Текст книги "Tough Enough"

Автор книги: M. Leighton

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

THIRTY-EIGHT

Rogan

I’m not sure how I’ve made it through the last month. I’ve tried everything from exhaustion to redirection, and nothing seems to work. I even tried to get the Colonel to let me come and help him, help him find the man who’s targeting our team, but that didn’t work either. Couldn’t get ahold of him. Not that I’d be much help anyway. My focus is shit right now. Hell, I could be the next target for all I know, and I’d be a pretty easy one since I’m out of hiding in Enchantment and distracted as shit. But still, it’s the farthest thing from my mind. At least Katie is safe from that threat. We weren’t together very long and we were never public, so she was never in any danger.

Katie.

The only thing that’s getting me through the days is rage, I suppose. I’ve let it consume me. Well, I don’t know if I’ve let it, so much as it just has. It’s that or go completely batshit crazy. I didn’t realize what an important part of my life Katie was until she was no longer in it at all.

But I’m stuck. Trapped.

Some of it has been my own doing, some not. The thing is, I can’t change the past. As much as I wish I could, there are too many things beyond my control¸ things that have nothing to do with Katie. Yet everything to do with why I’m not with her right now.

I jerk off my sparring gloves and throw them aside in a fit of temper. I turn and walk off the mat, running my fingers through my wet hair. Damn it! If I’d only known that the two men who hurt her most in the entire world were two people that I was forced to work with . . .

But then what? Would I have kept it from her? Not told her I knew them, worked with them? Maybe I’d have told her elaborate lies. Or just never let her find out.

No.

Hell no. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I’d taken away her right to choose like that. Even if I knew that choice would mean the end of us. And that’s just what it cost me—her. Us.

She thinks I’m a pile of shit for associating with the Simses. Actually, I couldn’t agree more. But it’s not just me who would suffer if I cut ties. And that’s what makes me stuck.

If it were just me or my career, or even my ass on the line, I’d choose her over them so fast it would make their heads spin. But it’s not. Only she can never know that. No one can. It’s a secret I have to keep.

That doesn’t mean that I’m sitting idly by, letting those two bastards get away with what they did, though. I’ve been having that shithole Calvin followed since the morning after Katie left. I’ll get him for something. I’ll nail his ass to the wall. For Katie. Even though no one will know that it was me who did it or that she’s the reason. That doesn’t matter, though. I’ll know. And that’s how I’ll be able to sleep at night. Well, what little bit of sleep I actually get without Katie.

THIRTY-NINE

Katie

I wake with a pounding heart and a heaving chest. My dream . . . it was so real. I was at work with my back to the door, putting away some new products, when Calvin walked in. I turned to find him just a few feet away, watching me. As big as life. As big as my nightmares.

I realize now that he hasn’t changed much. I didn’t really notice at Rogan’s match; I was too stunned by his presence to note much of anything. But I relived it all in my dream, and I saw. I really saw. Saw the handsome exterior. Saw the monster underneath.

His hair is still dark sable and cut short. He’s got the hair of an aristocrat. And why not? He’s like political royalty because of his father. His face is still handsome even though I’d much rather see it after a truck tire rolls over it. His eyes are still the same greenish blue, but in my dream, the pretense was gone. There was not a shred of kindness in the cold depths. He’d stopped playing the game. We’d come to an understanding. I know just what lies beneath the surface and he’s not going to waste his energy trying to convince me that I don’t.

I shudder involuntarily as I think about glancing down at his hands in my dream, hands that brought me such pain during the year we were together. Hands that ultimately stole everything from me with the simple flick of a match.

Even as I curl onto my side under the covers, I still feel every single emotion as if I’d actually experienced the whole thing. In a way, I guess I did. It was as if I’d actually gone through with it. But this . . . this is why I have to call Rogan. I have to fight this. I can’t trust them. I won’t trust them. Not with my life. Not with a day. And certainly not with Rogan’s future.

No, this is my only choice. Today I have to call Rogan.

FORTY

Rogan

I’m already irritable, as it seems I always am here lately, when I pull up to my house to find a rental car in the driveway. “Who the hell is this?” I bark at the quiet interior.

I get out and walk up the front steps, slinging open the door. I stop dead when I see Jasper, one of my Army buddies, standing in the kitchen talking to Kurt.

He turns when the door slams shut behind me and then I see a woman peek around his shoulder. She’s practically hidden by him. I recognize her. She’s the Colonel’s daughter. We met a few weeks ago when the three of us—Jasper, Tag and me—went to Atlanta to discuss Reid’s death and who’s targeting our team with the Colonel. His daughter, Muse, was there. Not a name or a face I’m likely to forget. She’s gorgeous as hell.

But she’s not Katie.

“Hope you don’t mind that we dropped by,” Jasper says. His voice is dark and deep, like always. He was the more . . . intense of the four of us. Even now, though his comment is casual enough, there’s something about his expression that tells me this is no casual visit.

I cross to them, looking first at his companion. “Muse. It’s nice to see you again.” She returns my smile and I lean down to kiss her cheek. Seems like the right thing to do. She is the Colonel’s daughter after all.

“Rogan, right?”

I poke my elbow in Jasper’s ribs. “See? I told you I was unforgettable.”

His smile is barely there. As always. But that doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is the way he looks at Muse.

“She’s heard me talk about you enough.”

I back up, nodding. Understanding. “So, it’s like that.”

He nods once. “It’s like that.”

I examine him a little more closely. Under the dark look of whatever brought him here today, I see subtle differences. Good differences. “I’ll be damned. You’re in love with her.”

This time Jasper actually laughs. It’s a sound I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before. He really has changed.

“It’s a good thing she already knew that or I’d kick your ass for telling her.”

“You sly bastard! Congrats, man!” I pull him in for a dude’s hug and slap him on the back. When I lean away, I can see that what I’m seeing on him is happiness.

And I’m envious as hell.

“Thanks. I wish that was the only reason I was here.”

Right to the point. Just like Jasper.

“Let’s go into the study,” I tell him. I glance at Muse. “Kurt’ll get you something to drink, Muse, but feel free to make yourself at home.”

The grin she gives me tells me that she probably wasn’t planning on sitting this one out. But she nods at me and winks at Jasper, which assures me that she’s okay with it, though.

“This way,” I tell Jasper, starting off back toward the foyer. As I pass the door, I see another car pull up, some anonymous dark blue sedan. “Who the hell is this?”

I feel like I’m asking that too often today. But then I see my other buddy, Tag, get out and start up the drive. I glance back at Jasper. He’s watching me. He doesn’t say a word. But then again, he doesn’t have to. The only reason we’d all be here is the same reason we were all at the Colonel’s safe house.

Reid Sheridan.

The fourth one of us. The one who was killed. The first of us to be betrayed.

I open the door for Tag. He comes in. He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He knows why we’re here. This is serious shit. We didn’t dick around on our missions. We took out terrorists. We neutralized threats. We took lives. We assassinated leaders. But for the right reasons. On orders from our government. Not like what happened to Reid. He was targeted. Betrayed. Sold out.

“Don’t you shower anymore, brother?” Tag asks.

I take in his expensive shirt and slacks. “You afraid I’ll wrinkle you, ya pussy?”

We hug and then he and Jasper shake hands before we all three head for the study.

When the door is closed, I lean up against one side of the desk, Tag against the other, and we both face Jasper. He wastes no time. “The Colonel got a name. He found out who’s behind Operation Napalm.”

A name. Finally. The person responsible for the death of Reid. The person responsible for the death of Jasper’s mother. The person responsible for putting our team in the crosshairs.

That’s why I couldn’t reach the Colonel. Seems he was busy uncovering a dirtbag.

“Who? Who is it?”

Jasper glances at Tag and then looks long and hard at me. “Senator Sims.”

Holy. Hell.

No one says anything for a few seconds. We all know who he is. And I guess it makes sense. He knew us. Knew all about us. He would be one of the few people who could manipulate us fairly easily. Mislead us. Set us up.

His committee is the only one that knew about us, the one that authorized our missions. Black Ops shit. High risk. Highly classified. Ugly business. Things that had to be done, things no one else wanted to do.

I’m probably the only one who knows what he’s like in real life, though, Senator Sims. The only one who knows how much of his cutthroat politics bleed into his personal life.

“But why?” Tag asks. His gray eyes are stormy. I remember that look. With Tag, much like with the rest of us, you’re asking for trouble when you mess with the unit. Or anyone he cares about.

“He’s making a run for the White House. Turns out he has skeletons. Several of them. That job we did in Syria, taking out Assad’s second-in-command . . . it wasn’t government sanctioned like the Colonel thought. Sims was just covering his tracks. He’d been brokering arms deals for that asshole for his own personal gain. Made millions. I guess presidential campaigns are expensive. But he had us take him out. Now we’re the only loose threads. We are his last remaining skeletons.”

Tag’s jaw is tight. “So he’s taking us out. Cleaning up the mess.”

“He’s trying.”

“He’s taking out everyone he thinks can be a threat, right down to people we might’ve told. Like family. To someone like him, no one is off limits, but to us . . . to us that’s sacred ground. You don’t go after family. You just don’t. We knew what we were signing up for, but not them. Not them,” Jasper says somberly, his mother having been killed already. Caught in the crossfire and blown up by a mercenary wannabe who knew about Jasper’s past.

The wheels of my stunned brain come to a screeching halt.

Family.

Loved ones.

Cleaning up messes.

Skeletons.

An image of Katie pops into my mind, the one of her face when she saw the Simses at the fight. She knows what they’re capable of. I know what they’re capable of. And after the way I reacted to her at the fight, they now know what she is to me.

“What is it, man? And who’s Katie?” Jasper asks. I didn’t even realize that I’d said her name aloud.

“I think she’s one of his messes, too.”

I know they won’t understand. They don’t know about Katie. They don’t know about what little Sims did to her. Or how that might look for a father if it came out during a bid for the presidency.

My palms start to sweat. It all makes sense now. How could I not have seen it? How could I not have known?

Mother of God.

He’s going to turn his son loose on Katie.

As if on cue, my phone rings. I see the familiar number and my insides clench.

“Katie?”

“Rogan?” she replies. My whole body, even my blood, sags with relief.

“Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I . . . I just . . . I saw something on the Internet.” I try to come up with a plausible response without revealing the truth. “Something about you and Calvin Sims. I was just worried. That’s all.”

There’s a long pause before she responds. “Actually, that’s what I was calling about. I need to talk to you. It’s about what the Senator is trying to do. To you.”

“Stay there. I’m on my way.”

I hang up before she can argue and I look up to two pairs of eyes watching me with varying degrees of fury. After a few seconds, Jasper merely steps out of my way and nods toward the door.

“Let’s go. We’ve got work to do,” he says.

I nod and lead the way. I’ve never looked forward to hurting someone more than I do right now. Not even my shitty father.

FORTY-ONE

Katie

As I leave the studio, I realize that as anxious as I am to get away from work, I’m not very enthusiastic about going home. Work used to be just a job, neither good nor bad. Now it’s the place where I spent the happiest days of my life with Rogan and the most humiliating days of my life after him. And home . . . home used to be my sanctuary. Now it’s just pure hell. The memories of Rogan . . . they chase me. Haunt me. Refuse to give me a moment’s peace. Even to sleep.

Nights are the worst. They’re nearly unbearable. I toss and turn rather than sleep, and everywhere I look, I see and feel Rogan. With perfect clarity, I can picture him asleep on the pillow next to me. With excruciating precision, I can feel his hands on me, his mouth, his body. Oh God! What I wouldn’t give to forget, to just have my memory wiped clean of all traces of Rogan. But there’s no such mercy for a girl like me. He will live on in my head and in my heart until I reach the only escape I’ll ever have from him—death. When blood stops pumping through my veins, maybe then I’ll finally be over him.

And now I’m going to see him again. I know it will set me back. Maybe even right back to square one. But I have to do this. I have to talk to him and tell him what’s going on.

I unlock my front door, pausing to look for Dozer like I do every day. When I see that he isn’t in front of the door, I push it open to step inside. It’s as I’m closing it that I feel the niggle of someone’s presence behind me. But not soon enough.

I’m turning to face him, door still ajar, when Calvin grabs my upper arms and backs me into the living room, slamming the door shut behind us.

I struggle to free myself from his grip, but his fingers are like iron shackles. A bolt of fear flashes through me. Among the memories of his punches and kicks and slaps, I’d forgotten how easily he could overpower me. But it’s all coming back to me now. Too fresh, too clear.

I reach for bravery. I reach for boldness. I reach for tough. I don’t want him to see that he can still rattle me. Even though he can.

“What are you doing here? Get the hell out of my house!”

On his face is a sneer. “What? Change your mind so soon?”

“Change my mind? About what?”

“About seeing me again.”

Sweet God! I’d told the Senator I’d do it, but I didn’t say when. No arrangements were made. And certainly none for this soon. It has only been a day, for God’s sake!

“What’s the matter? Kat got your tongue?” he asks, using my old name.

“No, I . . . I, uh, just wasn’t expecting you this soon. And certainly not here.”

“What’s the matter, Kat? Afraid to have me so close to your bed?”

His leer coupled with the smell of alcohol on his breath gives me a surge of adrenaline. My heart thunders and every subtle nuance of this moment is carving itself indelibly into my brain.

“Hardly. You disgust me!” I hiss in a burst of bold and brave honesty.

His expression turns furious and he grabs me by my upper arms. “So he’s so much better than me, is that it? That piece-of-shit fighter. Where is he now? If he’s so much better than me, where is he? Why am I here with you when he’s not?” A dart of fear pierces me. He was always much worse, much more forceful and unpredictable when he was drinking.

I keep my calm, at least outwardly. “You’re drunk, Calvin. You need to leave.”

“So anxious to get me out of here. Why? Is he coming? Will he be warming up that pussy tonight?”

His temper flares and his fingers bite into my arms, making painful indentations.

“Let me go, Calvin. I’m not kidding.” Part of me wants to cower in the face of his anger, the memories flooding me like salt water flooding a hole in the sand. But another part of me, a tough and slightly reckless part, wants to face him, wants to stand up in his face and scream that I’m not afraid of him anymore.

He stares down into my face and I see the battle waging. Stay or go. Lash out or calm down. Stay and fight or walk away. I see his pupils swell and I know which way the tide is turning.

The muscles along his jawline flex as he grits his teeth. He jerks me up close to his face so that I can feel the heat of his temper. And I do. I feel it. And I know what’s coming.

“I tried to forget you after the fire. I thought it would burn you out of my blood. And for a while it did. But when I saw you again . . . with him . . . Damn you for making me feel this way again! Damn. You.”

Before I can respond, Calvin straightens his arms and sends me flying across the entryway, a tangle of flailing limbs.

I look up to see him pushing the unbuttoned sleeves of his dress shirt up his forearms, like he’s preparing to get messy. I know that gesture. I remember it like I remember the bone-jarring ache of being punched in the ribs. Or kicked in the back of the head.

Courage flees me. Calm abandons me. And terror, pure terror turns my blood to ice in my veins. After a time, I knew Calvin had a bad temper and that he was prone to violence, but never would I have suspected that he might set me on fire. Yet he did. That’s when I realized that I had no idea the depths to which his mental illness extended. He could be capable of anything. Even murder.

With speed uncommon in someone as lanky as Calvin, he lunges for me before I can react, grabbing me by the front of my shirt and pulling me to my feet to sling me across the dining room table. I go skittering along the top before I crash down onto the chair at the end and topple it to the floor, the edge of the seat cracking against my hip. I gasp in pain, my fear nearly blinding me as I scramble to get my bearings.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to punish you, Kat. For leaving me. For making me hurt you. For spreading those legs for someone else. You’re mine, Kat. You always will be.”

My addled mind spins with solutions and scenarios, for any possible way out of this without getting myself killed. He set me on fire last time. I can’t give him the chance to hurt me again.

I stall until I can find a way, find something with which to defend myself. “I didn’t think you’d want me with all my scars,” I tell him. I swallow past the balloon of fear that inflates in my throat and I scoot into a sitting position.

Calvin frowns. I’m not sure what to make of it. Is he confused by my tactic? Disgusted by the mention of my disfigurement?

“I thought you knew how much I loved you. Yes, I hate the scars, but I’ll pay for plastic surgery to get rid of them, and you’ll be my beautiful Kat again. At least for a little while.”

For a little while? That sounds . . . ominous.

Absently, I push scraps of the broken chair out of the way so that I can find my balance and make my way to my feet. I pause as my eyes settle on one of the splintered legs. For a few seconds, I zone out of the present as I stare at it, as I think of the implications of it. As I look at it, I drift into a strange place of calm.

The jagged wooden end holds my attention, almost as though it’s beckoning me. Calvin’s angry voice is nothing more than a distant backdrop to the peculiar trance I’ve stumbled into. In this peaceful world, I don’t distinguish between Kat, Kathryn or Katie. I don’t live a life as splintered as the chair leg I’m gazing at. I’m simply a girl who’s tired of hiding, who’s tired of being hurt. Who’s tired of only surviving. I am a woman who needs to stand up. To fight back. To get the missing part of myself back. To be whole again.

In the fuzzy recesses of my mind, I realize that if I don’t stand up now, if I don’t start to live now, I never will. Just like Rogan said, I’ll die a little more each day.

Fight to survive. Fight to live.

I’ve fought to survive. For years now, I’ve survived. But I need more. It’s time to fight to live.

It’s time to live.

My movements have a slow, surreal quality to them at first, almost dreamlike. I reach for the makeshift stake. I curl my trembling fingers around it. I use my free hand for balance. I come carefully to my feet. And I face Calvin.

Although fear is still with me, it’s muted by this strange calm and, somehow, I’m bolstered by the feel of the cool wood of the chair leg against my palm. I flex my fingers around it, rubbing the sharp tip against my thigh as I study Calvin.

“If you leave me again, it’ll only be worse, Kat. I didn’t think I could hate you as much as I loved you, but I was wrong. You made me see that. God, you were such a bitch! What you did to me . . .”

I tilt my head as I watch him. His face is bloodred as he rants, a single vein standing out like a thick rope right in the center of his forehead. I wonder briefly that it doesn’t burst and send him face-first onto my floor to drown in his own blood. I actually smile at the vision.

Calvin stops talking. I notice only because his lips cease to move. All I hear is the beat of my own heart, pounding in my ears.

I see spit on his chin. I focus on it for a few seconds, oddly fascinated by the foamy little drop. I notice only in the most absent of ways that it begins to get closer. It’s that minute detail that shakes me from my thrall.

Taking a step back, I hold out one hand and raise the other, wielding the stakelike piece of wood like a weapon. A weapon that I will use if I have to.

“I want you to leave, Calvin. Right now. And never come near me again. You and your father can go to hell. Stay away from me. Stay away from Rogan. Let this drop or I swear on all that is holy, you’ll regret the day you ever met me. Get out, Calvin. I won’t ask you again.”

At first he looks confused. Then stunned. Then, when his eyes bounce from me to the stake and back again, almost insulted.

I raise my chin defiantly. My cards are on the table. I’m taking my stand. And it feels good. I feel good.

But then he starts to laugh.

“Oh, Kat! You can’t be serious.”

Surely the girl who took his abuse for months wouldn’t fight back. Surely the girl who he set on fire wouldn’t dare to stand up to him. Surely the girl who he murdered in all the ways that count couldn’t have found a reason to live.

Surely not.

The hell you say!

Righteous fury explodes from my chest like a bomb, raining adrenaline into my blood. It’s like rocket fuel. It propels me into motion. Offensive motion.

I lunge forward, slicing in a downward angle at Calvin’s chest. I feel the tip of the pointed stick tear through something. Not flesh, but something.

When I step back, I see Calvin staring down at his torn shirt, at the bloody scratch that mars the smooth skin of his chest. The eyes he raises to mine are homicidal.

A needle of fear pricks my bubble of bravado, piercing it. For a moment, what was and what is collide, leaving me confused and frantic. I inhale sharply, my body mobilizing its fight-or-flight response as Calvin comes at me with an ear-splitting roar.

His aggression drowns out the loud clap of the front door flying open and ripping the hinges out of the frame. It doesn’t, however, drown out the image of Rogan racing toward Calvin like an avenging angel, come to save me.

At the last second, Rogan’s feet leave the floor. He’s airborne for only a few seconds before he comes down on Calvin like a two-hundred-twenty-pound hammer, driving his elbow into the top of his head. Calvin weaves and wobbles, dazed, before he stumbles back into me. I move to my right, barely escaping his falling weight, as Rogan comes after him again.

Kneeling, one knee on Calvin’s chest, the other on the floor, Rogan smashes his fist into my monstrous ex’s face in four punches of blurring speed. When he pauses, Calvin is oozing blood from his nose, mouth and the corner of one eye, and mumbling something about his daddy.

“I’m not thinking about your daddy. And neither should you. You should be listening to what I’m telling you right now, because I won’t say it again. If you ever, ever come near her again, I’ll kill you. I. Will. End you. I’ll break your neck, throw your body into a river and disappear before anyone can find me. And if you think I’m kidding, just ask your shithole of a father about me.”

Calvin rests on my floor, his head rocking back and forth as he drools blood onto his cheeks. Rogan stands to his feet, spitting on Calvin before turning to me. His expression is fiercer than anything I’ve ever seen. It softens the instant his eyes meet mine, though.

He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t come near me. I’m not sure I even want him to. I just want to stand here, in his presence, and take him in. Bask in his being, in the knowledge that he came for me. That he saved me. Again.

“You’re safe now,” he declares quietly.

I don’t know what to say. My tongue seems to be frozen to the roof of my mouth.

Behind him, I see Calvin stumbling to his feet. I gasp and Rogan jerks around, grabbing a handful of hair from the top of Calvin’s head and pulling down until my ex’s face meets the upswing of Rogan’s knee. With a nauseating crunch, Calvin drops lifelessly onto the floor again.

Barely breathing hard, Rogan straightens, turning his head just enough that I can see his profile. “I’ll be back after I take care of the trash,” he says quietly.

He bends, tossing Calvin over his shoulder and walking slowly toward the door. He pauses in the opening, like he might turn to face me, maybe to say something, but then he changes his mind. I just stand here, numb and stunned, until he starts to move again. That jars me into action.

“Rogan, wait!”

He stops and turns toward me, his eyes eating me up as I close the distance between us. He looks relieved.

“The Senator . . . he was blackmailing me. He said if I didn’t publicly date Calvin so that you would fight, he’d tell your secret. Kurt’s secret.”

He says nothing at first. Just watches me. “You know.”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Katie, I’m so sorry. I would never choose those snakes over you. If he hadn’t held that over my head . . . over my brother’s head . . . I swear to God, I’d have walked away and never looked back. For you. For you, I’d walk away from the world if it’s what you wanted me to do.”

My pounding heart soars.

As though Calvin is nothing more than the trash Rogan referred to, he drops him unceremoniously onto the floor and steps closer to me. His emerald eyes stare unflinchingly down into my face. “I’d rather die than watch you date Calvin Sims. I’m tough as hell and I’ve survived a lot in my life, but I wouldn’t be tough enough to survive that. I couldn’t stand it. I just . . . I couldn’t.”

His voice is raw with emotion and I feel belated tears well in my eyes.

“Then, Rogan, please tell me there’s another way. Tell me that he won’t win. I can’t bear to see him hurt you. They’ve taken so much already. From me, from you. I can’t give them anything else.”

His lips spread into a thin, sad smile. “They won’t take anything else from you. You have my word.”

The statement sounds final. Definite.

“Wh-what are you going to do?”

“Something that could make you hate me. Something that you can’t be a part of. But something that has to be finished. The Senator has done things. To you. To me. To the brothers I served with in the Army. We did a lot of covert ops. Things I can’t talk about. Things the Senator shouldn’t have ordered. Now he’s trying to cover his tracks. He’s having people targeted. Assassinated. My people.”

I had no idea that Special Forces meant . . . this. The room has narrowed to a tunnel that extends from Rogan’s eyes to mine and contains only the sound of his voice and the blood rushing behind my ears. Part of me thinks that I should be outraged, shocked. Afraid. But the rest of me . . . most of me . . . wants this, wants to be rid of him for good.

And knowing that Rogan is one of the men who has sacrificed so much for his country, for those he loves, for me . . . well, I could never hate him for that. Only love him more.

As if on cue, my heart swells with it, threatening to rip me open with the pressure of it inside my chest.

“I . . . I could never hate you, Rogan.”

“It would kill me if you did, but I won’t lie to you. I would never disrespect you like that. That’s why I’m telling you. Senator Sims is guilty of war crimes, Katie, and he’ll pay. It’s the way it has to be.”

“And Calvin?”

“I’ve got plans for him, too.”

I nod. I don’t know what else to do. Or to say. I want this. Even though it may not change things between Rogan and me, he’ll be free. And so will I. At least we’ll have that.

He backs away, bending slowly to throw Calvin the Trash over his shoulder and turn back toward the door. Things feel so . . . unfinished between us that I want to ask him to stay. But I know he can’t. And maybe he shouldn’t. But I want him to anyway.

“Rogan?”

He swivels to look back at me, a crooked smile twisting his lips. “I love you, Katie. I think I always have.”

And with that, he walks right out the door and into the night, leaving me staring after, out into the inky darkness.