Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(9)

“I’m in Paris, yes,” I say with remarkable coolness, considering I’m unraveling inside. Was I not supposed to leave? They never said a word about me not leaving the country.

“What was the rush to escape?”

Defensiveness lares inside me. “Escape?” I counter, and I feel the lex of Chris’s ingers on my belly in response. “I’m not sure what that means, but I’m pretty sure almost being killed by a crazy woman justiies my need for a change of scenery.”

“You needed it quickly, it seems.”

Defensiveness begins to blossom into outright anger, tightening my words. “What is it you’re alluding to?”

“You managed to take over Rebecca’s job.”

“Someone had to.”

“Not everyone had her personal items and her deepest, most intimate thoughts.” He hesitates and it’s clearly for efect.

“You ended up with her job and her boss. Really, her entire life.”

My heart jackhammers and Chris molds me closer, silently telling me he is here, he is with me. He is all that keeps me from completely snapping. “I was almost killed last night,” I repeat.



“That’s a separate event from Rebecca’s death.”



“Ava confessed to killing Rebecca. She tried to kill me.

That’s pretty connected, if you ask me.”

“She now says she confessed to protect Mark.”

“Protect Mark?” I all but gasp and I turn to face Chris, my ingers digging into his arms. “She says Markkilled Rebecca?”

Chris’s expression is unreadable, but I feel the muscles lex beneath my grip, and his hands settle irmly on my waist. His eyes ind mine and hold, and I feel him beyond his touch. He is my rock, my strength.

“Ava says that you killed Rebecca and blackmailed Mark into silence,” the detective informs me.

The darkness I’ve battled for hours now becomes a black hole, and the world seems to spin. A second later, my knees buckle and the ground is all I see.





Four


I blink and discover my hands are resting on the solid wall of Chris’s chest. His arm is wrapped around my waist, anchoring me to him while he talks on my phone. My anchor. He is that and so much more, I think, as I realize I blacked out and now I’m back in this world. I’ve never blacked out before, and it’s downright unnerving to realize I’ve lost all sense of time and reality.

“Did you tell her she couldn’t leave the country?” Chris calmly asks into the phone. There’s a short pause. “Then she’s done nothing wrong.” He listens again. “Yeah, well, for the record, I know she’s innocent, too, and your ‘just doing your job’

could have waited until she got over the shock of last night, no matter how much you want to cover your bases. From this point on, you talk to her attorney, Stephen Newman. He’ll be calling you.” He ends the call.

I swallow, trying to ind my voice, panic expanding in my chest all over again. “Chris, he . . . I—”



“You have nothing to worry about,” he assures me, framing my face with his hands. “I’ve got this, and I’ve got you.”

His eyes brim with warmth and promise, and I hope he knows something I don’t. “He all but accused me of killing Rebecca.”

“Ava and her attorney had to come up with a defense for her, and you were it. The police don’t believe her, but to get an indictment they have to do due diligence. Our attorney will take care of this. And I’ll take care of you.”

There was a time when the idea of leaning on Chris would have totally scared me. After the way he shut me out over Dylan’s death, it’s still hard not to be a little scared—but it’s also never felt as good as it does now, to be in this man’s arms.

I look down to where my hands rest on his chest and they’re shaking, but I can’t seem to feel them shaking. It is as if my body and my mind aren’t communicating. “I think . . . I think I’m not so good right now.”

“Like I said. I’ve got you, baby.” He punches the elevator button and scoops me up in his arms, and I sink against him, relieved. He has me. I have him. I choose to fully believe that right now. I need to believe that.

I rest my head against his shoulder and close my eyes. As silly as it might seem, I don’t want to see what awaits us inside, in this state of mind. I want to wait and explore later, when the bad isn’t tainting the good.

When I force my lashes to open a little while later, Chris is setting me down on a bathroom vanity. He kisses me, a quick brush of his mouth. “You okay?”

I cover his hands where they rest on my cheeks. “Only because of you.”

“I say that about you every day since I met you, Sara. You do know that, don’t you? When I was gone for Dylan’s funeral, it was you that got me through. Knowing you were in my life— that’s what broke through the darkness.”

My breath escapes on his name. “Chris,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck and burying my face in his shoulder. Wrenching pain rips through me at the memory of inding Chris in Mark’s club, screaming for the lash of a whip to beat away the pain of losing Dylan. “I love you.” I can’t keep the quaver from my voice and I don’t try. I lean back and lift my gaze to his, opening myself up, letting him judge my words as he’d judged himself that night. “I love you so much, Chris.”