Page 45 of Dead Love

“I was checking to see if you had anyone in the crematorium,” I said.

“And?”

I couldn’t remember any details, so I quickly changed the subject: “This is your break room?”

I walked into the room, then sat down at the table, my entire body shaking with nerves. How was I supposed to take what had happened with Andrew? A cop who was supposed to be protecting me, was telling me to spy on my abductor?

And what exactly would I find?

Was Vincent the Echo Killer?

Vincent sat across from me, his hands bracing the sides of the table. If he was the Echo Killer, what did he want from me?

“What do you want from life?” he asked.

Those words shocked me. I had been thinking almost the same thing. “What?”

“What do you want from life?” A subtle smile crossed his lips. “It’s simple.”

I furrowed my brows. I needed to be calm. I needed to pretend like everything was fine.

“Is anything ever that simple?” I asked.

“When it’s about desire, yes. It’s what you want. No one can change that.”

His onyx eyes sucked me in, drowning me, and though I knew I was supposed to see a killer inside of him, I didn’t. I saw a man who was tortured by a past I didn’t understand, possessed with an obsession to see things weaken before him, someone who was struck by the world.

“So?” he asked.

“So,” I gave a nervous laugh, “When I was younger—okay, when I was eighteen, so like, three years ago,” I corrected myself, “I wanted to go to college. Study floriculture. Maybe even go to one of the agriculture universities on the west coast.” I shrugged, trying to play it off like it didn’t bother me anymore. “I even got a scholarship. But I couldn’t go.”

“Why not?”

“My mother needed me. Here,” I said in a quiet voice. “She said she couldn’t risk me being that far away from home. And rather than risk another one of her episodes, I’ve been trying to think of ways I can work on learning nature here, in Punica. I was working with my friend to set up a proposal for this business.” I didn’t bring up the greenhouse, nor did I bring up Andrew’s marriage compromise. The whole thing seemed silly now. “Sometimes, my mother gets me books from the library, but mostly it’s just reading the catalogs. Scouring the websites when she lets me on the computer.”

His jaw ticked. “Your mother kept you from going to college on a scholarship?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to figure out why he was acting like that offended him. “Yeah. She needed me here.”

“She doesn’tneedyou. She’s a grown woman.”

“You don’t know her.”

“Nothing could give her an excuse to hold you back like that.”

I crowded my arms around myself. My cheeks flamed; he was acting like he knew my life better than I did.

“You can’t dwell on what you don’t have,” I said. “I’m not going to pity myself, or be angry with my mother, when I can find a new goal. A different way to make things work.” He shook his head; he didn’t agree. “You have to see the beauty in each moment. Maybe I didn’t get to go to college, but I got to help my mother expand Poppies & Wheat. And if I had actually gone to college, then I would never have met Nyla.” My muscles tightened. “You have to enjoy life. Even the little moments in between.”

He cocked his chin to the side, his eyes focused. He leaned forward, tapping his chin. My skin laced with heat. Why was he scrutinizing me like that?

“What is it?” I asked. “What are you thinking about?”

After a few seconds had passed, he said, “Like,” he scrunched his lips, “digging graves in the moonlight. Playing fetch in the dark.”

My stomach dropped. Those were his moments in between. Mine too, now.

“You’re still wrong,” he said.