Page 62 of No More Secrets

“You think I’m after you? That why you ran?”

“Isn’t that why you’re here?”

She swings her stool around to face him, her elbow on the bar. “I’m not here for the reason you probably think I am.”

He frowns at that. “You’re not taking me in? I don’t understand.”

“Truth for a truth?” Her low voice rolls over him, and his gaze drops to her lips.

“Hit me,” he says, staring at her mouth, the alcohol impairing his thoughts. His finger twitches. He wants to trace her pouty bottom lip.

“I know there is a warrant for your arrest for several traffic violations from last September.”

He forces air out his nose and leans back, waiting for the rest. When she doesn’t say more, he asks, “And?”

“And you spent time in juvie during high school.”

His gaze flips up to hers. That can’t be all.

“To answer the question you’re probably thinking, no, I haven’t notified the police of your whereabouts.”

That isn’t what he’s thinking, not at this exact moment. He murdered his father. The accident happened on a major road and should have been caught on CCTV. His hands were bloody. His blood would be at the scene. There should be a warrant for his arrest for first-degree murder.

“What can you tell me about the girl with you?” she asks, oblivious to his inner turmoil.

“Shiloh?” Her interest in the girl baffles him. Sophie/Zea must have missed something if she looked up his records. Then it smashes into him. She isn’t here for him. Shiloh was right. Sophie’s after her.

“She’s not your concern.” A tingling sensation spreads down his arms. He never should have left her alone.

“I know she isn’t your niece. She looked pretty roughed up when I met her.” Shiloh’s black eye and the scratches on her face and neck.

“You think I hit her?” Disgust sours his tongue.

“I don’t know what to think. That’s why I’m asking.”

“What’s your fascination with her?”

Sophie’s expression softens when she notices how fired up he’s getting. Without taking her eyes from him, she lays her arm on the bar top. Lucas’s gaze dips to read the script tattooed on her forearm.I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Isaiah 44:22.

Like him, she wants redemption. He meets her eyes and studies her in a new light. Their souls are kindred. Drifters aching over a past they can’t let go of. But what does hers have to do with Shiloh?

“Explain.”

“I used to work for a network that places homeless and runaway kids into homes.”

“Foster care?”

Her eyes skirt away. “Something like that. The network vets its angels—that’s what we call the people who open their homes for these kids—but not well enough in my book. This one girl, Alma, she was twelve when she ran away from home. Her stepfather sexually abused her. I placed her into one of our homes with a woman we thought we knew. She was a longtime angel. But unbeknownst to us, she had a new boyfriend, someone we hadn’t vetted. Someone with a record. He got to Alma, and he...” She clears her throat. “He used her, and he killed her. It’s my fault. I placed her in that house. I put her in the exact situation she ran from when I promised I’d protect her.”

“And now you seek redemption through Shiloh?” Her cheeks darken, and Lucas tilts his head toward her tattoo, understanding dawning. He, too, has been seeking redemption through Shiloh. If he could protect her, he could make up for failing his sister. Seeing someone else do the same shows him how fucked up his reasoning is. But it doesn’t change his mind. Shiloh still needs him.

“Shiloh’s safe with me, if that’s what you’re asking.” He finishes his beer, the urge to get back to his apartment to check on her pushing him to leave before history repeats itself and he loses Shiloh, too. Even though he knows she can’t stay with him in the long run, he shouldn’t have left her on her own. He shouldn’t have left her the way he did by lying to her. But his fear and cowardice had gotten the best of him.

“Who hurt her?” Sophie presses.

He doesn’t want Sophie to see him the way he suspects she does, as a predator. So he tells her. “She ran away from home and was living in a homeless encampment. A couple of guys attacked her. I pulled her out.” He slaps bills on the counter, urgent to return home, and swipes up his keys. “If the cops aren’t coming for me, we’re done here. If you’re here for Shiloh, forget about it. I’m taking care of her. Go home to wherever you came from. Look for your redemption elsewhere,” he says, his anger rising, more upset with himself that he was using Shiloh to fix himself than he is at Sophie.

He goes to stand and stumbles off the stool.

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