Page 26 of Wilder
Just then, Royal wanders in, sniffing at the air. “Now, I’m really fucking hungry.” He notes Echo’s swift turn of head. “Chase is with your sister. She said she’d keep him out of the kitchen while Wilder finished up.”
“So we have a few minutes, then.” I clear my throat, figuring I’ll throw caution to the wind and get the conversation rolling again. “We got interrupted earlier, and we have a few more things to make sure…” I make a circular motion with my hand, trying to get the words to come out, but they won’t. Probably because I really don’t want to deal with my own shit, and I know it’s coming.
Wilder finishes for me, “You want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
Royal nods, a grimace planted squarely across his face as he sits down to my left. “I was going to say the same. All those fuckin’ love notes and cute photos from the creeper?—”
Echo’s gasp cuts him off, and her eyes widen as she stares at us. She swallows roughly, wringing her hands. “Oh, shit.” As she bites her lip, I can practically see her turning over something in her head.
Not liking that whatever has sprung to her mind is freaking her out like this, I stand from my chair, moving quickly to pull her against my chest. I feel every shake and quiver of her bodyas my own. “Whoa, little love,” I whisper against the side of her head. And the kicker is she doesn’t even know yet about the knife in the door. I’m one hundred percent positive that when Royal’s nastygram was brought up she somehow missed the bit about the scary butcher knife in the door. She never reacted to Royal telling Wilder he wanted to see it. Not even so much as a flinch. That’s how I knew to watch her. Everything that transpired that night had simply been too fucking much for her.
She takes a deep breath, easing slightly away from me, and her anxious eyes dart to each of us in turn. “Don’t you think if they found all that stuff, they’re going to think we’re to blame for Freya and Zane?”
Well,definitely—if they found the knife…
ELEVEN
ROYAL
“The investigators would have saidsomething if they found anything. There’s more in that stash of evidence than you’re aware of, Echo. Trust us, we’d already know if it’d been found. They’d have had big fucking questions, and they didn’t.” Beckham shakes his head, catching her chin with his fingers and steering her gaze to his.
“What are you talking about?” Lines of confusion mar her forehead, confirming what Beckham clued us in to from the night of the break-in. She hadn’t registered us mentioning the knife. Honestly, there’d been so much going on, and it’d been late at that point. It simply hadn’t clicked in her head.
Beckham pins her with his gaze. “We’ll show you when we’re back at the house. It’s not worth worrying about right now. We’re gonna be fine. Promise.”
Her eyes slam shut, and she takes a shaky breath. “Okay. I trust your judgment.”
“Good.” He leans in, pressing his lips to her forehead. Her entire body relaxes in his hold.
I agree with his decision not to tell her yet. Every little thing she finds out about only adds to her worry. Fuck, sometimes I wish I didn’t know everything I do.
“Echo, I’ll reiterate what they’ve said. I think we’re good. I really do.” Wilder’s gaze coasts over her as food in the pan sizzles.
I arch a brow in Wilder’s direction. “I never asked exactly where you put all that bullshit. It might help all of us to know where you stowed it.”
“Everything is hidden under a loose board in my closet. It’s not obvious at all, so I highly doubt they found it.”
Ah, thank fuck.That’s infinitely better than if the bizarre stack of evidence were sitting on a shelf in the closet or in a desk drawer. Nodding, I grit out, “Good. Sorry, but it hit me that all that shit was still hidden somewhere over there, and it was making me fucking nervous that I didn’t know where it was. But you’re right. They would’ve been up your ass about it if they thought they had something.”
“Good. I don’t want them to have any reason to be focusing on any of us.” Echo exhales heavily as her gaze slips to me.
Figures. The thought of the police looking in our direction has worried her. With me, though, it’s different. I’m the resident jailbird, so I suppose it makes sense that she’d be more worried about me than anyone else. But also… I believe there’s another reason she’s focusing on me more than Wilder or Beckham, even though the dead bodies and evidence were in their rooms, not mine. I pause, working my jaw to the side as I try to puzzle this girl’s actions out. Fuck, I think it might be because I’m Woyal, and the thought of something happening to tear me away from her and Chase again is unfathomable. It is for me, too.
The sound of that awful voice telling me he’ll pin their murder on me slithers around in my brain, making me feel so fucking sick, I don’t know how to handle it. My chest rises and falls fast as thoughts of losing them crash through me. Funny, it’s not the prospect of returning to jail that does it, it’s not being right here with these people I love—Wilder and Beckham,included. An unsettled, troubled breath stutters from me after clawing its way from my throat. Fortunately, no one notices. My gaze snaps to where Beckham is giving me the side-eye.Okay. Except maybe him.
Echo’s fully turned around to address Wilder and is mid-sentence when my brain reconnects with a conversation I’ve partially missed. “How did you even figure out you had a loose board in the closet of all places?” I blink hard. Who knows what the fuck else I missed. Goddamn. I rub my hand over my chest, trying to center myself and clear the nerve-racking thoughts from my head.
“I might have intentionally made it loose so I could hide shit in there. I’d imagine most of us have a spot like that in our rooms—because we live in a house full of assholes.”
She chuckles. “True. Including my brother. Who I think must have decided to stay somewhere else because I haven’t heard from him and neither has Kara.”
My entire body bristles.No.I don’t want to think about fucking Davis right now in addition to everything else. But I don’t want to let on how messed up my head is right now, so I mumble, “Hasn’t been back, huh?” Another wave of fuckery rains down on me.
“No. Not that I know of.” Echo swivels herself on the stool, her lips parting with dismay as she studies the storm brewing on my face. Her green eyes latch onto mine, the apology there clear.
I wrench my gaze from hers and let out a frustrated groan, propping my elbows on the table and dropping my head into my hands. I’m fucking miserable with all this shit beginning to pile on me and weigh me down.
Beckham must never have stopped his assessment of me from the corner of his eye because he rises from his chair, but only long enough to scoot closer to me and sit back down. “Hey.” His warm hand lands on my back, reminding me of when hesought to comfort me at Theo’s. It’s a simple show of support that I don’t want to need, but dammit, I do. I round my back and let him soothe me. My heart thunders in my chest, wondering what sort of fucking magic is in his touch. He whispers, “It’s okay if you’re pissed about any of the shit that went down with him or the Franks today. You’re still processing it. You know that, right?”
