Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  “But she knows you. You don’t get how fucked up we were…all of us, when you were gone. And the shit I saw in that camper. When I told the others, well, she didn’t like being dropped by Connor.”

  The water was beginning to match the cool and slick texture of my skin, causing me to shiver. “That’s why he’s avoiding me,” I mumbled into my arm.

  Drake avoided my eyes, but nodded. “Look, Riley. I hate what the two of you had, and I’m not competing with him.”

  “I don’t expect you to.”

  His hazel eyes softened, and the skin around them crinkled when he smiled. “With that said, I know he cares about you more than you’ve seen the last few days. But I’m not letting you slip away from me again.” He squatted by the tub, reaching out to stroke my hair. “I care about you, too.”

  I let him touch my hair, my cheek, my neck, and said nothing in response until his hand fell away. “Okay,” I whispered.

  When our eyes met again, he knew what I wanted without hearing the words. “You need to talk to him, don’t you?”

  Just a nod, that’s all I gave him.

  “Right.” He sighed heavily and stood. “Okay. After your bath. I’ll…make it happen.” Before he left the room, I shifted in the water and clutched the towel around me.

  “Drake…thank you.”

  With a laugh that was more dead than the grass buried under the snow outside my window, he pounded once on the doorframe. “Riley, for you I’d do anything. Even if it kills me.”

  CONNOR

  His heart pounded with irregular thumps after Drake pulled him aside in the kitchen and quietly asked for a favor. He’d been cleaning up Ashlyn’s kitchen mess, which looked like a single serving of soup, and until Drake spoke, his was the last face that Connor wanted to see. He twisted one of the kitchen towels in his hand until it hurt his palms, and then immediately scanned the room on the other side of the wall, hoping Ashlyn wasn’t listening in on their conversation.

  “She’s not down here,” Drake mumbled, leaning against the counter.

  “Are you sure…after everything, Riley wants to see me?” Connor whispered.

  “You don’t have to whisper. The bitch is upstairs in her room, probably doing her hair or sharpening her hunting knife.”

  Connor glared at Drake, who appeared far too comfortable in his relaxed jeans and plaid shirt, with his arms crossed and one leg casually hooked over the other.

  “I know she doesn’t want me alone with Riley,” he said. “Your room’s right next to hers, so how is that going to work?”

  “I’ll distract her,” Drake said with a matter of fact tone.

  “For how long?”

  “Long enough to walk the perimeter of the property.” When Connor gave him a doubtful glance, Drake sighed and dropped his arms to the counter, using them to hold him up. “Look, she won’t turn down attention, okay? Even if it’s only for a walk.”

  “How long will I have, exactly?”

  “I don’t know, asshole. Ten minutes, maybe twenty? Long enough.”

  Connor fidgeted with the towel. Ten minutes to tell Riley everything he wanted to say. It was impossible. “I’ll take it.”

  “Of course you will,” Drake snapped. “I’ll go get the witch. The clock starts in two minutes.”

  He waited around the hall corner, out of sight from the stairs, while Drake was attempting to convince Ashlyn to go outside. It took more than two minutes. More like ten, really. His legs had never felt as heavy as they did in that hall, waiting to go to Riley. Not even when he was running from the firestorm in California did they feel as unsteady and unreliable. When Drake finally hit the stairs with his plodding feet, and Ashlyn fake-whined behind him, pulling a scarf around her neck, his legs felt solid again.

  While he held his breath, he pressed into the wall and listened to them cross through the main room and into the kitchen. After the swish of coat arms and zippers, he heard the kitchen door open, and the two exit, with Ashlyn complaining about the snow. He didn’t wait. He bolted around the corner and toward the stairs, taking them up two at a time, and sprinted down the hall, reaching Drake’s room a second before Drake and Ashlyn stepped off the patio deck. He had ten minutes, he told himself, inhaling sharply to regulate his breathing before knocking on the closed door.

  “You don’t have to knock, Connor,” she said softly from inside.

  With a twist, he opened the door and glanced in. Expecting to see her pale and fragile, bundled under the covers, he found her sitting on the edge of the bed instead, fully dressed and combing through her wet hair. He let the clean smell of her overwhelm his senses before he entered the room and closed the door behind him, latching it.

  “You’re up,” he said.

  “I am.” She smiled shyly at him, and he cleared his throat, unsure of what to do, or even how to stand in the room. When she told him to sit next to her, he hesitated and glanced toward the window. “Are you really that scared of a woman half your size?” Riley asked, the comb temporarily still in her hair.

  With a chuckle, he shrugged and took a seat on the corner of the mattress, an arm’s length away from her. “You don’t know Ashlyn,” he said, trying to smile. His face froze in a grimace when Riley’s eyes fell to the floor.

  “No, I don’t. I know you, though.” She pulled the comb through her hair two more times, then set it on the bedside table. “Look…” she started, but he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t sit so far away.

  He leaned forward and pulled her into him, against his chest, and let her breathe into his shirt. Everything about her was familiar, like being home. The lean length of her arms that slowly went around his midsection, the point of her knee against his leg, the curve of her neck under one of his hands, and the soft swell of her breasts against his upper body every time she breathed. She was his home.

  “I miss this,” he whispered into her damp hair.

  “Me too,” she whispered back. But after a ragged sigh, she pushed away from him and coughed into her arm until her face flushed and her breaths came in jagged bursts.

  “We need to get you better,” he said, smoothing the hair away from her face.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. She sat up straighter and took one of his hands in hers. “I’ll be fine.”

  He glanced at the window again, as if it was a clock, reminding him that he had maybe seven minutes left before Ashlyn and Drake would finish their rounds, and Riley sighed in frustration.

  “She threatened everyone,” he began to explain, squeezing her hand. “Even the baby. She came to my room the other night with her knife, and told me she’d kill them all.”

  Riley’s eyes widened, but she surprised him by laughing. “Well, she sounds crazy.”

  “I think she is,” he said. “I really think she’d do it. I’ve severely underestimated how far she’d go to get what she wants. Right now, I just want you safe, and the others. Well, most of them.”

  “You and Drake haven’t gotten along, have you?”

  His eyebrow shot up. “What do you think?”

  She nodded, and stared down at the bedspread. “When I found out you were at the Ark, I don’t know…it’s like I’d died and come back, you know? And then when I saw her practically sitting on your lap, I died again.”

  “Riley, I’m so sorry.” He tried to pull her into another hug, but she braced her arm against him. “Please,” he begged, touching her face. “I need you to understand that I thought you were gone. Ashlyn was just…there.”

  He flinched when she shifted, thinking she might strike him, but she brought her hand up to his face and traced the side of his jaw, where his burn scar was still pink and shiny. “And this…how did it happen?”

  With his eyes closed, be breathed in the fresh scent of soap on her skin and tried to imprint into his memory the feel of her warm hand on his face. With his fingers over hers, he opened his eyes and stared over her shoulder.

  “I went back for you. Once I got Kris safe, I went back. But I co
uldn’t find anything. For days, I searched buildings and homes, but there were armed men out there, probably the ones who shot you. I just…I just wanted to find your body and bring you home, you know? To your mates. To your family.” He stiffened when she scooted closer to him, and her hand traced the scar down his neck, but she nodded for him to continue. “The fire came a few weeks later, I don’t know from where, but it was bad. It ate through everything, and cut off the roads, all the access points I could find on my map. That’s how I came across Ashlyn’s group. They were hurt, some of them burned, and on foot. I couldn’t leave them there. What happened after…what I did…I just wanted you back. I thought you were dead, Riley.”

  Riley leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips, and then sat back, watching his eyes water. “I thought you were dead, too. You and Kris. If Drake hadn’t found me and taken me to his place, I would have died where I fell.” She paused to cough, and Connor resisted the urge to glance at the window again. “I had so much rage, Connor. What I did in L.A. flipped a switch in me. I killed people. But I found her,” she whispered.

  “Found who?”

  “I found Mariah.”

  His entire body jerked as if electrocuted and he pressed into the bed with his arm to steady himself. “What? How? Where is she now?”

  She shook her head. “She was too far gone. I’d risked it all, losing you and Kris, losing the horses…putting everyone else at the lodge in jeopardy, for a girl who was already dead inside. She didn’t make it.”

  “Jesus,” he mumbled, rubbing at his face. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Drake was all I had left,” she said.

  “So…you two. When did that start?”

  Her face settled into an angry glare and her lips became a tight, white line. “That didn’t happen while I was being shot at, or beaten, or running for my life through the countryside of Southern California. It happened later. Much later.”

  With a groan, he rubbed at his face with both hands, and pushed off the bed. “I can’t believe how complicated this has gotten, Riley. You and I should be together! We could leave…we could pack a bag right now and get the fuck out of here, just you and me,” he blurted.

  She stood and faced him with her hands on her hips, and the desire he still had for her shot a painful jolt through his core. “And go where, Connor? Die in a snow drift holding onto each other? Get taken by the next group of assholes to be used and treated like trash? Do you know what happened to me, Connor? What they did to me?” Riley’s entire body shook, and she’d begun to cry. When he reached for her, she slapped his hand away. “I’m leaving these mountains, Connor. I am. But I’m not running out on my family, not again. What about Kris…what about Jacks and the baby…and yes, what about Drake?”

  “That’s who you want, that bloody git?”

  Despite the anger on her face, she laughed. “This isn’t about who I choose, you know,” she said softly.

  “Yes, it is,” he snapped. “That’s all it’s about now. It’s him or me, and you know it!” His eyes flicked to the window and she followed them.

  “Right. Okay. Well, today it’s him, is that what you need to hear? Today, you’re going to sneak out of here in the next minute, and pretend everything is okay and that the twisted thing you started with this other woman is normal. That’s a choice you made, Connor.”

  “For you!” he nearly screamed, and a door opened in the hall. “You think I want his hands on you? You think I want his mouth on yours? I’d snap that cunt’s neck if I had it in me, but I can’t, I tried! All I can do is play along, and let you and Drake play house right under my fucking nose!”

  His voice was so loud that she flinched from him, but he couldn’t stop. He kept cursing and yelling, and telling her why he was doing it, all of it. It wasn’t for him. None of it was for him. He didn’t stop until she threw her arms around his shoulders and cried into his neck. Only then did he realize the severity of his choices, and how gone she was. Even in his arms, she was no longer his.

  “I can’t do this,” he gasped, struggling to push her away. “I can’t…” But his body needed her, and with a hand, he cupped her chin and held her head steady. When they kissed, it was deep and painful, almost furious. He lost his fingers in her hair and pulled the length of her smaller body against his, letting her mouth suffocate him until all he could taste, and all he could feel, was Riley. And then, just as passionately and abruptly as it began, the kiss ended.

  They stood a foot apart, panting and angry, yet still wanting each other. “Your ten minutes are probably up,” she wheezed, covering her mouth with an arm as she coughed.

  “Get some rest,” he stammered. “If Drake wants to take care of you, let him.”

  “That’s what you want?” she asked, with a hand on her heaving chest.

  “For now, that’s how it should be.”

  He turned to leave, but Riley grabbed for him. “There’s something you should know,” she said. “But, I’m afraid to tell you.”

  It hurt to look at her face, so he stared at the place where her shirt collar met her neck. “There’s nothing you can say now that will hurt any more than leaving this room.”

  “It’s about the fire,” she whispered. Her hand, still holding his, began to tremble. “I think…I think I know how it happened.” She stopped as if the words hurt, and he shifted on his feet, the anxiety building from Ashlyn and Drake’s impending return.

  “It was a brush fire, Riley. With no one to put it out, half of California is probably burned to dust by now.”

  “No…” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, it became a brush fire, but that’s not what started it.”

  “I don’t understand.” He stared down at her calm sea-blue eyes as they darted between his.

  “I set it,” she claimed with a gulp. He pulled his hand free and blinked at her as she began to cry. “It was me, Connor. It was the only way to quiet the voices, to send the shadows away…from the coast to the mountains, I set fires. I did this to you,” she whispered, reaching up to touch his face.

  He pulled away, dumbfounded. “No,” he stated, backing towards the door. “You didn’t…you couldn’t.” She didn’t answer him, only hugged her arms around her chest and bit down on her lips to keep from crying out. “Riley, that can’t be true,” he whispered.

  “I’m so sorry…”

  All the emotion he’d kept bottled up inside him since the moment he saw her shot off the horse, and then found her standing on the mountain trail, rushed out and he grabbed her by the upper arms, shaking hard.

  “How could you do that?” he hissed. “You killed people, Riley…living people! You almost killed me!”

  “I thought you were dead!” she yelled back. “Nothing else mattered!”

  When they broke free of each other, the room dipped in temperature and Connor felt what was left of his heart freeze over. The dog was barking wildly in the hall, and someone knocked on the door, but it blended into a blur, because the loudest thing in his ears was the rushing sound of the fire that had nearly snuffed him out of existence. That roar of power, the shrill screams of burning people and the popping of exploding trees, the smoke, the heat, he was in it again, lost in the flames.

  He turned away from her and went to run from the room, but collided into the wooden door, struggling to escape, and forgetting it was locked. Once he could fling it open, he stumbled into the hall and pushed by a startled Kris and sleep-deprived Jacks. He was going to barricade himself in his room until he stopped burning on the inside.

  RILEY

  After Connor fled, and the dog rushed in to check on me, I realized it had been a mistake telling him the truth. Only Drake had known, and it would have remained a secret forever had I simply let myself forget. But I couldn’t look at Connor without seeing what the fire had done to him. How it had marked him, possibly forever. It was my fault, and as he stood before me, fleshing out his own secrets, mine bubbled to the surface. There was no way I couldn’t tell
him.

  Kris stepped into the doorway as my breathing turned into a heaving cry. “Are you okay?” she asked, biting on her thumbnail and moving aside for Jacks to come into the room.

  I backed up until my legs hit the bed, and fell onto my ass, struggling to breathe. Jacks stopped just in front of me, but I put my hand out to keep him from coming any closer.

  “What the hell just happened in here?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  “It’s over,” I croaked, trying not to cough.

  “Are you okay?” he repeated Kris’ question, and squatted to my eye level, going down on one knee to meet my gaze. “Riley, talk to me.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fucking fine. What happened?”

  The breeze pressed into the window and we all turned toward the hall when the banging sound of a closing door echoed up the stairs. Drake and Ashlyn were back. Zoey huffed from her spot by my feet.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said, wiping my face dry. “It’ll be okay. Please, act normal,” I begged.

  “Act normal?” Jacks scoffed. “Jesus, Riley. What passes off for normal these days is a bit fucked up, don’t you think?”

  I nodded, struggling to smile and glanced at Kris. “I’m hungry…are you hungry?” I asked her.

  She frowned, but nodded. “Sure. Want me to get you something?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, bobbing my head up and down with so much force that my damp hair bounced into my face.

  Kris stepped away and Jacks pushed the hair back behind my ear. “I’m worried about you, Riley,” he whispered.

  “Jacks,” I said, taking his hand. “I think I hear the baby…is Lily crying?”

  He straightened and cocked his head to the side, listening to the sounds of Ashlyn and Drake downstairs and Zoey’s panting. “I don’t hear her,” he said.

  “Oh, must be the wind. Go check anyway, okay?”

  He straightened, standing before me like a wall. “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

  “Maybe.”

  He slowly moved towards the door. “Well, I’ll be back.”