So alone.
Her hold tightened.
She couldn’t be without him again.
She couldn’t allow herself to waste so much as a single moment that they could be together.
She had lost so much time. She had nearly lost him.
“I love you,” the words tore from her lips as the sobs finally escaped.
More than twelve years of holding them inside, of telling herself it didn’t hurt so she could survive. Seven years of loving him, of aching for him, of realizing that nothing, that no one, could ever touch her, hold her, kiss her as Rafer did.
And she could never love anyone as she loved him.
“Ah, Cami.” Pulling his head back, he rested his forehead against hers, staring down at her, his gaze so dark, so filled with emotion.
And that emotion had always bound them.
That bond she hadn’t been able to decipher hadn’t been so hard to figure out; she just had to allow herself to get past the denial. The denial that she had lost their child, that she had lost her dearest friend, and the knowledge that if she lost Rafe again, then like Jaymi, she wouldn’t want to live.
She believed that. How many times had she heard Jaymi whisper that she didn’t know if she could wake up another morning without her heart?
And now, Cami understood. She knew what her sister had felt, how she had loved, and knew that if she had nothing left of Rafe to hold on to, no reason to get up every morning, then she too would wonder just how much longer she had to wait.
“He’s dead, Rafe.” Crowe’s voice drew their attention back to the scene in the middle of her bedroom floor.
Lowry Berry, the shy, socially reclusive teacher whom she and Jaymi both had called friend, had been a crazed child rapist and a killer.
“Who the hell was he working for, though?” Logan muttered as he propped his hands on his hips and stared down at the bloody corpse.
There was a single gunshot wound to Lowry’s chest, directly into his heart. A self-inflicted wound. He had killed himself rather than face trial or have to face the fact that his crimes would be brought to light.
“What do we do now?” she asked as Crowe pulled his phone free of the holder at his hip.
“Now, we call Archer,” Rafe breathed out roughly before turning to Amelia, then back to Crowe. “Let Logan call the sheriff. You get her the hell out of here and back home. We don’t need her name in this.”
Amelia still stood against the wall, watching, her face pale, her eyes locked on Lowry’s lifeless form.
“He called me last night.” She lifted her gaze to Cami, misery reflected in their depths. “He’s never called me before, Cami. He said friends should say good-bye.” Amelia gave her head a hard shake as her gaze lifted back to Cami. “I didn’t know what he was talking about until I heard Jack’s garage had blown up.”
“Get her out of here, Logan,” Crowe growled. “Now.”
“I thought that was your job?” Logan muttered.
Crowe shot him a dangerous, brooding look. “I think she comes with more trouble than I need.”
Cami’s breath caught at the pain that suddenly flashed in her friend’s eyes.
Amelia’s shoulders straightened, though, her emerald eyes turning dark and emotionless.
“I didn’t need any help getting here, and I don’t need any help leaving,” she informed them.
Then, steady and calm, she moved to Cami.
“It would kill me if anything happened to you,” Amelia said evenly. “And I never blamed you for what Father found. He was looking for something and he found it.” She shot Crowe a cold look. “It was my fault.”
“Amelia—”
“I hear fucking sirens. Get her the hell out of here if she’s going,” Crowe rasped.
Amelia turned on her heel and, with Logan close on her heels, hurriedly left the bedroom.
Cami listened until the sound of Amelia’s footsteps on the stairs faded away and nothing else was heard.
Rafe’s arm slid around Cami once again, pulling her against him, the warmth of his body, the steady strength found there, a balm to what had been her shattered soul.
How had she managed to survive without him for the past three years?
“We don’t know who was behind it,” she said softly as the sound of the sirens grew closer.
“But now, we know he’s out there,” Rafe said, his hold on her tightening. “We know he’s there, Cami, and we know to watch our backs.”
Looking over her head to his cousin, Rafe made a vow to himself. Whoever it was. Whatever had made them a target for whatever reason. They would find him. They would find him, and they would make damned certain he paid with his life as well.
Rafe was thirty years old and he’d believed a single coincidence, Jaymi’s death, had marked his life forever.
His life had been marked for far longer than the years after Cami’s sister’s death. It stretched back to his and his cousins’ childhoods and possibly even to the deaths of their parents.
The question was why.
Laying his cheek against Cami’s head, he swore to himself he’d find out why. Because he couldn’t risk this, he couldn’t risk his soul by losing this woman.
If he lost Cami, then he would lose everything he was and he would lose the only reason he had to fight another day.
“I love you, kitten,” he whispered against her hair, his eyes clenching closed, his hand stroking down her back as his arms held her close.
She was his.
And in the darkest hours of midnight, when sin was in the eye of the beholder and secrets were guarded with the blood of others, Rafe knew he would no longer be alone.
