Zeus races to our door as soon as we’re out of the elevator. We both know she’s there, waiting for us. The second we’re inside, we both stop dead as an eerie silence greets us. I toss my keys on the counter, bend to unhook the leash from Zeus’s collar, and look around. Nothing is out of place, but everything feels wrong.
“Adair?” I call. Zeus shoves his wet nose into my palm and whimpers at the sound of her name. My stomach drops and I tell myself he wants a treat. That’s all. Given how impatient I was on our walk—eager to get back to the woman I’d left in my bed—I can’t blame him. I snag one from the canister I keep in the kitchen and toss it to him.
But Zeus doesn’t go for it. That’s the second sign something is wrong. Instead, he lopes toward the bedroom, tongue lolling from his mouth, and lets out a howl.
Panic seizes me, and I can’t move. Déjà vu does that. It sticks you to a spot until dread forces you to move. I do that now as calmly as possible. “Lucky? You in there?”
She’s probably in the shower or fallen back asleep. There’s absolutely no reason to suspect anything is wrong. Other than the quiet house and worried dog—a dog that loves her as much as I do. I’m not stupid enough to believe that we’ve earned a happily ever after. There are things she doesn’t know about me—things I need to tell her.
When she was a mark—a line on my blacklist—I didn’t worry about that. Now?
Things are different now.
Now she’s on a different list. One I reserve for my makeshift family. It’s a list of people I’d die for. It’s a select group. I didn’t know until this moment that she’d not only made the cut, she’d worked her way up to the top.
I pause in the butler’s pantry, opening a cabinet and reach toward the back, sliding free a Glock 19. The safety’s already off. If I’m reaching for it, I don’t have time to mess around. I know that from experience. What I don’t know is what’s waiting for me in my bedroom.
But whatever I expect to find, it isn’t this. The bedroom is empty. There’s no running shower. No clothes on the floor. No trace of her except the unmade bed I’d left her in twenty minutes ago and the slight hint of magnolia lingering in the air. I want to believe she’s in the bathroom. I lower my gun, and not because I’m worried she’ll surprise me. I lower it because I know I’m alone. The room feels cold, like all the light and warmth has been sucked from it. She’s not here. I feel her absence as acutely as I would feel her presence. Something is missing. There’s a gaping hole in this place now. I carved a spot for her without knowing it. Her absence makes me see that.
The imprint of her body lingers on the sheets. I can still see where her head rested against the pillow minutes ago. For one chilling moment I wonder if someone took her. I wonder if I’ve dragged her into a world she knows nothing about. I wonder if someone else is crossing her off their list right now.
Then I see the pages.
Words ripped from a book like the heart the sight rips from my chest, scattered with its remains across the bed. I don’t need to check the book she’s tossed on the nightstand. I know which book it is. Of course, she knew where it was. Heat swells inside me as I cross to the piece of torn page she’s left in the spot she occupied when I left.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
She tore up my favorite book.
She tore up my heart.
I don’t know which hurts more.
More than that, I don’t know what it means. When she’d come here tonight seeking shelter from her brother, I thought we’d turned a corner. I’d taken the first step with the flowers and the note. I’d given us a blank slate. I’d listened to my fucking heart instead of my head and this is where it landed me: a vandalized book and an empty bed.
She chose that line for a reason. Because it was the end? Because there’s no happily ever after? No.
Into the past.
It’s a message. We can’t escape the current, the riptide will keep dragging us back out to sea—lost and separated, making it impossible to find our way back to one another. That’s where we were in the past.
So that’s how Adair sees it. I thought when she came here last night that she’d agreed with what I’d written on that note:
I’m all in, Lucky.
I was—until now.
“What the fuck, Lucky?” I growl. Zeus backs away a little and I force myself to take a deep breath. If I can scare him, what does she think of me? Is that why she left? Did I say something? Did I frighten her? Is that why turned away from me five years ago?
I look down at the gun heavy in my palm and realize if that’s the case, she’s smarter than I thought—and I’ve always thought Adair was brilliant. I flick on the safety and shove the gun in my waistband. There’s no danger here, except me. I should have seen myself coming.
I spin around, rubbing my palm against my neck. She can’t have gone far. I feel stupid thinking about my conversation with Percy now. He said she seemed quiet tonight. He meant when she left! I consider trying to catch him before his
