Page 68 of Everything We Found

“I know,” he said, taking the cookie she offered him.

They chewed quietly, stuck in their own heads, washing the crumbs down with their waters. She thought about never calling Aimee, never seeing her mother again. No more potlucks at Kristen and Nick’s. No more playing board games and Barbie with their kids. And she honestly didn’t know if she could give it up. She loved her life. She loved the way she lived her life.

But what was the cost if she didn’t?

The Hidalgos could murder her in her sleep. They could kidnap and torture her until Thomas turned himself over. She’d heard the stories. She’d seen the photos online of what happened to those victims. The broken jaws, the pulled teeth, the missing limbs. The warnings carved into their skin. All in the name of manipulating a loved one to get a desired outcome, whether that be someone’s cooperation, a supply of weapons, or bags of cash. It could be happening to Claire right now. That had to be excruciating for Thomas, the not knowing.

“It’s been a long day and it’s not even one p.m.” Nadia finally spoke into the quiet. “I need another shower and a nap. I need time to think on this.”

“Time isn’t a luxury we have.”

She rested her hand over his and looked him in the eye. “I need you to give me some. What you’re asking of me is a big ask.”

He nodded tightly. “All right. Go rest. We’ll talk more later.”

Assuming they had time to talk later, since he actually didn’t know how much time they had left.

21

NADIA

Nadia stirred from sleep, the late afternoon light casting long, copper shadows across the room. Before her eyes fully opened, she felt his presence, that gentle tug in her lower abdomen. Thomas sat on the edge of the bed, his weight creating a slight dip in the mattress. He stared out the window, his hair damp from a recent shower, the ends curling against his temple and neck. Golden sunlight carved a hard line against his profile. Dressed in a fitted black tee and dark gray joggers, he looked devilish, the cotton stretched taut across his defined shoulders and upper back. Arms braced on his thighs, forearms corded with tension, he looked as if he were physically holding himself in place. He was also a man in conflict.

She jackknifed in bed, coming fully awake. “What’s wrong? Do we need to go?” She spoke with urgency, her voice rough with sleep.

“Tom?” she asked when he didn’t immediately answer.

“No, we don’t have to go, not yet.”

“Where’s Cammy?” She glanced out the window in search of the older woman’s Chevy Tahoe.

“She went into town a few hours ago. She won’t be back until late. Quilting Club meet-up.”

“She quilts?” Nadia almost snorted. She couldn’t picture the hearty retired U.S. Marshal quilting. Carrying a gun? Absolutely. But darning with a needle and thread? Nope. Couldn’t see it.

Nadia yawned and stretched her neck. It felt like she’d climbed into bed only minutes ago but it had been hours.

Thomas still hadn’t looked at her. His forearms rested on his knees, his hands between them. He tapped his fingertips together in a steady rhythm, thinking on something.

“What are you doing here?” she asked gently.

He turned toward her then, his eyes reflecting the dusk light as they searched her face with longing and resignation, desire and doubt. “I’ve been watching you sleep,” he admitted, softly. “Telling myself I have no right to be here with you. That with everything happening, this is absolutely the wrong time.” His hand flexed against the bed sheet. “But I don’t think I can go another second of breathing the same air as you and not be with you. Not know you ineveryway. I’m tired of telling myself no, that you wouldn’t want me. Tired of waiting.”

Nadia’s eyes widened. He just took creepy to smoking hot, the weight of his admission settling between her ribs. She exhaled a long, uneven breath, years of unexpressed longing unfurling within her, and leaned forward. Brilliant, fragmented pieces of her coalesced in her center as her hand reached up and skirted over the nape of his neck, her fingers threading through his silver-streaked hair. Her lips hovered an inch from his. “Then let’s stop waiting,” she whispered, giving in.

His fingertips moved to caress her cheek with a delicate touch, and his mouth closed over hers. The kiss was tentative at first, a question posed and answered. A much gentler exploration than their fierce, almost feral collision earlier when it felt like she was trying to claw her way into his soul. But this kiss, she felt in every molecule of her being. It radiated asoothing heat, awakening nerve endings that had lain dormant through years of denial.

Thomas inched closer until his chest pressed against her breasts, his arms coming around her, his scent engulfing her—desert sage, cedarwood, and that ineffable essence uniquely his. He saturated her senses, chasing away every warning about him that Aimee had preached to her, every objection about him she’d raised on her own, until she felt nothing but an incredible rightness. He felt like coming home. Not to the place she’d grown up in where she learned the people she loved could walk out the door and not come back. But the kind of home you built inside another person’s arms when your own body didn’t feel like enough of a shelter.

Memories cascaded through her consciousness—Thomas at seventeen, laughing across a sticky diner table. Him at thirty-one, somber in a tailored suit at a funeral that was nothing but a fabrication. Then mere days ago, throwing himself between her and a bullet’s path. Always altering her life’s trajectory. Always there.

Alwayshere.

A moan escaped her with that thought, her fingers tearing at the shirt on his shoulders. She wanted it off him so that she could feel his skin against hers. He made a rough noise against her mouth that sounded of both relief and ruin as she tugged the shirt over his head and flung it across the bed. She took that groan—his unleashed passion—into herself, swallowing the sound like a secret she’d been waiting decades to hear him confess. As she kissed his shoulders, his bare chest, the current beneath all their conversations over the years fizzled and all pretenses of restraint fell away. Returning to his mouth, neither of them able to hold back any longer, their kiss detonated, becoming that violent collision of souls Nadia had heard so much about but never experienced on her own.

Thomas seized her face between his hands, consuming her with a hunger that demanded an equal match. Her fingers dug into his back then his arms with bruising intensity as he pushed her back onto the covers, leaning over her. She welcomed his weight with a heated sigh. He rolled his hips almost on reflex, pushing against her center, and they both groaned.

“I’ve carried you with me,” he murmured against her jaw, kissing his way down her neck. “In every decision.” He stretched the neck of her cotton shirt as far as it would go, his mouth lavishing kisses across the upper curve of her breasts. “Every sacrifice.”