Page 12 of Salacious Devotion

Her jaw drops. “You pay five grand a month for a play space?”

I move closer to her. I need to touch her. “Yes.”

“What the fuck do you do for work? You owned a security company clear across the country three years ago.”

I smile. “I still own it, baby. Levitt Security. I moved it to Seattle two years ago, hoping to get a fresh start. Plus, the business was growing. There were far bigger opportunities here. It’s been an extremely lucrative move. Most of our clients are high-dollar.”

She searches my gaze.

I grab her around the waist and pull her into me. “I can and will hide you indefinitely, baby. I will also find that fucker and take him out.”

“You can’t do that. It’s madness. You’d end up in prison. Where would that leave me?”

“I promise I will not end up incarcerated.”

“I can’t just walk away from my life, Dane,” she murmurs as she wraps her arms around me and hugs me tightly.

I lower my face to her hair and inhale her scent. Fuck, I missed this. When she first died, I bought ten brands of shampoo that claimed to be burnt vanilla. I washed my pillowcases in them, trying to hold on to the memory of her scent. None of them were quite right, perhaps because they needed to be mixed with her own personal scent.

“That’s not your life,” I tell her softly. “Your life is with me.”

“You don’t even know me. Maybe I’m not the person you thought you loved,” she replies to my chest.

“I didn’t think I loved you…Paige. I loved you. I’m just a fucking fool for not saying it. Now, is there anything important you need from your apartment?”

She tips her head back. “You can’t be serious. This is madness. You need to let me walk out of here and never tell a soul about seeing me. It’s the only sane possibility.”

I shake my head. “Not a chance in hell. We’ll stay in this room until we figure out how to move you to my penthouse without anyone finding out.”

She rolls her eyes. “You have a penthouse?”

“Yes. I’ll need to put my cleaning people on hiatus. I have a safe room in the penthouse. If anything were ever to happen, you could go into it. No one would find you there.”

“You have a safe room,” she deadpans.

“I do.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do. It’s just that I have more money than the last time you saw me.”

“Apparently.”

“Is there anything of sentimental value you want from your apartment? I’ll get it.”

She chuckles sardonically. “Everything of sentimental value I could have ever wanted was in my old apartment. That was one of the hard parts about walking away. I lost everything I owned. I’m sure it all went in the dumpster. Pictures. Mementos. Jewelry.” She lowers her forehead to my chest. “My mother’s ring. Some heirlooms. My father probably trashed it all.”

I slide my hands around her back and hold her close. I press my lips on top of her head. “I have all of that, baby.”

Her entire body goes stiff. She yanks her head back to look at me. “You’re kidding.”

I shake my head. At least I can give her this one thing. “No. I mean, I can’t be certain I took every single thing you might have wanted, but I have a box. You’re right. Your father was too upset to deal with your apartment and belongings, so I was the one to deal with it all. I couldn’t part with anything that you and I had accumulated together. And…” I’m choked up again. I need a second.

“And what, Dane?”

“I was a fool. All our friends thought I had lost my last brain cell. I couldn’t accept that you were gone. They tried to tell me, but I refused to believe it was true. So I packed up your favorite things and took them to my place. I told myself it was because I wasn’t ready to part with them. I also told myself you weren’t gone.” I don’t mention her phone yet. She’ll think I’ve gone mad.

She stares at me, tears running down her cheeks again. I hate that she keeps crying. I hate that I keep crying. But there’s no way to avoid it. We have to flush this all out.

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