Page 48 of Furever Loyal
“What will happen to you?”
Kincaid shrugged. “I’ll succeed. Or I won’t.”
Haley was silent. “I need my boring life back, Kincaid. I don’t think I can do this. You’re a nice person, and I wish this hadn’t happened to you, but I can’t live this life. I can’t be a part of your world. It’s too chaotic.” She screwed her eyes shut. “I just can’t.”
“You won’t get your life back by staying here, Haley. If they come to find me gone, they’ll take it out on you.Trust me, nobody will ever find you here. They’ll leave you alone if you go back to town, keep your mouth shut and try to forget about all this. That’s theonlyway.”
She couldn’t bring herself to do it. That would be too much like breaking the law and living on the run. Haley would live every day in fear that they would come after her. In the middle of the night, if she heard a sound, she’d never know if it was just the house creaking, or Kvoss coming to snatch her away and bring her back here.
Kincaid looked over his shoulder. “I can’t stay for much longer, Haley. At some point, someone will be back to check on us, and I need as much of a head start as possible before then. You need to make up your mind.”
She hung her head, resting it against the bars, hand still covering the lock. “Would it be easier if I came with you?”
“Honestly?” he said awkwardly. “No, probably not at first. Escaping with the two of us is going to be a lot tougher than just me doing it. I can move faster and quieter than you, and I know my way around. Plus, I have…senses, that you don’t.”
It wasn’t the answer she’d expected, but it made complete sense. “Why are you so adamant that I come with you then? It has to be more than just fear for my own life.”
Kincaid hesitated now. In fact, he looked away and shifted his weight from side to side. “I just don’t want to see you hurt for something you didn’t do. I forced you to come with me, and now you’re all caught up in this.”
“Actually, your Queen did that,” she pointed out. “Why, Kincaid? What do you want with me coming with you?”
“I enjoy and value your company,” he said tightly, glancing at her, then away, then back at her. “I…I don’t want to leave you. I want you with me. To come with me, I mean.”
Now Haley was truly torn. She’d felt something when he’d kissed her, and now she had confirmation that he had too. Somehow, the big jerk was showing a side of himself he hadn’t before, and she was becoming interested in him.
This isn’t good.
“Haley,” he pressed. “I need you to move your hand now.”
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. There had to be another way. A way that didn’t involve them breaking the rules yet again. It was doing that which had landed them in their spot, and if she—
“I need to go,” he repeated, his voice more pained than ever. “I’m sorry.”
He laid the key on the horizontal bar. “I’m so sorry Haley. I never wanted this. I should have listened to you, and never let you get involved at all. This is all my fault, and I can never make that up to you. I…”
Haunted blue eyes stared at her, filling with emotions that she could barely process. One above them all won out, and her heart nearly shattered as she saw the hurt in them. The hurt from her rejection of him. That was what she was doing, essentially, saying no to him on every level by staying there.
There was the ghost of a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Then he was gone, disappearing into the darkness as well, moving so quietly she didn’t hear him go as he fled down the tunnel to the right.
Almost immediately, the silence closed in around her. Haley retreated to the back of her cell, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her eyes, however, were still locked on to the key that Kincaid had left. It wouldn’t do her much good on her own. There was no way she could escape the maze of Ursidae Manor alone.
If she was going to go, if she was going to make a break for it, it would have to be now, before Kincaid got too far ahead of her. It might even be too late already.
Pulling her knees to her chest, she stayed huddled there, trying to figure out what to do. Did she stick with what years of her life were screaming at her to do?
Or did she take a risk?
25
He crept down the hallway, trying to keep his mind there in the moment with him, and not back in his cell.
Not once had Kincaid expected that Haley would refuse to come with him. In his mind, he’d seen the two of them together, making good their escape from the manor and racing off into the night to prove their innocence. Then, when nobody was after them, and only then, could he figure out just what the hell he’d been thinking when he’d kissed her.
Approaching an intersection of hallways, he slowed his pace, so he wasn’t even making the slightest of sounds. The first step would be getting out of the building itself. Then he would have to get across the nearby grounds, and finally the outer perimeter of forest and bush.
Not for the first time he cursed himself, wishing he’d been born as anything but a polar bear. They weren’t all that uncommon, but they were enough in number that if one was seen wandering around at night, they would probably be stopped and questioned. If he’d been born with black or brown fur, in all likelihood he could simply waltz out into the darkness of the night without being stopped.
