Page 80 of Healing Conviction
Her heart pounded into her throat, like the same words were trying to escape. Thankfully he kept talking, inadvertently giving her more time to be a coward.
“I’ve loved you with purple hair and black. Violet eyes and green. I know I’ll love you when you’re gray. But I can’t love you if you don’t give me everything, too. I’m an all-or-nothing guy, Pix. If I can’t have all of you, it’ll be too hard. I’ll hate knowing thatI’mnot enough to take a risk on. To trust enough to give me your whole self.”
“Drake… why does it bother you so much?”
“Because, Pix. If you don’t trust me with everything, then how am I gonna know that you forgive me for getting kidnapped? For failing you so miserably before? How am I supposed to forgive myself if I don’t knowyoucan?”
Her heart cracked. “Drake, I don’t blame you—”
A loud dragging metal sound interrupted their conversation, and the forest silenced around them as they stilled. After a quiet moment of listening, they looked at each other before looking around.
“What was that?” Nora whispered, unsure if she should talk out loud or not.
Male voices sounded far off and in the next motion Drake had moved them both to standing and was already grabbing his stakeout equipment.
“Follow me.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
Draco led them through the woods, carefully making sure his stubborn little pixie didn’t wind up in one of his traps again. Even though, admittedly, all he wanted to do at the moment was tie her to a tree and demand answers.
He knew that tactic would backfire. Nora was a people pleaser, but she’d failed to realize her tricks never worked for him. If he tied her up and made her come until she admitted how she felt for him, she’d admit it all right, but she’d convince herself she was doing it for his benefit, rather than to share the truth.
No, he’d realized the night before that chasing Nora wasn’t going to work. Even if he caught her, she’d find a way to convince herself that she should stay at arm’s length. He was going to have to wait for her to come to him. Again. It hadn’t worked the last time and that sure as fuck didn’t give him hope about this one.
They navigated the short journey to the edge of the forest line and he was silently grateful that he’d been able to sleep the past few nights with Nora. He was never a great sleeper before the coma, and afterward he’d been afraid to close his eyes, scared he might not wake up. But holding Nora kept that fear at bay.
Another thing I can’t tell her yet.
He hadn’t even meant to tell her he loved her. It certainly hadn’t been the way he wanted to tell her. The monologue had slipped out as he tried to get her to open up. And now whatever the fuck that noise was, was putting off yet another attempt at her ‘come to Jesus’ moment, as she would call it.
When they reached the forest line, the metal scraping and shouts were louder and he and Nora ducked low, careful not to bring attention to themselves as they watched. He pulled the binoculars from his bag and handed them to Nora before he grabbed the disconnected rifle scope from his bag and peered through it.
A man with gloves on was closing the chain-link fence behind a van as it rolled into the lot toward an open garage door. Inside the door was a container on an eighteen-wheeler. He and Nora watched as the van backed up and a man opened the container door. Another opened the back of the van, but at their angle, it was impossible to see what was happening in the space between.
“Can you see what they’re doing?” Nora asked.
He shook his head and strained his eye into the scope. “I think they’re taking something from the van and putting it into the container, but what, I’m not sure.”
After several moments, Draco racked his brain trying to figure out howto get closer, but the moat was in front of them and it was still daylight. He watched frustrated until the van door shut, leaving the container door open.
Nora gasped. “There are boxes inside, but I think I might’ve also seen bags. L-like the ones Ellie and I were in.”
“Shit.” Draco panned his scope over the inside of the container, but only saw plastic-wrapped stacks of cardboard boxes on top of pallets. “Are you sure?”
“No.” Nora groaned slightly. “I’m not.”
The man helping unload hopped down from inside the container and shut the door before locking it. The van rolled away and parked alongside vans like it. After a moment, one of the shorter men pulled a chain down in a pulley system to close the garage door. Draco moved his scope to see the logo and code on the back before it disappeared:CTIU 148729 7.
“You got those numbers, Pix?”
“Got it.”
He memorized what he could of the numbers emblazoned across the blue metal before it disappeared and saw Nora out of his periphery, tracing numbers in the dirt.
The man who had closed the fence behind the van raced underneath the closing door, looking around behind and beside him before going out of sight.
After a moment, the forest was quiet around them. The birds chirped and a gentle wind rustled the leaves. A few more wind gusts passed before Nora’s soft voice spoke beside him.