Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
JJ paused for a moment. I could feel the intensity of his gaze. He was studying me. Looking for some kind of reaction from me. I let him look. That was, after all, why I’d brought him here. I was a suspect he needed to question.
Just a suspect.
The reminder was like a punch to the gut. I automatically looked at the kitchen door again.
Still open.
I forced myself to settle my eyes on JJ and then donned the mask I’d been wearing nearly my entire life.
And just like that, I was back in that cell… waiting. Waiting for something that was never going to appear.
Always waiting.
CHAPTER 16
Jj
Isaw the exact moment when Cass mentally checked out. His entire body stiffened, and his eyes went blank.
It was the way it was supposed to be. We both had to play our parts. He was the suspect, and I was his interrogator and nothing more.
I couldn’t help but find myself back in that shower with him. Even though I couldn’t remember an entire chunk of my life, my memory of what had happened in that shower was crystal clear. I could still feel the way he’d kissed me, the way he’d held me afterwards, both in the shower and later.
I was the one who’d taken his hand after we’d silently dried ourselves and I was the one who’d held on to him as he’d tried to move toward the door so he could leave the room.
I should have let him go.
I should have done a lot of things.
But from the moment I’d woken up in the middle of the afternoon only to find my traitorous body draped over Cass’s, I’d been caught in a maelstrom of emotions. I hadn’t moved, though. I’d pretended I was exactly where I belonged. I’d imagined what it would be like to fall asleep in Cass’s arms every night and wake up to find myself still in them every morning.
It was all a shit show. A stupid fantasy that had begun when the hero worship I’d felt for Cass since I was a kid had turned into something else.
Something I wasn’t allowed to feel.
Something that would leave me burning in the fires of hell if my father ever found out.
The thought of my father immediately led me to thoughts of Sully. If he were here, he’d know what to do. Sully always did. It was who he was. My protector, my best friend, and the stand-in father I’d needed because my real father had been forced to work two shitty jobs to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.
While silence was often a cop’s best friend during an interrogation, I didn’t like it.
Not with Cass.
But the man in front of me wasn’t Cass. I didn’t remember much, but that I did know.
His own words the night before had confirmed that my gut and my brain hadn’t been in alignment since our first confrontation. I knew I was missing something important, but I didn’t know what it was.
I suddenly felt as twitchy as Cass probably did. He might have looked hard and indifferent, but his body betrayed him every time his eyes shifted back and forth between us and the open kitchen door. One of his fingers tapped his arm every few seconds and his breaths were too even.
A man like Cass didn’t let cracks appear in his armor. He’d been trained not to. That had been the military, though. Life with his family hadn’t been much better.
But prison was an entirely different thing.
I closed my eyes to try to get a hold of myself and be the cop I’d once been. I didn’t want to think about Cass and his life behind bars. I didn’t want to think about the fear and loneliness he must have felt from the moment his cell door had been closed with him on the wrong side of the bars.
I couldn’t feel them.
If I did, that would be the end of all this. I’d never know the truth; I’d never understand how a man who’d become a part of my family from the moment he and Sully had met on that football field became a man who’d stood accused of murdering three people and trying to kill a fourth.
Stood accused?
Where the hell had that come from?
He hadn’t stood accused… he’d been proven guilty in a court of law.
Pain began to build behind my eye. I knew what would come next if I didn’t manage to control it. The last thing I needed was to end up curled into a ball on the floor again.
“You mind if we take a walk?” I asked, catching both Cass and myself off guard. Where the hell had that come from? I was supposed to be interrogating the man.
It was all I could do not to jerk when a jolt of pain went through me.