“Yes, it could have,” Cooper murmured.
Tiffany pulled her cell phone from her purse and tapped the screen with a hot pink acrylic fingernail. “I need to make some phone calls. But Lici told me to tell y’all to come on back when you’re ready.”
“Oh, no.” Sloane held her palm up in surrender at the same time Cooper said, “Yeah, that’d be great.”
“We don’t need to do that,” she said before Cooper could protest.
He furrowed his eyebrows, searching Sloane’s eyes, and she saw it. The realization that something wasn’t right with her. It was clicking in his mind, if he hadn’t already pieced it together.
“She really needs the company,” Davon’s aunt persisted. “It would be good for Davon to hear your voices, if you can.”
Great. How was Sloane supposed to say no to that?
So she allowed Cooper to lead her through the double doors, focusing on her tiptoe steps as she tried not to touch the lines of the square tiles. She must have looked ridiculous, but compulsion paid no mind to appearances.
Cooper tapped a timid cadence on the glass door as they walked in Davon’s room.
Darkness clouded the edges of Sloane’s vision as she laid eyes on Davon, small and swallowed in the big hospital bed. Surrounded by blankets and machines to the point that his big green eyes were pretty much the only visible part of him.
She gripped Cooper’s elbow to steady herself.
Davon looked so little. So scared.
So much like Aaron at that age.
Sitting by his bedside was Alicia with the protective posture of a lioness.
Sloane bit her lip and resisted the urge to double over. It was as if she’d swallowed a bunch of nails and her throat had been glued shut. It was crippling to see Davon like this.
I shouldn’t be here.
Cooper inched toward the bed and gently touched the slim lump of Davon’s arm under the hospital sheet. “We’re here for you, buddy.”
Davon’s heavy eyes fluttered a fraction wider and then closed completely. Sloane backed into the wall. Any second now, the nurses were going to bust in here and do their thing to try to save his life. But the machines stayed steady, and Davon’s chest rose and fell in an easy rhythm.
“We should go,” Cooper whispered, crossing the room to Alicia’s chair. She stood to hug him and whispered something Sloane couldn’t understand.
Cooper nodded and his lips moved in response. But over her shoulder, his golden-brown eyes were trained on Sloane with concern. A concern that didn’t soften even as they said goodbye to Davon’s family and navigated the maze of the parking garage.
The drive to Sloane’s apartment was silent. When it was clear Cooper wasn’t ready to ask the questions in his eyes, she stopped fighting to appear composed and normal and allowed the melancholy to wrap its cold, bony, familiar arms around her. To numb the piercing pain that had taken residence in her chest and wash away Aaron’s haunting smile that was burned in her memory.
The silence stretched until Cooper walked her from the curb to the door of her building. “Are you going to be all right?” He took a half step toward her.
The unguarded care in his eyes made the muscles in her face slacken for half a second before her measured facade of control fell into place.
No, she was not all right. How could she explain to him that she was skirting the edge of a thousand-foot rock face? Why today, after Davon’s accident, after seeing him in that hospital bed, she was hanging on with white knuckles?
Sloane mustered a smile and nodded, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “I’m fine.” Always fine. “Just worried about Davon. Call me when you figure out when works best to reschedule.”
Her heels scraped against the concrete, unable to take her away from Cooper fast enough. Her mind was a tangle of confusion. How could his presence put her at ease one minute and make her completely unhinged the next? How much longer until he found out the truth? He was too perceptive for his own good.
Then there was the image of Davon in the hospital bed to contend with. The mental picture she wished she could somehow erase or override with something happy. Because any time her mind went there, it inevitably crept to hard places she’d rather not confront at that moment. Or ever.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
COOPER WATCHED SLOANE disappear into her lobby. Should he say something? Go after her? She clearly wasn’t okay.
Yet she clearly wanted to work through it alone. Or not work through it at all.
He drove home. He pretended to watch the news. Took Maddie for a walk. But as he hung Maddie’s leash on its hook, he grabbed his keys.
If Sloane didn’t want to talk, he could at least take her to the restaurant and make something that would help her feel better.
“C’mon, Maddie. Let’s go see Sloane.”
The dog ran in excited hops to the car. Cooper dialed Sloane’s number, but got voice mail. “Look, I don’t care if you’re in your pajamas. I want to make us some food.” At a stoplight, he sent her a text saying the same.
“I’m here to see Sloane Bradley,” he told the lobby attendant, who was watching what appeared to be a courtroom drama on a small black-and-white TV.
The man straightened, lines of recognition creasing on his forehead. “Sir, she hasn’t come back in from her run.”
A run? In the dark downtown? Did she do this often?
“How long has she been gone?”
“Mmm, no longer than an hour or so.”
Cooper squinted at his watch. “I’ll wait outside.”
He walked to the Defender, wind whipping through his button-down shirt, then moved the vehicle to an empty spot with a full view of the building entrance. At this rate, Sloane had run at least six miles. Was she a hard-core runner? Maybe she’d stopped for water or a coffee somewhere.
Thirty minutes later, a pool of acid had taken residence under Cooper’s rib cage. Raindrops plinked against the windshield, each one pumping an urgent energy into his veins until he physically couldn’t stay still another second. He had to do something.
He turned the key in the ignition. The streets of downtown Dallas passed in blurred lights and lines of rainwater streaming down his windows. Wet wind cut across his cheeks when he opened his window to make his search a little easier. The area around her apartment was pretty much deserted except for a few hurried corporate drones getting off work late.
No sign of Sloane.
He gripped the steering wheel with jittery hands, adrenaline and panic pumping through his muscles. What if something had happened to her? What if she’d passed through one of the parks where the homeless congregated? He’d seen horror stories on the news about those places.
Maybe she’d taken some odd, zigzagging route. He turned in the direction of her apartment. She could be home taking a warm shower for all he knew. His phone—he’d checked about a hundred times—showed she still hadn’t called.
He parked in the same spot, not bothering to pay the meter, and sprinted across the street. Something lurched in his chest as he saw her in the glow of the lobby light, bent at the waist under the canopied entrance. Her body heaved, taking in massive gulps of air.
“Sloane?”
She tensed and bolted upright, scrubbing under her eyes with her palms before she turned in a stiff movement.
“Are you all right? I—I was looking everywhere for you.” He shook droplets of water from his hair, giving no care about how creepy he must sound.
“What are you doing here, Cooper?” Her tone was as gray as the washed-out cityscape around them. “Is it Davon?”
“Your doorman told me you went for a run.” He let out a shaky breath and brought a hand up to squeeze the back of his neck. “You’ve been running this whole time?”
“Is. Davon.
Okay?” Sloane took a step toward him and pitched forward into Cooper’s arms, her nose scrunching before she quickly straightened away from him.
Was she hurt? Cooper’s gaze fell to her bare legs, to a scar on the outside of her left leg that peeked from beneath her cropped tights and disappeared into her shoe. The sight of it, angry purple and jagged against her pale skin, electrocuted him.
Sloane pivoted her leg out of his view. “Listen, I really need to go.” She took a few steps toward the entrance. Short, stiff, clearly painful movements.
He wanted to help her. But when his gaze swept to her face, the unrelenting Job Interview Sloane was back. The Sloane who had been warming to him was gone.
“I—I just came to make sure you were okay. You seemed a little... I don’t know.” His eyes darted to her leg again before he could help himself and then settled onto the steely expression that seemed to challenge him, I dare you to look at it again.
“As I told you, I’m fine.” Sloane smoothed the loose strands from her ponytail behind her ear. “I’m worried about Davon. Aren’t you?”
She was a terrible liar.
“You sure about that?” He took a small step in her direction.
“Fine.” She swallowed hard and pressed against the door of the building. “You know what? I’ll email you to reschedule as soon as I have a minute. I have a pretty big ad campaign to work on this week.”
Another deflection.
She pulled something from the pocket of her running jacket—a cloth handkerchief, it looked like—and fumbled the door open.
“Wait.” Cooper had an idea. “Just one second. Wait.”
He jogged to the Defender, pausing for a few cars to pass.
“C’mon, Maddie.” If Sloane wouldn’t allow him to help her, then he would have to send in a backup.
Something that sounded like a cough came from Sloane when she saw Maddie bounding up to her. She bent awkwardly to rub the dog’s ears, again favoring that left leg.
“Let Maddie keep you company.”
“Coop—”
“No, please. I insist.” He crouched next to the dog and looked at Sloane. “I’ll pick her up in the morning. She’s already eaten and won’t be any trouble.”
Sloane nodded.
“I don’t want you to be alone right now.”
Their eyes met over Maddie’s head. For a moment, Cooper saw an explanation forming in Sloane’s eyes. But she stood and whirled around, focused on Maddie at her feet. “C’mon, girl,” she said without looking back.
Cooper’s goodbye stuck in his throat, trapped in the sticky confusion of Sloane’s mystery and the anguish in her eyes.
Who—or what—had done this to her? And how could he help her fix it?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THERE WASN’T ANYTHING she could do to stop it. The moment she lost the battle to her body’s heavy exhaustion, she was in the car again, in her dad’s Lexus sedan that she’d taken. Only this time, she was locked in a glass-walled prison in the periphery, fully aware she was dreaming.
She watched Aaron running around the rear of the car. Trying to open her door. Slamming on the window in frustration. “Open the sunroof!”
No. She wasn’t going to look at him. In this dream, she was going to die with him.
But just like in reality, his long fingers gripped under her arms. She screamed as he lifted her through the opening in the roof, her lower leg folding like an accordion. But no sound came out.
“Don’t look at it,” Aaron said as he laid her on the side of the road a safe distance away. “Just look at me.”
Dream Sloane pressed Override on Real Sloane’s wishes, her chest twisting as she met his serious dark eyes. Blood trickled from his nose, dark and thick in the swaths of firelight from the fully engulfed car.
“My parents are going to kill me!”
He flashed his trademark crooked grin. “You think they’re going to care about anything but us being okay?”
A faceless firefighter appeared beside Sloane and lifted her, no stretcher or neck stabilizer or anything. Was it worse when her dreams were exact replica flashbacks or when they deviated from what had really happened?
“No!” she screamed. “Take him first. He looks okay, but his brain is bleeding. If you take him first, you’ll find it. I promise.” But the firefighter continued to carry her toward the ambulance.
She squeezed Aaron’s hand as tightly as she could, fighting the firefighter’s momentum, until her body was almost parallel with the ground. She looked up for one last glimpse of Aaron’s face.
But the smooth, sepia tone of his skin was lighter, his eyes softened to a caramel color. The warmth that had become familiar to her over the last few weeks shone, kneading her insides like dough.
“No!” Not Cooper.
At the sound of her scream, fear took the life out of Cooper’s eyes, just as it had Aaron’s. He squeezed her hand tighter, stretching her against the firefighter’s pull.
“You’re going to be okay, Sloane.”
She woke up, drenched, in midmotion. Twisted in sweaty sheets, hanging halfway off of the bed.
Maddie’s eyes shone in the darkness next to her and then dipped as she burrowed her warm snout under Sloane’s hand, digging until her arm was draped around the dog’s warm body.
Sloane untangled the sheets, rolled onto her side and curled around Maddie, using her as a warm compress against the place where the grief physically pained her middle. Where it pulled her inside out.
There was something new, something foreign within her. An ache to hear Cooper’s voice, to reassure herself that he was all right.
At least the dream was over. At least she was free of that slide show of horrifying visions. When her breathing was finally manageable, Sloane pushed herself to the edge of her bed and waited for her sore legs to stop shaking so they could support her weight.
There was no hope of going back to sleep, she’d learned. So she pulled out another bag of frozen peas for her inflamed lower leg and unwrapped a new toothbrush from the supply she kept under her bathroom sink.
Her apartment was due for a deep clean anyway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT WAS FINALLY HERE, the moment he’d been dreading for the past four days. After Cooper had told his father’s secretary the wrong time for Sloane’s presentation, he didn’t consider that Sloane would reschedule with his father directly. She and Cooper could have strategized together if she’d been willing to talk to him.
After he’d picked up Maddie from Sloane’s apartment, she hadn’t returned his calls or texts. Their communication was limited to emails containing only the most pertinent information. Still, Cooper read right through her behavior.
“Good morning.”
Cooper turned and stifled a wince when he saw Sloane. She was pale, her eyes puffy and red despite some serious makeup. It looked like she’d fought a hard battle all night—and lost.
Yes, whatever motivated her change, it stemmed from something way deeper than Davon’s accident. She didn’t have to do this meeting right now—he didn’t want her to—but he suspected he’d be wasting his words if he told her that.
“Morning.” He attempted a smile, but it couldn’t have looked legitimate.
Sloane’s hands jerked as if they had a mind of their own, trying to find something to do until they finally settled around the strap of her bag. “I apologize in advance because I had an energy drink and it seems to be having an adverse effect on me.”
“Hey, don’t worry. This is going to be a breeze.” At least he hoped. “I told my dad’s secretary to reserve the auditorium and have him meet us there.” Cooper guided Sloane through a hallway on the ground floor of J. Marian Restaurants’ high-rise.
“The auditorium?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah. You’ll see. If you give me your flash drive, I can set up your presentation.” He pushed open a pair of metal doors, revealing a large room with rows of white leather chairs arranged in stadium style, sloping toward an asymmetrical stainless steel podium. Behind the stage a glass wall overlooked a manicured green space.
“Don’t tell me J. Marian doubles as a college.”
Cooper smiled. “Kind of. This room is used for franchisee trainings.”
“That’s a lot of franchisees.”
“Yeah.” He started down the steps. He’d stood at the podium hundreds of times addressing a crowded room. He opened the laptop mounted on the inside of the podium and looked up as he pressed the power button.
Sloane was shuffling down the steps one at a time, a grim expression on her face. The memory of the scar on her leg, dark and jagged, prompted him into motion.
“Let me help you. Is it your...leg?”
The desire to know the answers that would fill in the blanks about Sloane surged. But the way she yanked her arm away when he reached to help said he wasn’t about to find out.
“That’s not necessary. I’m just a little sore from my run the other day.”
“I’ve already seen it, Sloane,” he said. “You don’t have to keep pretending something didn’t happen to you.”
She scowled. “Let’s cut right to the chase, why don’t we?” She pushed past him down the steps, pointedly masking her limp. “I don’t want to talk about it, in case I haven’t made myself clear.”
“You can barely walk. You shouldn’t be running—”
“Why does it matter right now? I’ll be fine for our meeting that starts in—now.”
Cooper massaged his forehead. “You’ve been kind of...off since Davon’s accident.”
“I’m always kind of off. It’s who I am.”
“Why?” His voice rose to meet hers, and he hastily lowered it. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”
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