Everything looks good.
It makes me smile until I realize of course they would look good. If he slipped unnoticed into the Bays’ house, why should our place be any different?
The thought makes tears prick my eyes.
Bren and Lily will be home tonight. How could I endanger them like this? How could I have screwed up so badly? I nearly got caught. I touched a body.
I hold on to the kitchen counter and take three deliberate breaths. I’m overreacting. There’s no need to panic . . . yet. I know he has my license plate number. I don’t know how long it will take him to trace it—depends on his skill set or his connections and either one could take a while.
So for now, I’m good.
I just don’t know for how long.
My legs give out and I end up on the floor, slumped up against the bottom cabinets. Dimly I’m aware that I’m leaving dirt everywhere. I need to change, but I’m scared to go upstairs. I’m scared he’s already here, waiting for me.
I tuck my knees under my chin. Oh, God, I am in so much trouble. Not just me. Bren. Lily. If he traces me to my sister—
There’s a soft whump as the garage door turns on. My stomach rolls. The garage. I didn’t check the garage. I scramble forward, land on both knees as my mud-slicked feet shoot out from under me.
The door scrapes open.
“Wicked?”
Relief turns my bones mushy. It’s Griff. Holding a pizza. He stares at me so long I think he’s going to turn around and leave. Then, suddenly, he’s at my side. His arms are around me and I shouldn’t plaster myself against him—I’m muddy, bloody, maybe even crying—and I can’t let him go.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I finished early. I wanted—the hell, Wick? What happened to your head?”
“I . . . fell. In a hole.”
“What?” Griff’s face wads up. He touches his fingers to the cut above my eye. “Wait. Back up. Start from the beginning.”
I can’t. I have no idea what to say. Everything I can think of will only piss him off and I’m not even sure I know where the beginning is. When I caught Todd? When Carson said I wasn’t finished?
“Jesus, your skin feels like ice.” Griff wraps his hands around mine. He’s right. The thought of telling him the truth has hollowed me, left nothing but chill.
“I was working the job,” I say at last.
“Same one as before?” Griff’s rubbing my arms now, hard. Bits of dirt scatter onto the floor. “Tracking down Bay?”
“I broke into his house to plant the sniffer.”
Griff’s hands stop.
“Someone else was there—someone who wasn’t Bay or Ian. I ran and he ran after me.” The words are hurtling out of me now and I have to put both hands on the floor to keep myself from collapsing. “I don’t know who he is or what he was doing there. I think he’s going to figure out who I am. He found my car. Saw the license plate.”
“And you thought he was coming through your garage door. You thought I was him.”
I nod.
“Did you check the house? The security system?”
More nods. It’s all I can manage.
“You need to get out of those clothes. You want help up the stairs?”
Do not say yes. Do. Not. Say. Yes.
“Yes.”
Griff looks away, his jaw flexes once. “You want me to wait outside the bathroom while you shower?”
My fingers curve into the kitchen tile and I have to concentrate on breathing so I don’t think about what I want to say and shouldn’t.
Doesn’t matter because all that comes out is, “Yes.”
I start to stand, but Griff tucks me into him, lifts me so I’m pinned against his chest. “Griff, please, it’s not—”
“It is.”
Griff stalks up the stairs, puts me down outside my bathroom, and goes inside to crank the hot water. Steam fills the room and I follow him, lean against the vanity counter, shivering, as he piles fresh towels near the shower door.
“I’ll get you some clean clothes and try to wipe up the mud downstairs,” Griff says, drying his wet hands on the backs of his jeans. “You don’t want Bren finding it. Move, okay?”
I stare at him. Move?
Oh, because I’m in his way. He wants to leave.
I want him to stay. I put one hand on Griff’s chest, feel his heartbeat. I take my other hand and lock the door.
13
Griff retreats a step. “What’re you doing, Wick?”
Wick. Not Wicked. Which is what this is, isn’t it? I want Griff. I want his mouth, his hands. I want him to hold me so I stop shivering.
“I—” I kiss him. It’s not pretty. He’s too tall. I have to tug him down to me, and when I do, he hesitates and I nearly sob. Please don’t let me have damaged this too.
“Please,” I breathe. His hands find my jaw, my cheeks. He smoothes back my hair, and my skin warms like always. How can everything be so wrong and he stays so perfect?
“God, you’re so—” Griff groans against my hair and the way his voice turns rough feels like want.
I tug at his shirt, yanking it over his head and leaving muddy handprints across his chest. I’m not being careful.