Page 136 of I Know Your Secret
I follow him in, shutting the door behind me.
“Fuck, I really fucked him up.”
Chase’s words have me honing in on the loud heavy-metal music blasting down the hall.
“Where is that coming from?”
“The gym, if I had to guess,” Chase says, rubbing his hands over his dirty blond scruff. “I’ll go see if I can bring him around.”
“No. I’ll go.”
“It’s admirable, what you’ve become to him, Greer, it is. But you don’t know some parts of Koen as I do. It’s probably safer for me to…”
“No. I’ll go,” I double down.
“It’s your throat,” Chase argues. “I’m going to go do some more recon on Koen’s cameras to see if I can formulate some plan of attack for us.”
“Order pizza, too. We’re going to need brain food.”
“Koen doesn’t let us order food to this address; we’re off-grid, remember?”
“Goddamn him and his rules. Alright, I’ll find something to make when I’m done.”
Chase grins. “Alright.”
He rolls past the gym door in his chair as I take a calming breath, preparing myself for whatever version of Koen is on the other side.
My body is already starting to feel the effects of the rigorous training he put me through, my arms burning from the recoil of shooting earlier as I lift my hand to the handle.
I find it unlocked, which is at least one thing in my favor.
The muted music becomes nearly too much to bear as I slowly creak the door open and pop my head inside.
Koen’s back is to me as he lifts up and down on a pull-up bar over and over, his torso bare, along with his feet tucked up and crossed behind him.
Sweat drips off his back as he works at a pace I don’t think is healthy for anyone, even Koen, as superhuman as he might seem.
Apprehension coats my insides as I close the door behind me, feeling much like the bear about to poke the bees’ nest to steal the honeycomb.
He drops down, heaving breaths into his chest before he turns around. The look in his eyes is damn near inhuman, and I’m caught in it as his brows knit together.
“Get out.” It’s firm, and to the point, and if I were a wiser woman, I’d heed the demand for privacy, but the insane side of me, the side that’s currently falling in love with a trained killer, steps closer.
Why do I do so?
Because sometimes someone you love is hurting so immensely, so profoundly, it’s written in the lines of their face and the posture of their body. It’s underlying in their words, even when they hadn’t meant it to be.
Sometimes, they don’t know what’s good for them or how to verbalize their needs, and you have to push against the barriers of their emotions to support them.
He needs me.
“No,” I reply, stepping even closer, hesitantly, but still.
“Greer, you’re being stupid right now. Leave me alone and let me work through this my way.”
“Are you working through it?” I shout over the music before grabbing his phone off the bench beside him and silencing it. “Or are you turning the other cheek?”
Snatching his hand forward, he tries to get his phone back.
