This Is Love, Baby (War & Peace #2)(6)

I lie there, unmoving like a child’s doll long forgotten in the yard. Discarded and used. Broken and useless. My thoughts are blank and my heart doesn’t beat. I just stare and stare and stare into nothingness. His next words don’t frighten me or upset me. I don’t recoil in disgust or beg for him not to.

“I’m going to make love to you now.”

I simply stare.

I am no longer War’s peace. I am nothing. I am Gabe’s vacant little doll.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Abso-f*cking-lutely nothing.





I SHOULDER MY duffle bag and start toward the door when a thought occurs to me.

She doesn’t have any clue. Not one single clue.

My girl has been stolen, most likely raped and beaten, been someone’s prisoner for nearly four months now. Her spirit is probably broken. She’ll miss her parents. I’m sure she’ll be scared out of her damn wits.

I run my fingers through my overgrown dark hair. The boyish spikes are a thing of the past and I’ve embraced the wildness of what it’s come to be. Much like myself. No longer stiff and in place, behaving for everyone to see. No, it’s unruly. Unmanageable. Rogue. Like me. I’ve spent months searching for her. Months dealing with more questions than answers. Months missing her so badly, my heart physically aches in my chest.

And while I don’t understand, and quite frankly, am furious about the correspondence she had made, I’d been smart enough to know it was probably under duress.

My Baylee loves me. She always has.

I can’t wait to take her from that motherf*cker and hold all of the broken pieces of her. I’ll mend her and heal her. Take the pain away from her. Provide the shoulder she needs to lean on. It’s what we do. Baylee and I are made to weather any storm. If we can get past all of this bullshit, we can do anything.

I stride through her home and make my way into her parents’ room to find what I’m looking for. On her father’s bedside table sits a picture. A picture of her family. The frame long since replaced after having been broken not so long ago.

Baylee—recently turned seventeen in the picture—sits between her parents on the bleachers. It had been baseball season, and she’d forced them to come to one of my games. Tony, for once, was actually smiling. Almost as if he’d grown used to seeing me around and could perhaps stomach the idea of her and I being a couple. Lynn wore a smile of beauty and grace as she side hugged her daughter. It was one of the last times Baylee’s mother had been well enough to leave the house.

I swallow down a thick ball of emotion and grit my teeth. Lynn had always been good to me. When Tony and Gabe would mess with me, like they often liked to do, she’d always shoo them off and mollify me with motherly smiles my own mother could never give. It was like she, too, knew Baylee and I weren’t just some passing fling, but instead true love. That we were meant to be.

I loved Lynn as if she were my own mother.

Baylee is going to be devastated.

Giving her the news via email seemed impersonal and wrong. I always knew I’d be the one to hold her through what would inevitably be the worst time of her life. I just didn’t realize that it would be so in more ways than one.

With a sigh, I set down the duffle bag and unzip it. I stuff the picture into it and on a whim decide to grab Lynn’s white sweater which she always kept on the chair near her bed. I look around the room, pondering whether or not I should take anything else. She’ll need memories. I don’t want her to be denied of any of them.

I snatch a few more things and toss them in the bag. After zipping it back up, I stride back through the house to leave. A loud, sudden bang on the front door nearly stops my heart.

My blood runs cold in my veins, nearly turning to ice, as I freeze in my tracks. I’ve been staying in this house for a while now and nobody has come over. Hoping it’s just a neighbor I can easily get rid of, I prowl over to the front door and peek through the small window. I lock eyes with the shrewd brown ones of Detective Stark.

Fuck.

Another pound startles me. “We can see you in there,” her partner’s deep voice booms through the door. “Open up. We’d like to ask a few questions.”

I grit my teeth and reluctantly pull open the door. Stark widens her eyes in surprise before she schools her expression.

“Brandon Thompson? Funny seeing you here,” she says carefully, her eyes darting behind me into the house. “Do your parents know where you’ve been?”

I shrug my shoulders and drag my gaze to her badge on her belt to avoid her scrutinizing stare. “I’m eighteen. I wasn’t missing, just needed my space. She knows I’m alive and well.”

She makes a cluck with her tongue and our eyes meet again. “I see. We actually came to pay a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Winston. May Detective Shilling and I come inside and ask a few questions?”

Glancing at Shilling, who chews on a toothpick like it’s a piece of gum beside her, and then back at Stark, I shake my head no. “Uh, didn’t you hear about Mrs. Winston? She’s dead.”

Stark’s partner slides his hand over his gun, the movement almost unnoticeable. But I see and cringe.

“Her liver finally shut down and she passed on,” I add quickly before they start getting the wrong idea.

Stark waves her hand at her partner, trying to calm him, I guess. “Yes, we knew she was very ill,” she says solemnly.