Page 4 of Ruthless Regret

What just happened?

I left Zain in the living room, and found my way to the small bathroom off the kitchen in a post-sex haze. I wasn’t paying any attention at all to anything around me on that walk. I just wanted to get to the bathroom and clean up.

Was someone already in the kitchen when I walked through it? Did they see me? Watch me as I hurried through? Surely I’d have noticed? The kitchen isn’t that big. It’s more likely that they arrived after I locked myself in the bathroom … right?

In my state of panic, I don’t really remember much beyond the terror coursing through me when the intruder came at me. Their body slammed into mine before I got out of the room. They wrapped a hand into my hair, slapped their palm over my mouth, and dragged me backward toward the door. In my frantic struggle to break free, I think their elbow hit the glass in the door.

Voices reach me, dragging me out of my thoughts, and I hurriedly close the door, and lean back against it.

There’s a nauseous lump in the pit of my stomach, fear crawling its way through my veins. It makes me want to find a dark corner and hide.

I take a deep breath. I can’t afford to let fear take over now. I need to keep my head clear.

Zain said the police are here. I need to get dressed. They’re going to want to question me about what happened.

I frown, fragments of his conversation on the phone coming back to me.

He’d been angry, his voice sharp and biting. He said he’d been talking to the sheriff … but was it, really? Why did he tell them that he’d expected them to have people here already?

My mind spins, throwing memories at me.

He got a phone call back at his parents’ house, too. That’s when he’d hustled me out of the door and drove back here.

Who hadthatbeen?

Oh my god. Did he hire someone to grab me? To kill me?

I think back to the look on his face when he came outside.

No, that had been a genuine look of shock … hadn’t it?

What if sleeping with you was a distraction? Another part of his plan to make you pay?

I dismiss that thought as soon as it forms. I’vehadmeaningless sex. A string of one night stands solely to wipe away the memory of the past back when I first moved away from Whitstone.

What happened between us wasn’t that … was it? It didn’t feel like it was meaningless.

I push away from the door. I need to get dressed before he comes back. I can’t be half-naked when the police come in.

I can’t afford to fall apart right now. I have to keep focused, stay in control. I can think about what happened later. Once the police have left.

It takes a minute or two to find my underwear, and my face is hot by the time I fish out my panties from beneath the couch. I drag them on, then my jeans, straighten my T-shirt, then diga hair-tie out of my pocket and use my fingers to comb my hair back into a low pony-tail.

I’m sitting down, lacing up my sneakers, when the door opens.

“Ashley?” Zain’s voice breaks the silence, and I twist to look over the back of the couch. “Are you in here?”

He steps into the room, another older man behind him. The stranger is dressed in a khaki shirt, his sheriff’s badge prominently visible on the left side of his chest. For a split second, I think Zain has brought him here to arrest me for something. Then common sense returns.

I haven’t done anything wrong.

I stand up.

“Ms. Trumont.” He walks toward me, one hand outstretched. “Sheriff McFadden. I’m sorry we weren’t here to stop what happened.”

“Mrs. Ryder,” Zain corrects him before I can say a word. “Ashley is my wife.”

“Of course. My apologies.” He doesn’t miss a beat.

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