by Aly Martinez
“Clare. Not Noir. Just Clare,” I mumbled lazily, forging through the darkness that had constricted my thoughts.
“Okay, Clare. Stay awake, okay?”
I felt hands under my arms, lifting and jostling me, before I found myself horizontal.
What the fuck happened to me?
My mind scanned the memories, but it felt as though I were searching for a word resting on the tip of my tongue yet still completely out of reach. The thoughts floated through my mind, but I couldn’t grasp any of them.
With one sound, a lifetime of memories crashed down like a tidal wave.
“Mama!”
My entire body came alive.
I bolted upright. “Tessa!” I screamed, slapping the hands of doctors and nurses off as I scrambled toward her voice.
Chaos broke out around me. A police officer appeared, grabbing my wrists to restrain me.
“Mrs. Noir—”
“Tessa!” I rose to my knees and searched over his shoulder, but she was nowhere in sight.
“Get your fucking hands off her.”
I heard the familiar voice just as his strong, muscular back separated me from the officer.
Oh, thank God.
I lurched toward him. “Luke! I need Tessa. Please help me.”
He guided his hand back and patted my leg. “You lay a hand on her again and I’m gonna rip them off your wrists, yeah?” he told the officer.
“Light, calm down. I was just—”
His body angled forward as he growled, “Your only warning. Do. Not. Test. Me.”
Another of her cries assaulted my ears. “Tessa!” I grabbed the back of his shirt. “Luke, please. Where is she?”
He spun to face me, pure wrath filling his strong features. I jerked in surprise. Never had he appeared even remotely menacing at the gym. Sure, he was always big, but he had worn such a kind smile that I couldn’t help but be put at ease.
But, right then, with the hard set of his jaw and murder dancing in his eyes, he looked flat-out terrifying.
“Luke,” I whispered, swaying away.
His face softened and his wide shoulders curled forward as he lifted a hand to cup my jaw.
I dodged it on instinct.
Shaking his head in frustration, he lowered his hand back to his side and turned his gaze to the floor. “She’s safe. She’s with Roman.”
That wasn’t enough. If Walt wanted his daughter back, no one—not even a man like Roman Leblanc—could stand in his way.
Panic spiraled within me. “No. I need her!” I fisted the front of his tight, black T-shirt, pulling him toward me.
His gaze jumped back to mine.
“He…he’s going to come for her. She has to stay with me. Walt…. He…” My voice broke. “He’ll take her. He’ll find us, and he’ll take her. Luke. Please.”
His eyes turned dark—ominous, even—as he held my gaze so deeply that I feared he could see the holes Walt had carved into my soul.
“I’ll go get her,” he replied softly. “But call me Heath. Not Luke.”
I nodded multiple times. I’d have called him Rumpelstiltskin as long as he got me my daughter.
He pointedly looked down at my hands, which were still clutching the front of his shirt. “You gotta let me go, babe.”
But, as much as I wanted Tessa, I was terrified to let go.
I’d been alone in my fight against Walt for so long, I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to that. For seven years, he had bled me dry of my desire to live. I had nothing left to give. The tiniest taste of having someone to share that burden with made me an addict.
“You’re coming back with her?” I asked weakly.
“Yeah, Clare. I’m coming back with her.”
“You…you’ll stay with me?” I pushed in case he had misunderstood the question.
One side of his mouth lifted in a sad smile. “For as long as you want.”
I caught sight of his hand flexing at his side.
“Let go, Clare.”
I wasn’t sure I could. “I’m really scared right now,” I admitted on a whisper.
His body jolted, and he leaned against my fists, his chest pressing into my hands, but he made no further move to touch me.
“I know,” he said. “And that’s okay for you to feel. But I swear I’m not going anywhere. I just gotta get your girl. Settle down and let the doctors take a look at you while I’m gone. And I’ll be back in a flash.”
I swallowed hard, willing my hands and legs to stop shaking, but they refused to obey, and it wasn’t long before the tremor had worked its way up to my chin.
“Hey,” he soothed. “No one’s gonna hurt you ever again,” he assured as if it were an absolute fact.
I didn’t agree. Walt would never quit until he destroyed me.
“Okay,” I whimpered.
He kept his gaze locked with mine. “You’re still holding on.”
“I am,” I confirmed without releasing him.
He nodded in understanding. “Then we’ll wait until you’re ready.”
“I don’t know that I can do this.” I bit my lip as twin rivers dripped from my chin.
“You don’t have to do anything anymore, Clare. You already did the impossible. You kept yourself and that little girl alive. I swear on my life, from here on out, I’ll keep you that way. You just let go and trust me to get Tessa. I’ll handle the rest.”
I was genuinely confused when I first felt the warmth. His hands remained at his sides, so I knew he wasn’t touching me. But, as I stared into his promising, blue eyes, a blanket of security wrapped around me.
“Luke,” I breathed, dropping my forehead to his chest.
“Heath,” he corrected.
“Heath,” I repeated.
“Jesus,” he whispered, inching even closer so his front became flush with mine, forcing me to move my head to the crook of his neck. He didn’t embrace me as he stood there, allowing me to desperately cling to his shirt—to hope. However, his promise meant more than anything he could have ever physically offered me.
I didn’t need a man to coddle me.
I needed help.
And, somehow, someway, after what felt like an eternity of living in Satan’s lair, God had finally heard my prayers.
I felt his cheek on the top of my head, but it was the warmth of his skin against my battered face that offered the most comfort. I’d been cold for too long.
A man’s voice interrupted my breakdown. “Can we at least move her out of the hallway?”
Heath’s hand flew out to the side, snapping him to silence. “When she’s ready,” he declared gruffly.
The fact of the matter was I was never going to be ready.
But I needed my baby girl.
And I needed Heath’s blanket of security wrapped around us both.
Drawing in a ragged breath, I released him and settled back on the gurney. When I finally took in my surroundings, there were at least three doctors and nurses waiting against the wall. We were in the middle of a hallway, barely inside the doors of what I imagined was the emergency room, two uniformed police officers hovering nearby and another guarding the door.
The sense of alarm hung heavily in the air around us.
They, too, were waiting for Walt to show up to reclaim his family.
He would.
Absolutely.
I only prayed that Heath’s blanket would be thick enough to hide us all.
“Right back,” he assured.
A cold chill slid up my spine as I watched him walk away.
Tessa was quietly crying when I made it to the room. Roman was doing his best to console her as he held her on his lap. Back at the house, I’d promised her that Roman was a good guy. But reassurances only lasted so long for a terrified little girl in the arms of a stranger.
“Luke!” she shrieked when she caught sight of me.
Over the past three months, I’d worked my ass off to gain that little girl’s trust. In the beginning,
I had done it hoping Clare’s would follow as a result. But, as the days had turned into weeks, I had done it because…well, somewhere along the line, being with them stopped being about an investigation and became everything to do with showing a little girl and her mother that there was a world that didn’t involve beatings and tears.
Whether it was tickling her as Clare fought a breakdown or tossing her in the air while Clare battled for the ability to breathe, I did my best to distract them both from the madness that was their lives. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I’d loved every fucking minute of watching them emerge from their cocoons of fear.
Before I had been assigned to go undercover as Clare’s personal trainer, I’d seen at least a dozen images of her. Not once had she ever been smiling. After I’d met her, I realized that her smile was one of the world’s best-kept secrets, because if any man experienced one, they would wage wars to hold on to it. It was life changing.
And my federally issued badge did not make me immune.
As a man—and a decent fucking human being—I’d ached to help her from the start. She was beautiful; no one could deny that. But she had this glimmer in her defeated eyes that spoke to my soul in ways others could never understand. It was a subtle flicker that danced even during the day as the flames of abuse consumed her from the inside. The bruises didn’t have to be present physically. It was as obvious as a beacon shining from her ocean-blue eyes. Not even the greatest actress could hide that unmistakable inferno.
The DEA hadn’t known much about Clare Noir at first. Walter had kept her under lock and key for years. It wasn’t until after Tessa had turned one that he’d started allowing her out of the house to go to the gym. Surveillance on her had started immediately, but it had taken years for us to develop enough of a case to send an agent in. And, even then, all we had known was that she was married to Atlanta’s enemy number one. My job had been to find out if she was enemy number two or, hopefully, bring her in as the final nail in the coffin in our case against Walter Noir.
But, within weeks, I’d found myself with a different objective altogether.
“One more, Clare,” I demanded, using one hand to help her lift the bar.
She groaned, struggling to get it up before finally catching it in the cups.
“Nice!” I praised halfheartedly.
She’d shown up with a busted lip and a fresh bruise peeking out from under her tank top. I’d excused myself under the pretenses of making a call and then spent ten minutes pacing my office in an effort to keep myself from demanding she tell me what the fuck had happened.
I needed to know she was okay.
But, if I asked, she would have just said yes.
The answer would have been no, especially not with marks like that.
Scars on her wrists.
Bruises on her thighs.
A gash through her eyebrow.
And there was not one fucking thing I could do to stop it from happening again without compromising the entire investigation.
For almost a month, I’d been patiently working with her, but she hadn’t opened up yet. And it felt like acid to my soul each time I had to ignore what that scum was doing to her.
“You do know I’m not trying to become a bodybuilder, right?” she smarted as she sat up on the bench, giving me a full view of the bite mark on the back of her shoulder.
Gritting my teeth, I flexed my hands at my sides and pasted on a grin that I prayed passed as something more than a grimace. “Which is exactly why you’re only lifting the bar.”
“Ten reps though? Walt’s going to lose his mind if I start putting on muscle.”
“Fuck Walt,” I shot back before I could catch myself.
She barked a laugh. “I can’t say I disagree. But you’re not the one who has to live with him.”
I meandered toward the free weights and pretended to be interested in a set of fifteen-pounders. “You know you don’t have to live with him, either.”
I chanced a glance up and found her eyes locked on mine in the mirror. “Unfortunately, that’s not true,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I could help—”
She cut me off. “So, what’s next, Luke? I feel like I need manly shoulders to go with my new manly biceps.”
I chuckled, but it was completely for her benefit. I found not one thing humorous.
When I faced her, I caught a glimpse of her dipping her mouth to her wrist.
My forehead crinkled as I asked, “Did you just kiss your watch?”
She smirked. “It’s 11:11. You have to kiss the clock or you don’t get a wish.”
“You are aware that you’re twenty-eight years old, right?”
“And?” She grinned, her eyes temporarily extinguishing the flame as they lit with pure, breathtaking happiness.
No makeup, blond hair pulled back in a sweaty ponytail, gray jogging shorts with a matching pink-and-gray tank that exposed countless black-and-blue patches, and a smile so genuine that I didn’t just see it—I felt it deep inside my chest, in a place a subject of interest had no business being.
Clearing my throat, I attempted to shake off my stupor. “Okay, well, what’d you wish for?”
She curled her lip and gawked as though I were insane. “I can’t tell you that!”
“Come on. You don’t seriously believe that crap.”
She tipped her head to the side. “Um…I kiss the clock at 11:11 in order to make a wish. I think it’s fair to assume I absolutely believe that crap.” Another of her Earth-shaking grins assaulted me.
At that moment, I didn’t care what the hell she’d wished for. I’d have made a deal with the devil to make it come true. And we were dealing with Walter Noir, so that might have been exactly what I had to do.
I rounded her side of the bench and snagged my bottle of water off the floor. “Well, maybe we can swap. I had a birthday last week, so I have a wish of my own. I’m sure a trade wouldn’t be against the cosmic rules of wishes.”
She dramatically clutched her chest. “Come on. That’s not fair! You know I won’t be able to resist the temptation of knowing big, bad Luke Cosgrove’s birthday wish.”
I laughed at her blatant sarcasm before taunting, “Your loss, because it was a really badass one this year, too.”
Her nose crinkled adorably as she tapped her chin in mock consideration. She might have been joking, but her curiosity was real, and eventually, it got the best of her.
“Okay, fine. But you go first.” She anxiously rolled her fingers together, and I swear to God the woman was damn near giddy as she stared at me with rapt excitement.
My birthday wasn’t actually for another month, and I hadn’t blown candles out since my little sister Maggie had turned fifteen and become too cool to bake her big brother birthday cakes anymore. I had no actual wish to share with her. But, if I could make her laugh, I’d happily forgo all birthday wishes for the rest of my life.
I shrugged. “Fine with me, but just to be clear, I don’t have to pinkie promise or share my diary combination first, right? I mean, we are taking our BFF status to a whole new level sharing wishes and all.”
“So funny,” she deadpanned. “Besides, if I thought you had a diary that consisted of anything more than a list of ways for you to torture your clients, I would have stolen it weeks ago. Combination or not.”
We were supposed to be working out, but like so often in my time with Clare, it had dissolved into us standing around a piece of equipment, bullshitting about anything I could think of in order to keep her talking and out of her own head.
“Come on, Cosgrove. Spill it,” she prompted impatiently.
My gaze dropped to her mouth as I ached to correct her with my real name. What I wouldn’t have given to hear Heath tumble from those pink, crescent lips.
I forced my attention from her mouth and said, “New jockstrap.”
Her lips twisted and her shoulders sagged in disappointment. “You have got to be kidding me! That’s your amazing bir
thday wish?”
I laughed and defended, “Hey! Do not underestimate the chafing a worn-out jockstrap can cause!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, in that case, I hope it’s chafing you right now. You’re ridiculous, and that’s not fair. No way I’m spilling my wish in exchange for your gross underwear.”
Using the end of my water bottle, I pointed at her. “Don’t you dare try to back out now, woman. We made a deal. I told you mine—you tell me yours.”
“What are you, twelve?”
“Asks the woman who kisses her watch at 11:11,” I retorted.
“Nope. I’m not telling you.” She shook her head and started to walk away, but I absentmindedly reached up and caught her arm.
She instantly froze at the contact, her face draining of all color.
Guilt slammed into my ribs with an alarming velocity. I hadn’t been thinking. I never touched Clare, no matter how I longed to. And, sometimes, when she was laughing and cracking jokes, it became easy to forget how fragile she really was.
“Shit.” I released her immediately. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured softly, hurrying to the free weights.
She kept her back to me, but as I stood, I could see her chest heaving in the mirror. Her brave mask made her face unreadable, but her body’s physical reaction to such an innocent touch told the real story.
“Clare,” I apologized, striding toward her. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you, but I’d never hurt you.”
She nodded, picking a set of weights up while avoiding my gaze. “Really, it’s okay. I’m just jumpy sometimes.”
“You want to talk about it?” I asked cautiously, praying that she’d finally let me in.
Her gaze slowly lifted to mine in the mirror, that fucking glimmer of pain once again dancing within. “I wished that I’ll catch 11:11 again tomorrow.”
“What?” I took a step toward her.
She blinked tears back as she held my gaze, her mask slipping away. The emptiness appearing in its place viciously sliced through me.
With a shaky voice, she confessed, “I don’t really believe in wishes, but somehow, I’ve found myself in a situation where a silly wish is all I have left. If I’m lucky enough to catch 11:11 again tomorrow, it means we’ve survived another day.”
