom, I’ve blamed myself for tonight, but at the root of every problem, was Tyler. He showed up at the bar tonight. He picked a fight with Dash. He was what triggered me and Dash fighting.
I grab a bag from the closet and start filling it, a bit sad that my new house is already my old house, but it’s not really about the house as much as it is yet another shift in my life. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing, but if I’m honest with myself, that reaches well beyond one night. I need to dig my feet in and be emotionally brave enough to really face my future, which means facing my past. Just not tonight.
I open a drawer and there sits the necklace box, at least one connection between my life and Allison’s in one place. She left her career behind, perhaps more. But did she really walk away, or did she walk forward to something better?
I pick up the box and lift the lid, staring down at the gorgeous stones.
“You’re obsessed with that necklace,” Dash says from the doorway.
I shut the lid and turn back to face him. “It’s thousands of dollars. What if someone came for it, not me, tonight?”
“That sounds like a good reason to get you out of here.”
“There are cameras,” I remember. “We should be able to see who was here on the cameras.”
“They were off,” he announces. “Jack checked.”
My brows dip. “What do you mean off? The cameras work even when the security system is off.”
“I mean they were working up until tonight and somehow they were just flipped off.”
I curl forward, hugging myself. “What is this Dash?”
He catches my waist and walks me to him, “I just want you out of here.”
I don’t argue. I’m suddenly more eager than ever to leave this house and not come back.
CHAPTER TWO
The problem with the unknown is its haunting ability to know what you do not. It’s such a silly wordplay I know, but it’s also the truth. The unknown is the monster that wants to remain unknown, and it drives us crazy. Dash hangs out while I pack, hovering nearby as if he feels the presence of that monster and fears I may be snatched out of his reach any moment.
For me, that monster is the necklace and yet, I’m going to take it with me, rather than leave it behind.
I retrieve it from the bathroom counter, grab it and stick it in one of my overnight bags. Dash manages to appear in the doorway at just that moment. “Before you say I’m obsessed with it again, I don’t know what to do with it,” I say. “And it’s too expensive for me to just leave behind, especially when it’s a compelling reason to break into the house in the first place.”
“Carrying it around isn’t the answer,” he says, obviously referencing the way I’d had it with me when I’d had drinks with Tyler and his father, whose name is ironically, considering the officer’s name helping us tonight, Jack. The necklace had fallen out of my purse and ultimately Tyler had learned that it was Allison’s, a gift from another man. I guess on some level he didn’t want to believe there was someone else in her life.
“We’ll start by locking it in my safe,” Dash suggests, snapping me out of my reverie. “And you in my apartment.”
“You’re going to lock me in your apartment?” I challenge.
He catches my hips, his touch possessive as he walks me to him. “Yes. If that’s what it takes to protect you.”
There’s a dark pulse between us that radiates with every moment that went oh so terribly wrong tonight. He says he wants to protect me and that feels kind of nice, but I’m not the only one that needs protection. He does, too. My hands go to his wrist. “Will you be with me?”
“I shouldn’t have let you leave in the first place. I shouldn’t have walked away when I did. Then none of this would have happened.”
None of this.
Three extremely simple and yet complicated words, too much to even touch right now. “Should we talk to Jack about the necklace?”
“There’s a lot about tonight, neither of us understands,” he says. “Let’s figure out our own questions and answers before we go creating new problems.”
In other words, he’s not sure Tyler doesn’t have everything to do with everything that happened tonight. And the thing is, I’m not sure I can argue otherwise, but what I can’t do is ignore how ever-present, and yet absent, Allison is in every moment of my life. “I’m starting to worry about Allison, Dash. Should I be worried?”
His jaw flexes. “What did Tyler say?”
“He’s trying to reach her.”
“He might not be the one to actually get her to respond.” There’s disapproval in his tone that speaks of the two men’s history, and I’m reminded of Tyler’s insistence that Dash is not only bad for me, but Dash knows that as a fact. But there was also a reference to Dash warning Tyler away from another woman.
Allison, I wonder?
It’s a question for later, not now. “I’ve tried to reach her as well,” I say. “That’s why I worry we need to talk to Jack.”
“We’ll have Jack reach out to her.”