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?”

“I don’t want the wedding to be off.”

“Oh, no?”

“Of course not.” Digging into my pocket, I pulled her ring out and leaned forward so my elbows were resting on my knees. “I told you to never take this one off,” I murmured. “What did the note mean? What do you understand?”

“I understand your wanting to call the wedding off. I’m sure you’re right, I’m sure I’m not the same Rachel anymore.”

I looked up so I could see her face and watched as she turned her head away and brushed at her cheeks. “What?”

“So I won’t put you in the position of having to break up with me . . . I won’t make you be seen as the man that broke up with his fiancée the day after she was rescued.”

“Rachel, I’m not breaking up with you. I don’t want to call off the wedding, why are you saying all—”

“I heard you talking to your parents last night, Logan! Don’t lie to me.”

“I— Shit.” I groaned and sat back in my chair. “I don’t want to call off the wedding. I’m sorry you heard that conversation, but, Rachel, I was mad and confused and thought you were in love with that guy!”

“Trent. His name. Is. Trent.”

“I know what his name is, Rachel, please try to see it from my side. I reacted the wrong way, I wasn’t thinking about you, and I’m sorry about that. I lost my shit when I saw you kissing him and when you immediately left me for him, and then to find out later that he was the one to steal you from our damn house? None of it made sense to me, and it killed me to watch you not know what to say to Byson when he asked if you’d had a sexual relationship with him. I was hurt, and I was pissed, and I was so fucking jealous I couldn’t see straight. So last night I was just lashing out because I was too scared to find out what really happened between you two. I was wrong. I know that. I’m so damn sorry you heard that conversation, but that isn’t what I want, that isn’t how I feel; and I’m ready to listen to you now.”

I took in her closed-off posture and after fumbling for a moment, put the ring on the table near us, closest to her. Rachel stared at the ring for a long time before looking back at me. Those blue eyes of hers were so guarded I had no idea what she was thinking or feeling, and I hated it.

“This ring belongs to you, and the only place I want it is on your left hand . . . and hopefully someday if you’ll still have me, I want it accompanied by another ring. Like before, I won’t push you, but this is yours. If you decide to put it on again, Rachel, you better understand what I’m saying this time. I don’t want you taking that ring off.”

She didn’t move toward the ring, and she didn’t say anything. She just stayed in the same position, staring at me.

“You were still wearing your ring when we found you. So, tell me something,” I said softly, “while you were gone, were you hoping to escape, or to be found . . . and did you ever think about us and our future together?”

“Of course I did.” She sounded like I’d insulted her with my question. Thankfully, after turning away from me, she continued. “I never gave up hope until the day before you came for me. Trent said you . . . all of you . . . stopped looking for me. That you hadn’t been looking for me for a week. I figured you thought I was dead. That was the first time I ever felt like there was no hope. Every day before that I thought about you, thought about how long it probably was until we were supposed to get married. What you were telling people.” She paused and chewed on her bottom lip for a second before rushing out, “I wrote to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trent bought me a journal. I wrote to you the same way I write to my parents. I never stopped thinking about you, or us.” When she looked at me again, her eyes were glassy, and it was taking all my willpower to stay in my chair and not take her in my arms. “Did you?” she asked suddenly.

“Did I what?”

“Did you stop looking for me?”

I shifted forward again and brought my hands close to where her feet rested flat on the seat cushion. “Not the way you’re thinking. I was almost positive I knew where you were. Enough that Mason agreed to go in with me and attempt to rescue you if you were there. I had been taken off the case immediately because I was too close to it. So I did my own investigating. I looked all over the streets and used every resource I had until I got a lockdown on the building. By that time, the department had already figured out from the tests they did on the hair from your brushes, that at the very least, the hair they sent wasn’t yours. Just like the blood wasn’t even human. So they had to begin assuming all the ‘evidence’ was false, and they stopped responding to the men who took you when they called.