Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(72)

The trust fund she hated to use because whenever she touched it—as she had when Emma had gone missing and they’d hired the best private investigators to find her—her self-absorbed parents made her feel guilty from thousands of miles away.

“You don’t need to touch your trust fund. You have me.”

“You’re not going to start paying my bills.”

“Raegs, that was our apartment.”

“But it’s not anymore,” she said softly.

“What if I want it to be?”

Her gaze flicked over his, filled with a million doubts all playing across her gorgeous features. “Alec—”

“No, hear me out . . .” His chest drew tight as a drum, but it was a good tight. A right tight. One he liked because it told him he was alive. “I don’t want to just spend the night at your place. I want it to be our place. I want you, every day and every night. The way we should have been the last three years.”

She didn’t reach for him. Didn’t melt into his arms as he’d hoped. Instead, she looked down at their joined hands with a sadness that rocked him to his core. “And what happens if we don’t find Emma? Or worse, what if what we find isn’t what we both hope to find?”

He held her hand tighter because something in her sad voice made him feel like she was about to pull away. “Then we get through it together.”

Her eyes slid closed. “Alec—”

“Do you want guarantees?” Panic spread beneath his ribs, drilling holes in that drum. He reached for her other hand, as if doing so could keep her with him. “I can’t give them to you, Raegan. I don’t know what we’re going to find. All I can do is tell you that I love you. That I have always loved you and that I will always love you. Nothing we uncover today or tomorrow or twenty years from now is going to change that fact.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. One that tugged on his heart and drew him toward her like a lifeline. He closed his arms around her, feeling the wetness of her tears against his throat, hoping she felt the truth in the beat of his pulse where her cheek was pressed against his neck. “I know it’s a risk. I know my track record is shit. But give me a chance, baby. Give us a chance. I love you so damn much, Raegan. More than you will ever know.”

She sank into him and slid her arms around his waist, holding him just as tightly. “I love you too. I’m just . . . I don’t want to lose you again. I don’t want what happened before to happen again. I don’t want any of this to be the reason . . .”

Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to say the words for him to know what she meant. Their unspoken meaning slammed into him with the force of a freight train, twisting his heart like buckling metal.

She didn’t want him to hit rock bottom again and decide he had nothing to live for.

Slowly, because his hands were shaking, he framed her face and gently drew her back so she could see his eyes. “Look at me. That’s never going to happen again. Do you hear me? I was stupid and selfish that day, and I wish you didn’t even know about it, but I promise you, I’m not going back there. I have too much to live for.”

Her eyelids dropped. “But—”

“Raegan.” He tightened his fingers on her jaw, forcing her eyes to flutter open and focus on his. “Even if we weren’t together now, even if something—God forbid—happens in the future and you decide you don’t want me anymore, I still won’t ever go back there. Because if I did, if I left this world like that, there’d be no chance to win you back and prove to you this is the real deal. Because it is. This is for good or bad, for better or worse. Remember? This is forever.”

“I’m scared,” she whispered. Lifting her arms, she slid her hands around his neck and pressed her lips to his. “I’m just so scared.”

He was scared too. Scared of what they’d find, scared of the truth, and scared to death of the unknown. But more than anything, he was scared of losing her again.

No matter what, he wouldn’t let that happen.



Raegan closed her fingers around Alec’s as she walked next to him on the pothole-laden gravel road and scanned the single-wide trailers to her right and left.

“How do you know she’s here?” she asked, stepping over a mud puddle while she tried to ignore the smell around her. She couldn’t quite place it. A mixture of urine and garbage that made her glad she hadn’t eaten much lunch before they’d driven out here.

“Out here” was the only description she had for where they were. Since Alec hadn’t let her drive and hadn’t told her where they were going, she’d had to sit back and watch the scenery. She knew they were somewhere north of Portland back in the hills, but the trailer park was surrounded by such tall trees blocking all view that she had no idea in which direction the highway was or how she’d ever find her way out of here if she got separated from Alec.

“Because this is where she was the last time she contacted me, looking for money.”

He didn’t specify when “the last time” was, but Raegan knew he’d come out here after Emma had disappeared. He’d been looking for his father then, convinced he knew where Emma was. At the time, Raegan had tried to go with Alec, if for no other reason than to make sure he didn’t kill John Gilbert and wind up in jail himself, but Alec hadn’t let her tag along. Back then, in the days and weeks after Emma’s disappearance, Alec hadn’t wanted Raegan anywhere near him.