And I show him exactly what I want from him.
Everything he has to give.
Chapter Twelve
He doesn’t let me sleep; I wake to the sensation of his fingers sliding inside me, wringing a moan from my throat. This round winds up moving into the shower, and by the time we’re done, the hot water runs ice-cold.
Afterward, we get dressed—him in a pair of jeans and a black shirt, while I wear a similar shirt but paired with a loose gray skirt of my own.
On his way into the hall, Rafe snatches something from the dresser and holds it out for me to see. His cell phone.
“Watch,” he commands before brushing his thumb across the screen, flicking through several images. Each one makes my cheeks grow hotter until I can’t even meet his gaze.
But he’s persistent, his voice so low the vibration resonates in my bones. “Look.”
As my eyes flick up to his hand, he strikes a button, and the current picture vanishes. Then he proceeds to do the same until each one is deleted.
“Give me your phone,” he says next.
I find it coiled within the bedsheets. Without hesitation, he does the same on my device, deleting every single picture I sent him last night. When I finally gather the nerve to face him again, he shrugs at my look of confusion. “Those belong to me. Only me.”
Meaning he won’t hoard them for ammunition later, or so I assume. I’m confident enough to believe he won’t share them either. Those intimate pieces of me will dwell within his skull for only him to enjoy—no one else.
When he hands me the phone, I can’t take my eyes off the now blank screen. It seems that he’s accepted my written apology, but I might as well say it out loud.
“I’m sorry for lying to you,” I blurt in a rush. “I’m sorry. There isn’t anything between Liam and me. And I’m sorry for putting you in an awkward position with Mara.”
His laughter is such a shock, I whirl to face him. He’s watching me in return, his lips quirked, his eyes gleaming. “I never thought I’d hear a woman apologize for that,” he murmurs, stepping close enough to flick his thumb against my chin. “I’ll tell you how you can make it up to me.”
“How?” I ask in a whisper.
“From here on out, you tell me everything,” he says. “Everything. Like why you were looking at Liam like he’d just punched you in the face.”
I stiffen. “That… I was asking him about Faith’s case,” I admit. “I thought he might know something.”
He blinks, his overall expression unnervingly blank. “And?”
“They have a suspect,” I confess. “They found Faith’s phone and they think that whoever sent her one of the last messages before she vanished might know something about what happened… What’s wrong?”
Suddenly, he’s staring off into space, his jaw clenched, and a foreboding knot forms in my stomach. After days in his orbit, it’s becoming easier to read him.
And know when he’s on edge.
“Rafe?” Tentatively, I brush my hand along his shoulder, lingering over his forearm. “What’s wrong?”
Finally, without looking at me, he says, “If their suspect was the last person who messaged her, then I know who it is.”
His voice is too deep. Too cold. A heavy sense of dread washes over me, but there’s no point in running from the truth now. I need to know. “Who?”
I suck in a breath as he meets my gaze in that brutally honest way, holding nothing back.
“It was me,” he says. “I messaged her.”
Chapter Thirteen
For what feels like an eternity, all I can do is stare straight ahead, desperately trying to process my emotions. Confusion. Terror. Shock.
He could be a suspect in Faith Wen’s murder.
The scariest part? Branden hinted at as much.
Was he lying to hide his own guilt, or is Rafe every bit the criminal Branden’s insisted he was from the start?
Turning to face him, I can’t tell. He’s an enigma, his eyes a stormy black, glowering into the distance. A tiny voice at the back of my mind warns that Branden is right.
I have no idea what he’s capable of.
Do I even have what it takes to find out?
“What do you mean?” I ask, taking a steadying breath. My voice shakes anyway, betraying any attempt to sound brave. “Tell me everything.”
The look he sends my way doesn’t ease my fears one bit. “I’m pretty sure I might be the last one who texted Faith before she went missing,” he says. “But I know for a fact that she had two phones.”
I feel my brow furrow. “I don’t understand. How do you even know that?”
He shrugs, but his eyes maintain that distant, elusive gleam. He’s hiding something. “Trust me, I know.”
His confidence triggers that niggling sense of jealousy again. I do my best to swat it aside and focus on the information at the forefront. Faith had two phones. A fact that even the police don’t seem to know. Liam hadn’t mentioned it either.
But why?
“What did you text her about?” I ask, scanning his face for any hint of emotion. Love? Lust? His jaw remains stubbornly fixed, giving me nothing—not that he has to. My brain skips ahead, wondering if they spoke about way more than her problems with Gino and DW. “Why would that make you a suspect?”
“Because I was trying to get her to meet me,” he says.
“About?”
His heavy sigh triggers another wave of unease I can’t suppress this time.
“Tell me,” I prod.
When he finally looks my way, he’s more cautious than I think I’ve ever seen him. Like someone judging whether or not to strike a match over a lit puddle of gasoline. In the end, I guess he has no choice.
“About—” He breaks off, his head swiveling toward the front windows. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” I start to ask, but then I hear it—loud, steady pounding coming from below. The front door?
Above the racket comes a voice, ringing with authority. “Police! Open up, Mr. Wei-Shen. We have a warrant.”
Rafe
