Reveal (Wicked Ways #2)(64)

“Vaughn.” He exits the car and looks at me over its roof. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Then why even bring it up?”

“You can stick your head in the sand all you want, but it’ll just make you more vulnerable because you won’t be able to see it coming. Carter’s not going to go away. Not until he gets everything he wants from you—your body, what you have on him, everything.”

“Then I guess you should have never offered me in the first place,” I whisper harshly, well aware that Lucy is sleeping a few feet from me. I push off from the car and take a few steps to get some distance from him and the ever-present reminder that is beginning to ruin this perfect night.

But I force myself to calm down and turn around and face him. I hang my head for a beat before I meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“I deserve it.”

“Yeah, you do—”

“I exacerbated the situation. The one you refuse to let me apologize for . . . so we keep going on, and this huge fucking elephant in the room rears its ugly head every time we get two steps forward only to pull us ten steps back.”

“I promised myself I was going to forgive and try to forget . . .” I look down at my hands twisting together and know he’s right about all this, but at the same time I would prefer to live in the fairytale land we just left at Belvedere Castle.

“We’re both works in progress.”

I smile softly. “Definitely works in progress.”

“Again, I’m sorry. He had his eyes set on you, Vaughn, and . . . and when he said he had dirt on you, I played his game. Fuck, did I play it.” He runs a hand through his hair in frustration and walks to the end of the driveway and then back.

“And now we know what he thought he had,” I say, thinking about my uncle and what it is that Carter was using his name for other than to try to scare me. To let me know he could hold the same kind of fear and power over me.

“If there’s anything else, Vaughn—anything at all about your uncle that you’re hiding—you need to tell me.”

I stare at him and just shake my head. “This is never going to go away, is it?”

“It will. I’ll make sure of it.”

“At what cost, though?” I ask, my voice breaking in ways I don’t want it to.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs as he pulls me against him and wraps his arms around me. And it feels so good, to be here, to feel safe, when I’m sure the sense of security is just as false as me pretending Carter is going to go away. “I just don’t know.”

“Maybe I should just hand over what I have on him. Losing all of this isn’t worth it,” I say with my cheek resting on his chest and his lips pressing a kiss to the crown of my head. Lucy. Him. My freedom if Carter calls the authorities. The three things that matter the most to me.

“What do you have on him, Vaughn?” he asks for a second time.

I tense at the question, at him asking to know the secrets I keep from everyone to protect myself. My safekeeping. At the last piece of myself that I haven’t given him yet—my confidentiality. “Pictures of Carter. . . let’s just say with his pants down.”

His pause in response tells me he knows just how big of a deal my answering him was.

“The underage girls.” My head whips up at his comment, and he simply nods. “His wife is my client. I’ve investigated him as well.”

“Oh.” But for some reason I feel a little more at ease divulging the information now, because I hadn’t thought about it that way.

“What else do you have? There has to be more.”

“Some kind of phone records.”

“And he knows you have these?” he asks, leaning back so he can see my eyes when I nod.

“Yes.”

“He knows specifically what they are?”

I shrug. “I just told him I had a call log. He acted like it wasn’t a big deal and said his calls were public record, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. They mean something to him.”

“What are they of?” he asks. “What—”

“I don’t exactly know.” I shake my head and feel stupid that I don’t have an answer. “They were emailed to my investigator anonymously. The IP address and fake email address were traced back to a terminal at a public library. The email just said that this paper was extremely important if someone connected the right dots. It was signed, A Concerned Citizen.”

Ryker angles his head to the side and narrows his eyes in thought. I wait for him to ask for more—to see the call log—and I struggle between giving myself completely to him or drawing a line in the sand I can’t let him cross.

“And they’re in safekeeping?”

I nod, almost breathing a sigh of relief when he doesn’t ask.

“What a clusterfuck,” he mutters with a shake of his head. “I need to think about this. About all of it. We’ll figure it out. I’ll help you figure it out.”

“Ryker . . . you don’t need to get involved. The last thing you need—”

“It’s you. I’m already involved.” He leans forward and brushes a tender kiss to my lips that feels so resolute, almost as if he, too, is wishing away the situation.