Page 56 of Oathbreaker

“I’m fine,” I say. I lie. “I’m dealing with things in my own time. In my own way.”

He looks at me for a beat and then says, “I miss you, Winter.”

I feel myself cracking, my anxiety rising. “I’m not ready for sex yet,” I blurt out.

“I’m not talking about sex.”

I talk over him. “I might never be ready for sex. I might never have sex with you again. And I know that’s crazy, and I think you should find someone else because I’m a mess, and I might not ever be ready for anything?—”

He pulls me into his arms, holding me. Hugging me. Kitty is still between our bodies.

When he kisses the top of my head, something snaps within me, and hysteria rises in my throat. I know that if one more thing happens, I will break. I might never recover. I’m terrified I’ll never recover.

“I will wait for you, Winter. I’m right here. I’m here to help you find your strength again. I’m here to help you navigate through this as you heal. I’m here because I love you, and I know that my Sunbeam is in there. You’re hurt, but I’ll wait for you.”

He kisses my hair again, and I clutch onto his shirt.

“I don’t need sex,” he says.

I snort in response.

“I don’t,” he emphasizes. “Palmala Handerson and I are working out just fine.”

And then, I push back from him, and I do the thing I haven’t done since standing in that godforsaken bathroom with him on the night that changed everything. I laugh. A full-volume laugh. I toss my head back, and the sound echoes across the water.

He smiles, and his eyes twinkle. “There’s my girl,” he whispers.

I try like hell to hold on to his words.

THIRTEEN

HUNTER

“Iwish I could tell you I have good news, boss,” Rio says from his place near the door of my office. Leo and I have been head down at my desk for the last few hours searching for connections who might know where my father is.

He’s gone underground, and despite our best efforts to locate him at his usual spots around the globe, he’s not appeared.

In front of me is a list of seventy-five potential accomplices in his hiding as well as the locations of the properties they own. There are hundreds, almost a thousand places he could be.

Pressure tightens at the base of my skull, and I have a fleeting thought that maybe I’m about to stroke out. I force myself to take deep breaths.

I didn’t sleep well after my middle-of-the-night jaunt with Winter last night. Not that I sleep well at all these days. But after spending time with her in a place that my mother loved—a place that my mother and I shared—I couldn’t get my brain to rest.

Throughout the rest of the night, I kept replaying the sound of her laughter.

I’m desperate to hear her laugh again.

The thing I want more than anything right now is for Winter to be okay, safe.

I need to fix this.

Max taps away at his computer in the corner. He sits with his hoodie pulled up and back hunched as his hands fly over his keyboard. A Twizzler hangs from his mouth as he makes his way through his third pack, grabbing pieces of candy without looking at the container.

Rio settles back against the closed door.

“Rio, how fast can you assemble a team to check all these places,” Leo murmurs, thumbing through the pages of the legal pad on my desk.

“I can get a team together, no problem. The problem is, however, how to assemble that team and get them to these separate places without their covers being blown or this taking two years to finish.”

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