Page 87 of Catch Me When I Fall

I waited for him to tell me more, my eyes searching his face, silently pleading for answers.

“Last night, I told you I’d been in hell,” he began. I nodded, remembering the pain in his voice. “That hell, gorgeous, was the same place where Leo got that drug.”

Chapter 23

Grayson

Once I was back downstairs, I found Jake and Dominic at Carrie’s kitchen table, both sipping coffee from her pink and purple coffee mugs. My lips twitched at the sight.

“How is she?” Dominic asked, setting his mug down.

“She’s fine.”

Both men leveled me with a look and I inhaled a deep breath as I folded my arms over my chest. When I released it, I gave them the truth. “She’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever come across. After everything she has been through, the shit the world and her fucking family have thrown at her, she should be a fucking mess. No one could blame her if she was.”

They both nodded, knowing her past.

“She’ll get through this,” Jake said, taking another sip of his coffee.

I looked to Dominic. “We good?”

He turned his laptop to face me, the screen showing a single blinking dot surrounded by water. When he returned, he informed us he’d planted a tracker on the fishing boat, and when he got a certain distance away from the coast, we would lose connection. Until that happened, we would be monitoring it, just in case someone came across it and called the Coastguard.

“You explain anything to her yet?” Dominic asked.

I shook my head. “No, just that the fucker gave her a fucking date rape drug you could only get from one place.”

Dominic’s jaw tensed. “You told Ash about this yet?”

Jake met my eyes and shook his head. “We don’t need to do that right now. The last thing we need is for Ash to get riled up again and go looking for that woman.”

I lifted my chin. “We got anything on her yet?”

Jake leaned back his hair; his face grim. “Not yet. Finding a needle in a haystack is easy, but finding a needle no one knew existed before now? That’s fucking hard.”

“But can you do it?” Dominic asked, facing Jake once more.

“I said it was hard, not impossible. It’s just going to take more time.”

“Uh, hi.”

I turned around to find Carrie standing at edge of the kitchen, her curls hanging just past her shoulders, water soaking into her maroon bookshop sweatshirt. Black leggings clung to the curves of her legs, stretching down to her ankles, where fuzzy pink socks covered her feet. Her cheeks were tinted pink, her lips slightly darker, and her blue eyes were bright, looking alive for the first time since I got here last night.

She took my fucking breath away.

The boys shot to their feet behind me as her eyes landed on them. I watched as Carrie bit the inside of her cheek and looked back to me.

“Come here,” I ordered softly, unfolding my arms.

Silence filled the room as she made her way to me, and I turned to face the boys, dropping my hand to the small of her back. “Boys, this is Carrie,” I introduced. “Carrie, this is Dominic Edwards and Jake Murphy.”

She nodded but didn’t hold her hand out to them. “Hello.”

Dominic smiled at her; his eyes warm. “Nice to meet you, Carrie.”

“We’ve heard a lot about you,” Jake noted, smiling as he stepped to the front of the table.

Carrie looked back up at me, her lips parting in surprise. “Y-you have?” she asked, looking back to my men.

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