Page 10

“This isn’t my cabin. If you were in my cabin, you’d know. You’d get a very specific invitation, and you’d have no doubt what your role was once you got there. And here’s a hint, Everly. I don’t like damsels in distress in my bed.”
She pressed her toes hard against the wooden deckbeneath her, happy it was cold enough to clear her head. Because under no circumstances could she permit herself to think about hisbed. Much less herself in it. With him.
In a specificrole.
“Are you going to help me, Blue?” she asked, and she didn’t mean for her voice to go so soft halfway through the question. Almost plaintive.
She sounded almost exactly as scared as she’d been every moment since that terrible night back in Chicago. She hadn’t given in to the fear, not in all the awful, confusing weeks since. She hadn’t let her own panic sweep her under, drag her down.
And she didn’t know why—standing here on a remote porch in the middle of the Alaskan summer night with a man she found as overwhelming as the impossible light at this hour—she felt so shaken. As if Blue were the thing that might break her, after all.
Or maybe that was just any normal woman’s reaction to imagining herself in Blue’s bed—but Everly shoved that thought aside.
Blue didn’t reply. He let one moment drag by, then another. His dark gaze never left her face, and Everly felt herself redden. She told herself it was nothing but leftover emotion, secondhand sensation, from everything she had been through. Nothing to do with imagining invitations to Blue’s actual cabin, she assured herself.
Of course not.
But she realized she was clenching her arms tight against her body, as if she were bracing herself for a blow.
“Tell me what happened back in Chicago,” Blue said, long after she’d decided he might never speak again. “Exactly what happened.”
“I thought I already did.”
“You gave me an overview. Maybe you thought you’d tell us all the details in the office? But you fell asleep.”
All Everly could remember from that office was the men. A lot of men. It had seemed like a crowd of them, a battalion, each one bigger and more intimidating and gruffer than the next. She’d curled up in an oversized armchair in one corner, tucked her legs beneath her, and tried to calm her roaring pulse. She couldn’t remember the names, tossed out too quickly. Or maybe she hadn’t tried to hear them because she could barely take it all in.
That she’d found Blue. And that he came with big, strapping friends who were just as overwhelming, clearly ex-military, and obviously lethal as he was.
“I’m not on drugs, by the way,” she told him. Awkwardly. “To clarify.”
He nodded, as if he’d already come to that conclusion himself. “You don’t have that flat, dull thing going on in your eyes. But you wouldn’t be the first pretty woman to pop prescription pills and pretend she didn’t have a problem.”
“I drink coffee like it’s my job. So depending on your view of caffeine, I guess I have a problem. But only that problem. No narcotics as a chaser to my skinny mocha latte.”
“I looked you up.” Blue tapped the tablet next to him, though the screen was dark. “You work at an ad agency. My impression of ad agencies is that they run on cocaine.”
“Why is it important to you that I be a drug addict?” She frowned at him. “Do I look like a drug addict?”
“You look skinny, weak, and frazzled,” Blue said, and it was the unvarnished way he said it that got to her. That made her feel shaky on her feet. As if he wasn’t offering an opinion but reciting facts. Obvious, inarguable facts. “Much skinnier, weaker, and more frazzled than any of the pictures posted on your social media accounts.”
“One minute I’m pretty but possibly a pill-popper, and the next I look like crap. Got it.”
“I’m real sorry I’m not as cuddly and sweet and cordial as you expected your fantasy hero to be, Everly. That must suck for you. Captain America isn’t real, but I am, and like hell am I getting caught up in a mess if it’s all in your head.”
“It’s not in my head.” Blue’s eyes narrowed, which was how Everly realized she’d pretty much shouted that at him. That and the echo from the trees standing sentry behind them. “I’ve had entirely too many people tell me I’m making things up lately. I’m pretty creative, but even in my wildest imaginings, I couldn’t kill off my roommate in my dreams and have her actually go missing the next day.”
“Unless you killed her in a drug-fueled rage and were so out of it you imagined the rest of it.”
“I’ve heard of drug-fueled rages, but not drug-fueled cleaning frenzies that erased all traces of the damage.”
“Depends on the drug.”
“I’m not on drugs,” she told him, and even she could hear how frayed her own temper was getting with each word. “Just like I’m not making things up to get attention, or such a drama queen that Iwantto imaginepeople are following me. I didn’t have a bad dream or a psychotic break. I’m not crazy, and I’m not lying. But you don’t have to take my word for it.” She thrust out her arms, which would have been more effective if she hadn’t been wearing a jacket, concealing her veins. “I’ll take a blood test right now.”
Blue swung his legs down from the bench and then sat there, facing her. He didn’t say he believed her. He didn’t assure her she was sane. And still, she felt calmer, as if his full attention was the same thing.
“I don’t want your blood,” he said quietly. “I want your story. The whole story, nothing left out. Do you understand?”