Page 61 of After All The Wreckage

“That isn’t a good idea.” He looked down the hall again.

“I don’t plan on shooting Dunn. I’ll do everything I can to make sure Monte’s vision doesn’t come true, but I’m also not walking away. Now that I know my mom was involved, I can’t. We can help each other. Tell Monte I want to help.”

Without waiting for him to argue about it more, I pulled open the door and stepped outside. Regardless of what Gage or Monte thought or decided, I wouldn’t stop.

Gage had said Monte’s visions were never wrong. Butneverwas a word I’d always bucked against. Especially when it came to me. Whenever someone tried to tell me I couldn’t do something, it only made me more determined to prove I could.

This would be just another time I’d prove the entire universe wrong.

And in doing so, I’d get justice for my momandMonte.

Where that left Gage and me when it was over, I had no idea. I couldn’t let that affect what I did or how I proceeded. There might be a possibility that Dad was wrong about tears, but he wasn’t wrong about emotions messing with an investigation. I couldn’t let my feelings, or a kiss, get in my way. No matter how damn earth-shattering the kiss had been.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Gage

HOW MUCH LOVE

Performed by Survivor

Rory walked out the door,and I bit my cheek to stop myself from begging her to come back. She was going into D.C., which meant she was investigating, stirring up the hornet’s nest. What would happen to her when she did? Look at what had happened to Monte when he’d simply talked to Dunn.

The tension in my body was wound to the top. Not just from the vision and Monte’s kidnapping, but from a kiss that had splintered my soul. I would have set Rory on the counter and feasted on her if Ivy hadn’t walked in on us.

Jesus. What the hell had I been thinking?

I hadn’t thought at all. My body had simply reacted. A man starved for too long, I’d been unable to deny what she’d given me. I’d told her the truth when I’d said she deserved a partner who would put her at the top of their list.

And yet the thought of someone else being that person for her—the thought of someone else kissing her, twining their body with hers—was enough to make my jaw and fists clench tightly. I was torn between wanting to claim her as mine with us standing shoulder to shoulder, holding the weight of our lives above us, and needing to put my walls and boundaries back in place so I wouldn’t take something I couldn’t give back.

“Bubba…” Ivy’s little voice called with worry in her tone. “I sorry.”

I rounded the counter into the kitchen and just stared for a moment. She was covered in yogurt. Head to toe. Face, hair, clothes, and socks. How could a tiny yogurt container have covered her so completely?

“What happened?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to laugh or growl in frustration.

“I twied to open it,” she said.

The burst yogurt became a metaphor for my entire morning. Messes I had to clean up right and left—at the bar, in the apartment, and with my family—all while my emotions ran so high I was swimming in them.

Throughout the day, I kept an extra close watch on Monte. His eyes were shadowed and dark, and he moved slowly, as if each motion shot pain through him. He’d taken the gauze off his hands, and the scrapes there were raw and red. But it was the mental wounds I was more worried about.

Once Ivy went down for a nap and Monte and I sat down for lunch, I finally had time to ask the question I’d been burning to ask all morning. “Do you want to talk to me about it?”

He picked at his sandwich, not really eating it. “Talk about what?”

“Any of it.”

He shook his head.

“Do you want to talk to someone else? A therapist, maybe?”

He scoffed, eyes way too old for his age meeting mine. “And what? Tell them my vision drove me to D.C.? That would go over really well. They’d try to stick me in a mental hospital.”

It bothered me that he was right. That he wouldn’t be able to work through this with someone who knew how to help in ways I didn’t, all because of the stupid abilities Demi had saddled him with.

He shoved the plate away. “I’ve been thinking. About Rory and Dunn. She’s a private investigator, right? I mean. Maybe we hire her to find Demi. Maybe that’s why she’s there…”