Page 77 of Savior

“Is it true?” He turned to face me. “You didn’t text me because you wanted to reconcile, you brought me out here for questioning?”

“I—” I swallowed. “Well, maybe partly—”

The hope I’d seen in his eyes extinguished, along with any chance of us working things out. “Just when I start to think that there’s nothing else left for you to do to rip my heart out, you go and surprise me.”

He turned and held his palms up to Mike, his jaw settling into a hard line as he asked, “Do you need to pat me down or am I okay to be interrogated like this?”

“I already told you this wasn’t anything official. We’re just trying to establish a timeline for the night Grey was shot.” Mike shot me a look of apology. “I thought you told him.”

Nate laughed bitterly. “That this was nothing more than a fucking ambush? No, she kept that to herself. Let’s get this over with. I have things to do.”

I stood rooted to a patch of yellowed grass as he stormed up the steps and into the house. Where I expected tears, there was nothing but numbness.

My mother and Dakota approached me cautiously, but I waved them off. “I’m fine.”

Dakota reached over to squeeze my arm. “This is all a disaster. I’m sorry, Kate. If I would’ve just told you—”

“Don’t do that,” I said with a shake of my head. “Seriously, it’s fine. We’ll see what he knows, and then he can go back to his regular life.”

“Tell him, Kate,” my mother demanded, her eyes filling with tears again. “Mikey can wait. If he knows—”

“If he knows… what, Mama?” I snapped. “What will that change? Absolutely nothing.”

Mike watched the entire exchange from the porch with a pinched expression and crossed arms. “If we could just—Kate, I’m really sorry, but we need to save this shit for later—”

“Don’t worry, Detective,” I bit out. “I won’t hold up your investigation. Just one thing, though.” I stopped in the doorway and looked up at him with a smirk. “You’re going to be dealing with so much more of ‘this shit’ with two girls on the way. Good luck.”

Dakota immediately began asking my mother for answers from the porch, but I continued on into the house, moving toward the sound of voices coming from the kitchen.

Nate had his back to the doorway but turned when he heard me come in. His jaw tightened, and he shook his head before looking away again.

I reached out a shaking hand to steady myself against the cabinets when I realized the real reason I was afraid to tell him about what happened. Deep down, I knew that when the truth came out, Nate wouldn’t hesitate to leave me.

Just like my father had.

“Hey,” Dakota tried to capture everyone’s attention when she entered the kitchen. When no one acknowledged her, she let out an unholy screech that made my skin crawl. “I said hey!”

Mike dug a finger into his ear from behind her. “Jesus Christ, Dakota! What the fuck was that?”

She shrugged. “A whistle. Well, I can’t actually whistle, so I just make the sound.”

Zane shook his head and gestured for her to get to the point. “But, that’s not important right now. Today has been a little hard for our team.”

Today had proven that none of us knew what the hell we were doing. We weren’t a team. We were nothing more than a group of people, all convinced that our way was better than the next guy’s.

“I’ll take it from here.” Mike patted her awkwardly on the back before moving into the center of the kitchen. “Everyone in this room is family, but we’re not acting like a family. Why have the Sons been successful?”

“Because they have better weapons?” Dakota guessed.

I felt Nate’s eyes on me and slightly tilted my head to look up at him. The expression on his face was hard to read as he lowered his head to mine. My heart beat wildly, sending the blood from my extremities down to the more lucrative organs between my thighs.

“Is this why you wanted me to come out here?”

I exhaled shakily as his warm breath hit my ear, fighting the urge to throw myself into his arms and admit to everything.

“To witness your kumbaya shit?”

The breath left my lungs in a heavy sigh, and I took a step back.

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