I feel Griff before I realize he’s moved. The heat of his chest—suddenly so close—makes me shiver.
“Let’s try this,” he says, holding up his cell. The pale light splashes across his cheekbones and the line of his nose. “Advantages to owning a crappy phone,” Griff says and it’s the first real smile I’ve seen from him in . . . ages. Long before I went to Looking Glass.
Griff labors through someone’s number and puts the cell to his ear. Downstairs, I hear Bren’s voice lift in answer. “Just stay on the line with me, okay?”
I guess Bren agrees because Griff begins to slowly pace Lily’s room, gliding the phone past her walls, her furniture, her stuffed animals. He’s testing for electromagnetic fields, trying to see if the connection will buzz or click. After finishing the room, Griff looks at me and shakes his head.
The relief makes my head go fuzzy—or maybe that’s the simmering migraine; either way I’m glad for the shadows. I’m glad no one’s going to see how close I am again to tears. Griff walks across the hall and opens the door to my bedroom again. I should be right behind him and I’m not. Here it is, my first time really home again, and my feet drag against the carpet.
“Wick?”
“Coming.” I stand in the doorway, take a deep breath to get me through. Even in the dark, I can see Bren hasn’t moved a thing. My bed is made. My clothes are hanging. My computer . . . my computer’s gone. Unease prickles the base of my skull. When Lily moved my stuff to keep it safe, did she move my desktop too?
“I checked the air vents,” Griff says. “They’re empty.”
“Thank you.”
He laps the room, slow and deliberate, as I twirl the flashlight up and down the walls. Nothing . . . nothing . . .
Light.
It’s only a pinprick, but that’s all they need.
“Got one,” I say, approaching the wall near my computer desk. I pull the screwdriver from my jeans pocket and dig the head into the drywall, listen for the tap of metal against metal. “Yeah, it’s definitely a camera.”
“Okay, let me see where they came in from.”
“Maybe from the crawl space?”
Griff disappears down the hallway and I wait, trying not to think about how Kent or Hart or Norcut could be watching us right now. There’s a bump on the other side of the wall, scratching like skeleton fingers clawing through, and then silence as Griff searches. It’s tricky installing cameras into already finished spaces. You have to come in from behind, usually by digging or drilling into the drywall. Sometimes you can do it from the outside, but for a second floor like ours, they’d have to use the crawl spaces. The camera’s body and the damage to the drywall would stay hidden, leaving only the tiny lens visible.
Still no sounds from Griff. The silence has seeped from seconds into minutes and I stand, ready to go after him.
“You were right.” I can’t see him in the doorway, but Griff’s suddenly there. “I found two more. I think we’ve got them all.”
“Good.” I sound as calm as he does, but I have to push one hand against the wall to get my feet moving. I shuffle into the hallway. Downstairs, someone’s turned on a light and I can make out the pictures hanging on the wall . . . the staircase ahead of us . . . Griff watching me.
We are inches from each other and the space feels suddenly like velvet.
I could touch him. I could—my fingers are already seeking his skin. They brush bandage instead and we both shudder.
“Why did you apologize?” I have to force myself to face him. “At Joe’s, you apologized. Why?”
The question’s so sudden he should be surprised. I’m acting like a total weirdo, but Griff exhales like he’d been holding his breath. He turns his attention down, not at me, but at the floor.
“Because I owed it to you. Look, Wick . . . I was interested in you way before you ever noticed me. It’s the way you handle yourself—the way you never back down. I’d never seen anything like it. You amazed me and I wanted you because of it and then, when you got tied up with Carson again, I resented you for it. I thought you were self-destructing and really . . . really you were just standing your ground. I should have been in awe of you. I should’ve helped and I didn’t. I was stupid. I confused you with . . . other people in my life.”
Griff’s eyes lift to mine. His tone is so soft, the kind of voice you save for confessions. “Do you understand?”
I shake my head. I want to look away from him and I can’t.
“I hate myself for abandoning you,” Griff says at last. “You didn’t deserve the way I treated you.”
“And you didn’t deserve the way I treated you.” I have to haul the words from me and the force spurs me forward; my hand finds his arm . . . and tightens. “I should’ve told you, Griff. I should’ve trusted you to understand.”