Return to Me (Breaking Free Book 2) Page 18

  “No, of course not.” She pauses for a moment. “Maybe. I’m in and out of that door a lot. Shit.”

  “It’s okay.” I open it up, step outside into the frigid air. The deck is wide and relatively narrow. There’s a covered hot tub in one corner with some decorative lattice along two sides for privacy, some padded deck chairs, a small table. I walk over to the railing and peer over the edge. She wasn’t kidding. It’s a straight drop down, and the support beams are angled in towards the house. “Well, someone’s been stomping around down there,” I say, catching sight of lots of small footprints in the muddy snow.

  The temperature has fluctuated wildly over the past few days, warming and cooling. The thin blanket of snow has partially melted, and refrozen a few times recently. I’m not sure if they’re going to be able to get much from those prints depending on when they were left.

  “Charity was down there,” Trin says. “Those might be from her.”

  I stoop down and inspect the railing. The stained, treated lumber is newer, but still probably at least a year or two old. There are few dark spots, ashy burns along the top flat portion. I find several nicks and scuffs, nothing unusual. Near the corner to the left I spot what I’m looking for, fresh scratches and dents where the pale grain beneath the stain is laid bare. “I think someone used a grappling hook to get up here.”

  “Holy shit,” Trin mutters.

  “Take a look at this,” Shane calls from inside.

  Trin steps aside to let me through, and I see Shane holding some sort of bleached animal bone out from himself between two gloved fingers.

  Waving her hand through the air, Trin lets out an annoyed sigh. “My sister found that out in the woods.”

  “She still collects bones?” I ask.

  “Among other crap. You can just throw that away.”

  Shane doesn’t throw it away. He lays it right back where he found it. We really shouldn’t be in here poking around with county forensics on the way, but I have a personal interest in this. I need to find out who is tormenting Trin. I start to close the door against the cold, then pause. Kneeling down I inspect the lock.

  There are scratches around the brass, like it’s been tampered with. Someone picked the lock. That message upstairs wasn’t left by your run of the mill obsessed fan. It was someone who knew what they were doing, and someone who knew enough about Trin and the layout of her home to understand this was the only safe way in without detection.

  Chapter 23

  Trin

  “I thought I told you no police,” Brent hisses near my ear as he gives me a tight squeeze.

  “Sorry. I freaked out.” I fail to mention that I called Gabe, not the police. Gabe has no want to be in the spotlight, and knowing my manager, he will try to play this relationship up for the media, so it’s best to keep that bit to myself.

  This isn’t publicity. This is my real life, a life that now includes Gabe, who said he loves me. He loves me! I’m giddy with this knowledge, despite being freaked out by the creepy message about wanting to eat my eyeballs, and make a pair of gloves out of my skin.

  What the fuck is wrong with people? Just like the first time, I didn’t read through the whole hand written letter. I digested just enough to know I needed to get to safety before the sick fuck who wrote it jumped out of the closet, or crawled out from beneath the bed to make good on those threats.

  “How are your nerves holding up?” Brent asks, rubbing my back soothingly.

  “I’ll be okay,” I say fast.

  “You need to come back to Nashville,” Brent says. “I can’t protect you up here, and I can’t be in two places at once.”

  “This is my home.”

  “How are you going to feel safe here now?”

  “I know how they got in, so I can fix it. I’ll be fine.”

  Brent stiffens slightly. “We should at least hire someone-”

  “No. You know I don’t like people living with me. It’s too invasive.”

  “I don’t know if you’re just stubborn, or reckless. Someone in your position needs protection.”

  Maybe he’s right. Would it kill me to have someone watch the place while I’m home? “I’ll think about it.”

  Gabe stalks into the living room. A trace of a smile tugs on the corners of his lips when his eyes fall on me, but it disappears completely when he looks in Brent’s direction. “Mr. Gibson, could we have a word in private for a moment?”

  Brent gives me a questioning look, and I shrug.

  I curl up on the end of the sofa with a cup of tea one of the officers made for me a while ago. It’s gone cold, but I take a few sips anyways. They’ve been here for hours, dusting for prints, roaming around outside looking for clues on the hillside. What happens if they actually catch the person who left that message? Will there be a trial? I hope they do catch them, but this is going to be a nightmare.

  When Brent returns twenty minutes later, his nostrils are flared like a bull, and his hazel eyes spark with anger. He takes the spot beside me, and asks in a furious, hushed whisper. “You mentioned that note you found back in Houston?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  Brent lets out a long, exasperated sigh. “You’ve opened quite the can of worms here, Trin.”

  “Sorry, but it was the same sort of letter, the same flowers? It seemed relevant. I’m not crazy, right?”

  He shakes his head. “You’re not crazy, doll.” Brent takes my closest hand and presses it flat between his palms. “He mentioned you were old friends. Maybe you can have a word with him, Trin. He’s wanting to question everyone that’s been here, and was in Houston. That’s Kane, Mia, Conner, and Ethan. And me. This is ridiculous.”

  “He’s just trying to do his job,” I remind him, and myself too, but Brent is right. This is ridiculous. There’s no way Brent scaled the side of my house, and none of those other people have reason to leave a creepy message in my home either.

  “I would offer to stay and keep you company, but since it looks like I may be a suspect in this investigation.” Brent widens his eyes on that last word, clearly mocking. “I’ll probably stay at my place in Charlotte.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry, Brent. Let me talk to them.”

  “You do that.” Brent stands to leave, and I walk him to the door. He gives me another hug, and a light peck on the cheek. “Maybe we can grab lunch tomorrow. We can talk some more about the direction you want to take with Sinsation. The truth is, the idea is kind of growing on me a bit.”

  I smile up at him. “We could do that.”

  Watching him leave, I feel incredibly shitty. He just flew all the way here to get accused of something so utterly preposterous it’s laughable. At the first available opportunity, I pull Gabe aside to a semi private corner in the dining room. “Gabe, you need to call this whole thing off. You can’t harass the people I work with.”

  “If there’s a link between Houston and here, I think it’s worth looking into.”

  “You’re looking in the wrong places! You know how many weirdos followed me from city to city? This could be anyone.”

  His hand rests on my shoulder, warming my skin through my sweater. His eyes are intensely blue. Deep ocean blue. “No one is getting harrassed. I promise you. It’s just a few routine questions. This is all standard in a situation like this.” He seems so authoritative, in a hot way. It’s usually not my thing. Maybe it’s the uniform. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but the calm, even cadence of his baritone voice definitely adds to the effect. “Does that make sense, Trin?”

  I realize I’m just staring at him in a daze. I nod quickly.

  “We just want to find out who’s doing this to you so we can put a stop to it.”

  “O-Okay.”

  Gabe takes a quick look over his shoulder to make sure we’re not being overheard. “You shouldn’t be here alone tonight. Trin, you should come home with me.”

  I nod again quickly. He’s right. I don’t want to be alone, or here in this house until we get the security b
reach sorted. Really I want to be where ever Gabe is.

  ∞∞∞

  “I’m afraid it’s a little smaller than you’re used to,” Gabe says with a smile as he leads me inside his place several hours later.

  “It’s perfect.” I don’t bother to look around. As soon as the door is closed, I’m pressed up against him. “Did you mean it?” I ask between kisses.

  “Of course I meant it.”

  “Say it.”

  “I love you, Trin.”

  Those words from his lips are the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. I never thought I’d hear them in his voice again.

  All those times he said them in the past, I took it for granted. I didn’t realize what I had until it was gone. It’s such a cliche, but it’s the truth. I was too young and foolish to understand what his love meant until I’d pushed him away. “I wrote so many of those songs about you.”

  “You did?”

  “Sometimes I hoped you would hear them, maybe you’d know.”

  “I never listened to your music.” He pulls the wig I wore here to remain anonymous off my head, lets it flutter to the floor.

  “You didn’t?” I run my palm against the sandpaper scratch of his jaw. I want to feel it against my tongue.

  He pulls my hair aside, kisses my neck. “Not if I could help it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It made me miss you too much,” he says against my skin.

  “I missed you too.”

  “How much?”

  “So much,” I sigh softly.

  Tugging gently on a fistful of my hair, he angles my face back to stare into my eyes. “Show me.”

  I suck in a sharp breath. God, he really is different. The old Gabe would’ve never demanded such a thing, and I think I’m starting to like this new Gabe just fine.

  The couch in the closest available soft surface, and I end up showing him right there, clothes half on, and clothes half off. At his prompting I climb on his lap, straddle his hips. I’m already halfway home before I lower myself down over him.

  “Slow,” he instructs, stripping the bra off me, the last piece remaining between us. “Do it sweet, Trin.”

  Gabe is the sweetest thing I’ve ever had, and he wants to make it last. So do I.

  I want this to last forever.

  Nothing last forever though, but we make it last for a long time. Slow, sweet, then faster, harder.

  “Not yet.” He says in a strained rumble.

  Gabe moves me off him, lays me back across the couch, and covers me with his body. His eyes are a stormy sky color, and I can sense that storm building inside him. There’s electricity crackling between us, within me. I wrap my legs around him. I want fast, hard. I want right now.

  He wants slow, and with one of his hands on my hip, the other curved behind my neck, he’s in control. He remembers just how to get me there, but he holds me on a razor edge. It’s sweet agony, delicious torture. I would beg for release, but his mouth and mine are connected in one long, desperate kiss that goes on and on.

  When he finally lets me fly, I shudder violently beneath him. I am still riding that high when he gives a shudder of his own.

  I could lay like this forever cocooned beneath him. I wrap him up with my arms and legs while he recovers. I say those words against his shoulder, his neck.

  Why did I have such a problem saying them in the past? I honestly don’t know. Saying them, hearing them, was beyond me. I think what I told him before was the truth. I was too immature. I wasn’t ready.

  I’m ready now. I’m ready for forever.

  We lay there like that for a long time, boneless and sated. The rumble of my stomach pulls us out of that hazy, dreamlike place. “You’re hungry.”

  “I’m starving,” I say truthfully.

  First we take a shower. It’s much smaller than mine at home, but larger than the one on my bus. The space feels perfect, close and intimate. I brought clothes, but I choose to wear one of his soft, cotton shirts that drapes around me. He goes bare on top, wearing only loose fitting shorts due to the warmth inside. He can’t control the heat in his apartment, he explains. It’s radiant, whatever that means.

  Radiant. I like that word. His smile is radiant. His blue eyes sparkle with a radiance.

  “I hope you’re prepared to eat something out of the microwave,” he says, swinging his freezer open. “I can’t cook. I don’t even have real food.”

  “Anything is better than the crap I’ve been eating.”

  “I’m such a shitty dad,” he says, pulling a few things out. “I feed this stuff to Rose when she’s here.”

  “That doesn’t make you a shitty dad. There’s far worse things for a kid than a frozen dinner.”

  “The other night I let her have cereal for dinner.”

  “You have cereal? Like the good kind? The kind with sugar?”

  Gabe gives me another radiant smile as he swings open a narrow pantry door. He has several to choose from.

  After my big, indulgent bowl of cereal, I remember to call and check in on Charity. She’s fine, she assures me. She’s an adult. Maybe it’s good she wasn’t with me when I returned to my place anyways, but I feel oddly guilty. I call Faith, who only lays on a bit more guilt.

  “Give me a break. I had an awful day,” I tell her. “Some weirdo broke into my place.”

  “You should come stay with us,” she offers after I clue her in on the details.

  “I’m with Gabe,” I say.

  He gives me another radiant smile at the mention of his name.

  “Good. That’s good,” Faith says. “Maybe I’ll go swing by and check on Charity before it gets too late.”

  Just as I hang up with my sister, I get a text from Brent with details on our lunch tomorrow. I swing my legs up on the couch, and lay my head across Gabe’s lap. His fingers stroke through my hair gently. I practically purr with relaxed pleasure. “You do realize that Brent probably couldn’t climb over the back of this couch with a grappling hook, right?” I say. “Plus he wasn’t even in town.”

  “I don’t trust him, Trin.”

  I sigh quietly. “I never said I trusted him.”

  “Then why do you work with him?”

  “Because I trust him more than I trust a lot of other people, and I understand him.”

  Gabe quirks an eyebrow at me.

  “He’s a greedy motherfucker. He sees dollar signs when he looks at me, but he doesn’t want to eat my eyeballs.”

  “What about Kane?”

  I roll my eyes. “He would never go to that much trouble to get a message to me. The only thing Kane cares about is pussy, and he doesn’t need to work hard for it.” I bring up Facebook, scroll through. I don’t have to go far to find what I’m looking for. “This is from yesterday.” I hold my phone up to show him a picture of Kane, looking deeply tan on some white, sandy beach with a girl in a skimpy bathing suit on each arm.

  “Your assistant Mia?”

  I’ve made her life difficult in the past, there’s no denying that, but she gets paid well to deal with my occasional crap, and since the last tour is over and I’ve been keeping far from Nashville, she’s getting paid to do almost nothing. “That’s not her style. She would just tattle to Brent if I pissed her off, or Conner when we were on the road.”

  “What about Conner?”

  I laugh hard. “He might hate me, but he just had a baby. He’s too busy changing shitty diapers for breaking and entering.”

  Gabe’s torso goes rigid. “Why does he hate you?”

  “Maybe hate is a strong word, but I wasn’t easy to work with when I was using. It pissed him off that I screwed around so much. I didn’t take things seriously.”

  His eyes soften, but there is a slight furrow between his brows. “But you’re different now.”

  “Too little too late. Conner finally got fed up with my bullshit, or maybe he’s just happy to retire at the ripe old age of thirty three. It’s definitely not him though. I’ve known him for years, and
his wife. We go way back.”

  “Ethan?”

  I shake my head. “Nah. He stays holed up in some little town in Vermont with his wife when we’re not on the road. He’s totally normal. Definitely not an eyeball eater. I’m telling you Gabe. It’s probably just some random fruitloop.” I give a tiny shudder, and not the good kind of shudder, at a recent memory. “Speaking of fruit loops, there was one in the store today. He gave me this weird look, and touched my hair.” I laugh. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing, but it creeped me out for some reason. “I saw him at the gas station one day last week, and he was… I dunno. He seemed pissed that I didn’t remember him.”

  “What did he look like?” Gabe asks, looking mildly furious.

  I shake my head. “Normal. Just a guy. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Average. I don’t know why I brought it up. He did look a little familiar, so I might’ve known him from back in the day. He wouldn’t have anything to do with Houston though. Maybe he was from the church. He probably just thought I was a sinful skank.”

  “He doesn’t know the real you.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “What?”

  “Well, if you only heard the stuff on the radio, you might not know.”

  “My sister said it was nasty.” He laughs. “But that’s Becca.”

  “Some of it was nasty, and then there was my wardrobe malfunction.” I form air quotes around the last word.

  “That was on purpose?”

  “Oh, yeah. We practiced it. Brent tried to talk me into flashing my vajayjay climbing out of a limo, but a girls gotta draw the line somewhere.”

  “That guy really is a creep.”

  “He was just doing his job. Generating buzz.” I wasn’t the type of girl you bring home to meet your parents, not parents like Gabe’s anyways, even before Sinful. I let out a soft, forlorn sigh.

  “It doesn’t bother me,” Gabe says, trailing a finger down the slope of my nose, over my lips, along my chin. “But no one gets to see this anymore except me.” He slides a palm down my torso to cup my sex briefly. His hand moves back up my body, dragging the oversized shirt of his up over my chest. “These either.” He pauses to lean over and lightly bite one of my nipples. “You’re all mine, Trin.”