Two weeks later….
"Can we talk for a minute?" Leo asks, walking into my bedroom. His eyes flash around the room, presumably looking for Erica.
"She’s taking a bath," I say, answering his unspoken question. "What’s up?"
He glances behind me at the bathroom door as he breathes a sigh of relief. He signals me to follow him into the hall. "I have to go somewhere for a few days. I’m not sure when I’ll be back." He looks down and swallows hard.
"What’s going on? Did something happen?" I take a step forward, but his eyes stay stuck to the ground.
"Look, I can’t do this anymore. I just need to get away for a while. She’s safe with you. I’ve got a few things to do, and now seems like a good time," he replies, finally lifting his eyes to mine, and I immediately know that he’s hiding something.
"You are so full of shit. Now tell me what the f*ck is really going on?" I demand.
"Just tell her I went to run an errand, maybe close down the old apartment or something."
"I’m not lying to her. If that’s the bullshit you want to tell, then do it your damn self," I bite out, closing the bedroom door just to be sure she can’t hear the conversation.
"I can’t live like this anymore," he says in a sad tone that is more alarming than the actual words.
"What the f*ck is going on with you? You’re not making any sense here. Are you going on vacation to clear your head or are you leaving for good?"
"I don’t know yet," he snaps as his frustration wins over the turmoil. "Here. I wanted you to have this. It’s the file I’ve been making since I was undercover. It documents everything from the first night I met Erica to the present. If anything happens while I’m gone, you turn that over to the police. I left the phone number of my contact at the program. If anything happens, you call them first, get her sorted, then you disappear. She won’t leave you, but you have to swear to me that, if you can’t get in touch with me, you will leave her in their custody."
"What the f*ck are you talking about? God damn it. You are not leaving her like this. Not until you start making sense and tell me what the hell is going on," I bark, but he ignores me and continues to talk about Erica.
"It will break her heart to lose you, but you have to swear you will put her back in the program."
"No," I say simply, but that one single word makes him explode.
He suddenly pushes me back against the wall, holding a forearm against my throat. His eyes are feral and his chest heaves as he pins me. "God damn it. I’m not f*cking around here. Swear to me!" he roars.
"What’s wrong?" Erica questions as she rushes into the hallway. She’s soaking wet and wrapped in her bathrobe.
As if a switch was flipped, Leo instantly transforms. He takes a step away, plastering on a fake smile as he turns to look at her.
"Hey, babe. Your boyfriend here was just pissing me off. Same shit, different day." He smiles and takes a step toward her. "I’m going to go run some errands. You want me to pick up dinner?" he says nonchalantly, blatantly lying.
Her eyes flash between us, but even as I stand stunned, Leo looks positively unaffected. It doesn’t take but a few seconds before she lets go of her concern. Knowing Erica, she doesn’t really want to know if something is wrong anyway.
"No, I’m going to cook tonight."
"All right. Well, I’m heading out." He gives her shoulder a squeeze, but his emotions manage to escape from behind the mask.
"Where are you going?" she asks, sensing his discomfort.
"I’m just going to hit the store, maybe pick up some movies. Any requests?" He gives me a nod and turns to walk away.
"You’re lying," she calls as she follows him down the hall.
He walks towards the door, pausing only to pick up his duffel bag. "I’ll be back," he says, never turning to face her.
"Since when do you need a bag to go to the store? Seriously, where are you going?" she asks, and I can see the panic escalating inside her. I try to pull her into my arms, but she bats my hands away. "Where. Are. You. Going?" she finally yells at him.
He turns around but he doesn’t look at her. Instead, his eyes find mine. "You need to hold on to her. She can’t follow me down and make a spectacle on the streets."
"Where are you going?" she yells again while stepping up into his face. But even though she’s crowding him, he ignores her completely.
He holds my eyes from across the room and gives me one final plea, "Swear to me."
And with those words, I know without a doubt that this will be the last time I ever see Leo James. Where he is going and why are still a mystery, but as I look into his eyes, I know that he has absolutely no plans of returning.
"I swear," I respond even though I’m not sure I could ever let Erica go, but I have a feeling he needs to hear it.
He sucks in a deep breath and closes his eyes. A small smile of relief tilts the corner of his mouth as I can physically see the invisible weight lifted from his shoulders.
"Leo, please talk to me. Where are you going?" Erica begins to cry as she begs for the answers I can tell he has no intention of giving her.
He suddenly opens his eyes and pulls her into a hug, breathing in the scent of her damp hair. "I love you. You’re safe now, Erica."
Just as quickly as he pulled her against him, he pushes her away and walks out the door. Tears are streaming down her face as she screams his name, but Leo never once looks back. She rushes into the hall after him, but I loop her around the waist to stop her from following him any farther. He’s right—she can’t go out there making a scene in the middle of the streets, and I sure as hell can’t go down to stop her. She fights against my grip, but I hold her tight and carry her back into the apartment.
"You have to stop him," she says between sobs.
But what I only recognize now is that Leo was already gone before he ever even walked into the bedroom.
The day Leo left, Erica alternated between crying, pacing, calling his phone, and searching his room for clues about where he could be going. I had no idea what to do, and finally, I cornered her and gave her no other option but to lean on me. I didn’t restrain her, but I made it clear that she’s not in this alone. She finally relented and spent the night in my arms. She didn’t sleep, but she curled in tight and allowed me to at least share her emotional burden. She loves Leo, and by all accounts, he loves her too. Which is why his sudden departure makes absolutely no sense.
Leo left all the credit cards I had given him when he took off. And while I wasn’t really keeping up with the cash he spent, it doesn’t appear as though he took any money either. Which, to me, means he went back into the program or knew he wouldn’t live long enough to need money. Either way, it makes me really f*cking nervous. However, right now, Erica has to be my main focus. He would have told me if there was any immediate danger. I refuse to believe that he would ever turn his back on Erica without being absolutely certain she was safe, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t beefed up security.
Johnson hired three new guards within twelve hours of when Leo left. I made him the new head of security, but I’m definitely keeping my finger on the pulse now more than I did when Leo was running the show. Erica has never really snapped out of her walking trance. She mostly just moves between our bedroom and the rec room. Her nose stays stuck to her Kindle or she just stares into space. Gone is my Erica, the funny one who laughs and jokes around. She isn’t even the scared and timid Riley I originally met. She’s just lost.
We haven’t talked much in the three days since Leo’s been gone, but every night, as she crawls into bed, she slides up beside me, holding me closer than ever before. I try to give her space to grieve, but it’s killing me to watch. So the moments when she leans on me mean the world.
The minute Leo left, I locked the file he gave me away in the fireproof safe. I am the only person who has the combination, but it still needs to be housed somewhere else for safekeeping. Should anything happen to me—or, God forbid, Erica—I want there to be undeniable proof about where to point the finger. Today, I’m scanning it and emailing a copy to the only person I trust not to read it, Jimmy Douglas.
While Erica is lying on the couch in the rec room, mindlessly staring at some TV show that I know she has absolutely no interest in watching, I head to the office to send it out. I have no idea what’s inside. I only know that Leo told me that he’d documented his time with Erica. Before now, I had no intention of actually taking the time to read it, but seeing her name on the very first page changes my mind completely.
For over an hour, I scour through Leo’s notes from when he was working undercover with Rodriguez. Not having a strong firsthand knowledge of the underbellies of the drug world, I just assumed these guys were big-time dealers with even bigger connections. But to read Leo telling it, they are hardcore, whatever-it-takes murderers as well. They thrive on innocent lives to get them ahead and have no compunction in taking them out when their services are no longer required. Case in point—Erica.
I read through his notes, engrossed in the world he embraced as Marcus Torres. I told Erica I would never ask, and this is probably the roundabout way of breaking that promise, but I can’t stop my hands from turning the pages. Then I read the one sentence I wish I could unsee. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t erase the words written in Leo’s handwriting scrawled across the page.
"What the f*ck!" I shout, jumping away from the paper and shooting to my feet.
My mind whirls while I try to regain control. I knew he was there the night everything happened. He killed three men to rescue her, but what the f*cking hell is this about him standing guard? Why in all my conversations with Erica and Leo has this topic never been broached? The only thing I can figure is that they are both hiding from the facts. My blood boils, but I know I have to finish. It’s obvious I’m missing quite a few of the details from that night.
For the next three hours, I read every single letter of the notes he has taken over the almost four years they have been on the run together. I wasn’t prepared for this. Erica’s life hasn’t just been stressful; it’s been damn near unimaginable at points. And now that I know the truth, her undeniable attachment to Leo is disturbing to say the least. However, as I turn page after page, it’s the very last paragraph that renders me completely speechless.
Oh God. What the hell is Leo up to? What drastic measure could he be taking to save her? I remember our conversation when he told me that Wilkes was searching for him and not Erica, and my stomach churns as I fear where he has gone. It never seemed right that Leo would just leave her unless he was planning to give himself up and set her free once and for all. Shit. What the f*ck did he do?
I can’t tell Erica about this. She’s already having a tough time with him being gone, but this little hypothesis I have now would destroy her. I quickly decide to give it a week before bringing this up to her. Who knows? I could be completely off the mark here. Leo could come prancing back in with a tan from vacation tomorrow. But I have a sick feeling in my gut that I’m right about this one.
"Erica," I call down the hall when I get out of the shower.
"In here," she says from the security room.
Before Leo left, I can’t remember her ever going in there, but now, she spends almost every night staring at the monitors. I can’t tell if she’s afraid someone will break in without him or if she’s just waiting for him to come home.
"Beautiful, you have to stop leaving this window open!" I tell her for the third time in three days.
"I need the air. I can’t breathe stuck in this apartment all the time. I need to get out of here, Slate. I haven’t been outside in weeks."
"It’s not safe, Erica. Open the windows on the far side. These connect to the breezeway, and Johnson is going to have a stroke if he finds it open. You want to go out on the balcony?"
"What?" she says, shocked and immediately excited. "Leo was worried they would take pictures of me."
Shit. I didn’t think about that.
"Yeah. He was probably right," I say, feeling like an ass as her face deflates. "Okay, how about this? What if I call the building and privately rent out the roof for the entire night. Johnson could clear it and block it off. I’ll bring up some chairs and we can just lie out under the stars for as long as you want."
Her smile immediately returns, bigger than I’ve seen in days. "Oh God, Slate. That sounds amazing."
"I’ll order some food too. Go get dressed. As soon as the sun goes down, we’ll go up." I pull her in for a kiss, taking full advantage of her sudden good mood.
Three hours later, we lie on a blanket on the building’s empty roof. We brought up chairs but quickly moved to the ground so we could be closer. Our legs are tangled together and she is squeezed tight against my side, using my chest as a pillow.
"Do you think he’s okay?" she asks out of the blue.
I let out a sigh, not sure how to answer. Do I honestly think Leo’s okay? No. But I can’t tell her that. "I don’t know, beautiful. I hope so."
"Me too," she says quietly.
Tonight is the perfect evening, and I’m seeing the first real flashes of Erica in days, but that only furthers my worries.
"Can I ask you something? Something you probably don’t want to talk about?"
She sits up, leaning on one elbow to look me in the eye. "You can ask me anything, Slate. I don’t have any secrets from you anymore."
I lean forward, kissing her on the forehead, feeling the pang of guilt for keeping my newest information about Leo from her. "I think you need more therapy."
She groans and lies back down next to me. "That’s not a question."
"Okay, let me rephrase. Why don’t you go to more therapy?"
"Because they told me I should leave Leo," she says honestly, shocking the hell out of me.
"Why’d they tell you to leave Leo?" I ask even though I know the answer.
"I saw the file in the safe, Slate."
"How’d you get into the safe?" I say, shocked.
"Leo gave me the combination in case of emergency."
"How the hell did Leo get the combination?" I shout while suddenly sitting up, forcing her to sit up with me.
She only responds with a shrug and the tiniest of smiles. "Anyway, I know you know everything that happened that night. So you know why they wanted me to leave Leo. I’m actually glad you read it. There were a lot of times I wanted you to know the truth but just couldn’t bring myself to talk about it."
"I just read it tonight. Have you read it?" I ask nervously.
"I lived it. I don’t need to read it." Thank God for that! She would freak if she read Leo’s little ‘drastic’ line. "Did it explain why he sat by while I was being raped?"
"Erica, there isn’t a rational reason why any decent human would ever do that. I know you think Leo has protected you all these years, but that’s warped. He stood guard while men raped you just so he wouldn’t blow his cover. That is f*cked up, no matter how you look at it."
She let out a strangled laugh. "Is that what he wrote? That he didn’t want to blow his cover? He is such a dick!" she yells into the night.
"Actually, he didn’t give a reason at all. I just assumed."
"Well, you assumed wrong, Slate," she snaps. "Leo was compromised. Wilkes didn’t trust him at all even though Dom did. Wilkes sent two men to watch Leo. They confiscated his weapon as soon as they walked into the house. There wasn’t a single moment of that day that there wasn’t a gun pointed at his back. He either had to play along or they would have killed him flat-out. I’ll give you one guess what would have happened to me if they’d killed Leo."
"Jesus Christ."
"When it was Leo’s turn, he managed to talk them into giving him his gun back just in case I got loose when he flipped me over."
"Flipped you over!" I roar, jumping to my feet.
"Leo never touched me, Slate," she says calmly from the ground.
I have no idea how she is telling this story without breaking down. I wasn’t even there and it’s killing me to hear.
"Anyway, you know the rest. I don’t have Stockholm syndrome or anything. Leo wasn’t my captor who I suddenly fell in love with. He may have taken me there, but he did the very best he could to make sure we both survived. He won’t forgive himself, so if you are on a mission to get someone into therapy, start with him."
"Erica, it’s not right. You need to get mad and stop being so sympathetic towards him. Fine, he’s not a horrible guy, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy for you to be his best friend."
"And that is your opinion. It might be odd to others, but it works for us. Leo and I were forced together after that night. He hates himself for what happened, and as much as I needed him to feel safe, he needs to know I’m safe to be able to sleep at night."
"You both need help," I answer, settling back down on the blanket.
"Probably. But that’s for us to decide."
"Just so you know, if I ever see him again, I’m going to f*ck him up. It’s my duty as your man to kill him for what he did. I’ll let him live, just because I know you love him, but that’s all I can promise," I say seriously, but she only laughs. I lie down and she immediately curls into my side. "Don’t try to stop me, Erica. I’m serious." My words cause her to laugh even louder.
"Okay, Tarzan. You can do whatever you need to—as my man," she teases but rolls on top of me. "I love you."
"Christ, I love you too, beautiful." I lean forward to find her mouth.
It’s a brief kiss, but only because she slides off me, settling once again on her side. She’s right beside me, but her mind is a million miles away. I’m hoping she’s thinking about our conversation and taking some of it seriously. Erica needs help. She’s probably right about Leo too, but right now, I think he has bigger issues to deal with—like staying alive.
We lie in silence, staring up at the sky for a while before Erica says anything else.
"When all of this is over, where do you see us going?"
"Like physically moving or our relationship in general?"
"Both."
"I don’t really know, because a lot of that depends on what you want to do. I can tell you that, no matter when or how it ends, I’m in this forever with you, Erica."
She squeezes me tight and sighs. "Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I imagine what it will be like to not live in fear anymore. I think of all these silly scenarios where you and I do the most normal things together. Things like going to a garden center to pick out flowers for the beds in front of our house."
"What kind of house is it?" I ask, rolling to my side to face her.
"Two-story, plantation style, with a big wraparound porch. I want a porch swing." She smiles, and I can tell she’s envisioning it.
"What else do you want?"
"I’d like to go back to work. Although I’m not sure I’m cracked up for emergency medicine anymore. I’m too jumpy these days. But I was thinking… I know you fund several rehabilitation centers for abused women. I figured I’d be really great as part of the medical staff somewhere like that. Maybe my past could actually be beneficial to some of the patients who come in."
"I know a guy who could probably get you a job." I wink.
"That’s what I was kind of banking on," she replies with a smirk. "What about you, Slate? What do you want to do now that you are officially unemployed?"
"Well, my plan was always to go back to Ohio and open a boxing gym for underprivileged kids. My mom almost went broke trying to keep me in the ring. Finally, my coach recognized that I had some talent and put me on a scholarship. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to stick with the sport otherwise."
"So do you want to be like a trainer or just run the gym?"
"Nah. My place is in the ring. I’d hire someone to run the everyday operations. I really think I’d enjoy working with the kids."
"Do you want kids of your own?"
"Yeah, I definitely want kids…eventually. What about you?"
"I think I want just one, but I’m not ruling out more," she says nervously.
"I’m cool with only one." I tuck a stray hair behind her ear as she rushes out a breath.
"Oh thank God. I could totally see you wanting, like, five kids. I don’t think I can do the big-family thing."
I begin laughing as she giggles beside me.
"You want to get married?" I ask, lifting an eyebrow at her.
"That better not be your proposal." She laughs again.
"No. I fully intend to get you a disgustingly gaudy ring and force you wear it everywhere when I finally propose."
"Oh, God. Please don’t," she says, as horrified as if I’d just threatened to kill her puppy.
"Yep. Totally happening. I can’t even tell you how excited I am to pick it out. It’s going to be ridiculous."
"Slate, swear you won’t do that!"
"I’m sorry. I can’t do that, Erica. It’s another one of my duties as your man," I joke.
"What? To buy me an ugly engagement ring?"
"Hey! Who said it was going to be ugly?" I grab my chest, feigning injury as she begins rolling in laughter beside me.
Yeah, even if it is temporary, my Erica is definitely back for the evening.
We talk for hours while lying on the hard ground. The blanket does nothing to soften it for us, but you won’t hear me complaining. I love every second of it. We keep things light, as I suspect we have both had enough of the heavy to last a lifetime. Finally, Erica begins to yawn.
"You ready to go in?"
"No."
"You’re about to fall asleep, beautiful."
"As soon as we go back inside, real life starts again. Can’t we just say out here forever?"
"One of these days, I’m going to make the inside of those walls better than the outside. We’ll have a home where the real life inside will be your sanctuary instead of your prison."
Her eyes glisten with tears as she nods. "I like the sound of that."
"Me too." I kiss the top of her head.
"Thank you," she whispers, but I don’t respond. It would feel wrong to say anything, because I should be the one thanking her.