Page 49 of Cold Case Murder Mystery

So, she’d left for some other reason. Butwhy? If she’d bolted because...

Well, he’d find her. He didn’t care what it took. Maybe she didn’t want it or like it, but he was hardly going to let her...

He pushed out the front door and then came to an abrupt halt.

She sat on the rickety porch, in the rocking chair that Carlyle had put there a month back, telling him he’d needed it because he was an old man now. Viola lay at her feet.

Brooke was watching the hint of a sunrise in the east. Or had been, until she’d looked over at him when he’d stormed out.

She raised an eyebrow, clearly at the way he’d burst out the door. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah... I just...” He didn’t have the words. Her hair was tangled. She was wearing his hoodie—way too big for her small frame. She had her legs curled up under her and the sunrise seemed to burnish her gold. Ethereal.

He didn’t have words for the emotion that swamped him. Theneedclogged in his throat. How much he wanted this. All those things he’d told her he’d never be able to give her four years ago.

And now he couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted more.

She sighed heavily. Her gaze moved back to the sunrise, but her words were careful. Deliberate.

“I know what this is, Zeke. I know what last night was. It doesn’t have to be all dramatic this go-around. I’m under no... illusions this is going to be something more than what it is.”

“Which is?” he returned, not comfortable with the dispassionate way she’d delivered all that.

“A momentary... trip down memory lane.” She said it with one of her patented nods, like she could make things true through sheer force of will. “It was a great... interlude. No guilt. No drama. Just... a distraction. Like you said.”

“That’snotwhat I said.”

Her head whipped back to look at him. Clearly an argument was on the tip of her tongue. He didn’t let her mount it.

“I asked if that’s what you were suggesting. And that’s fine. If that’s all you want it to be. I can deal.” Maybe he’d find some way to deal. Because he supposed he deserved that.

But Zeke Daniels didn’t go down without a fight. Why let that change?

“A distraction is not what I’m after though.” He didn’t know how to do this. How had Walker and Carlyle just... said the things that needed saying to deal with the people they loved? How had they made it all work?

Oh God, was he going to have to ask them?

“Whatareyou after, Zeke?” she asked, sounding tired. “Another few months where we’re in each other’s pockets, pretending to have this... relationship, this domestic thing we never got as kids? Until the danger is gone and reality seeps in and now you don’t even have North Star to blame for not being able to have a future. So then what?”

He deserved every single thing she was saying, even if every single word hurt. It’s exactly what he’d done back then. But this wasn’t back then. “Do you really think I haven’t changed?”

She inhaled sharply, though her words remained very, very calm. “Maybe you have, but...” She looked so pained, so confused, so lost. And he had felt all those things. Every moment since the last time he’d seen her. He had convinced himself it didn’t matter. It would never matter. He was such a lone wolf.

Yet what had he done? Settled down in the same place as his siblings with some vague idea to start a life. With some... nebulous hope something like Brooke would come along again.

Or maybe, deep down, he’d always just hoped for her.

But on the other side of all that washer. What she’d done in their time apart. What she’d thought. And the fact he’d had her trust once and broken it. She shouldn’t so easily believe him this go-around. He knew that.

He also knew what it was like to hurt her, and he didn’t want to live with that again. That pain had been worse than his fear, his inability to deal with everything he’d felt for her.

And, he supposed, that pain had brought him here. So he tried to find the words to get it across. To make her understand.

“I bought a ranch, Brooke. I put down roots. I sure as hell don’t know what to do with them, but they’re there.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding, though he knew her easy agreement wasn’t going to go in his favor. She met his gaze with dark blue eyes. Sad, sad eyes. “But they’re notmyroots.”

He should leave it at that. Heshould. But he couldn’t.

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