Page 9 of Without a Trace
“You know who.”
Trace didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. But his jaw locked.
I drained the rest of my drink like it might erase him from my bloodstream. “Next.”
The game continued, but I wasn’t in it anymore. Not really. My mind drifted and eventually I wandered down to the water alone.
The lake shimmered, holding a secret I’d never know. My bare feet sank into the cold sand, the breeze tangling my hair. I felt wild and sharp. Aching.
“You’re drunk.”
I didn’t turn around. “Takes one to know one.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what’s your excuse?”
I turned, facing Trace fully in the dark. He didn’t look offended, just amused. That crooked grin was back, slow and knowing. “Careful, Sunshine,” he said, voice playful. “You keep talking like that, I might start thinking you missed me.”
And maybe I had. Not just him, the whole thing. That feeling of being seen, really seen, by someone who didn’t need small talk, or surface-level bullshit to get to the heart of me. Trace always had a way of pulling things to the surface I didn’t mean to show. Like he was trained for it. Hell, maybe he was.
The others joked, but I’d seen the way they’d move when they didn’t think I was watching. The way Trace always seemed to put himself between me and the door. The way Alden scanned a room before he sat. Like instinct. Or something deeper.
I swallowed the thought. Too far down that path and I’d start asking questions I wasn’t ready to hear answers to.
“What do you want from me?” I asked, voice cracked.
He didn’t answer right away. His fingers were twitching again—thumb rubbing his forearm like the ink there could speak for him.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. “Yeah. It is.”
My pulse jumped. I hated him for it. Hated myself more.
I stood, stepped back, breath catching. “You don’t get to do this.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’rehere.”
He looked at me the way pain remembers where it started.
Then he just walked away.
Scarlett
The fire was lower as I made my way back, glowing embers and lazy sparks floating into the dark.
The others had drifted—some back to the house, some to the dock, some passed out on damp blankets under the stars. I should’ve followed. I should’ve done anything but pour another drink.
The tequila scorched all the way down, raw and wrong, but I liked the way it burned. Something inside me finally matching what I was feeling. My skin was hot, my thoughts loud. I could hear my heart in places I hadn’t before—throat, wrists, hips.
Trace sat down across from me; the bottle of beer barely touched in his hand. The fire casting shadows on his face made the tattoos on his arms flicker—alive in the dark.
Whatever was between us pulsed alive in the look he gave—him on the edge of speaking, me already bleeding.
