And she was beautiful when she slept.
Too beautiful and peaceful for me to keep scrolling through tedious emails on my laptop. I closed the lid, set it on the nightstand, then did what I should have done in the first place: I gathered her in my arms, held her close, and let sleep carry me under.
My phone rang, what felt like minutes later, and I released Tammy, sitting up and seeing that it wasn’t mere minutes past when I’d lain down. It had been just over an hour, and when my eyes flicked to the caller ID, seeing that Maggie was calling, I felt my stomach knot.
The peace of the last week was over.
I knew that in my fucking bones.
Mentally cursing, I slipped out from beneath the blankets and lifted my phone to my ear the moment I was in the hall.
“Mags?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”
“No, Tal,” she said. “It isn’t.”
And that was when the bottom fell out of my world.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tammy
I’d distantly heard the phone ring, felt Tal get out of bed—and it was funny, in the best possible way—that my body was so in tune with his I didn’t for one moment question where I was when I woke with him curved around me.
These last two weeks—with the exception of the whole assault, media frenzy, and home invasion—had been the absolute best of my life.
Finding my rhythm with this man, learning everything and anything I could, and continuing to fall deeper and deeper until I felt as though I would never surface from the bliss. I knew I would, of course. That was life, and we were two people who’d had tough upbringings, and it wasn’t like either of us were short on the whole stubborn gene thing. But those tough childhoods and the stubbornness were assets when it came to this.
I’d known instantly that Tal was different.
He’d shown me that he’d thought I was different, too.
And though it had been particularly terrifying, we’d both leaped in with two feet.
There was something safe and secure about hurtling oneself off a cliff—so long as the person who loved me and whom I loved right back held my hand as we plummeted down.
But now—I frowned, sat up—that man who was plunging down alongside me was talking hurriedly into the phone, his voice equal parts clipped and shocked and . . . I was already moving when I heard the crash.
I rushed into the hall, saw him on one knee, his head cradled in his hands.
The phone was on the floor, and I scooped it up. “Hello?”
“Tammy?”
Maggie’s voice was frantic. “Look, I’m almost there,” she said hurriedly.
“Here?” My stomach was twisting itself into knots.
“The hospital,” she said.
“Oh, my God. Are you hurt?”
“No.” A sharp breath. “Look, I’m sorry, I’m panicked here. I received a call from the hospital about the John Doe who attacked you guys. He’s awake, and he apparently asked someone to put something online for him and—”
She broke off.
My pulse was a rapid tattoo in my veins, my lungs might as well have been pulling in carbon dioxide instead of air, but I managed to push out, “What?”
“He’s saying he’s Tal’s father.”
I nearly dropped the phone myself, realized obliquely that it had been the thunk I’d heard a few moments before. “You cannot be serious,” I whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back. “I’m meeting the police there. We’ll get the nurse to take the video down, but”—a curse—“there are millions of views already. This story isn’t going away, and it’s not going to look good.”
“He came at us with a knife,” I pointed out.
“If he is Tal’s dad.”
My eyes slid closed and I said, “And the fact that he was shot and nearly killed by his son’s girlfriend isn’t a great look.”
Mag’s voice was brittle, sad laced into every syllable. “The optics aren’t good, no.”
I inhaled, exhaled, and carefully placed my hand on Tal’s back. “Will the man consent to a DNA test?”
Tal stiffened.
I moved my palm in gentle circles.
“He’s already provided a sample.”
Tal moved so fast that I could hardly blink before the cell was out of my hand and pressed to his ear. “This is bullshit, Maggie. My father is dead of an overdose, in a gutter somewhere.”
Whatever she said in response had his face falling.
I took the phone from his hand, put it on speaker.
“Maggie?” I said.
“I think Tal should give a sample, too” she said softly. “Not just because of this man, but for himself, because he’s going to always wonder if he doesn’t.”
I thought she was right.
But I could also see Talbot’s face, see the broken quality of his expression, and I knew that he wasn’t going to be receptive to anything that was logical and sound at that moment. He’d had a giant shock. He was hurt. He was . . . wondering.
“We’ll call you back,” I murmured.
“Tammy?”
“Yeah, Mags?”
“Take care of him.”
“That’s never in doubt,” I said and hung up. The resultant silence was very . . . well, it sounded stupid to say, but it was very quiet and heavy, a smothering thundercloud surrounding me, pressing on my lungs. “Tal,” I began, when I could take the oppressive pressure no longer.
He burst to his feet in another of those quick, abrupt movements.
Then he was striding away from me.
“Tal!” I called.
He didn’t stop, just walked down the hall and out the back door, not looking back, not saying a word, not even when I followed after him and called his name again. Not even as he disappeared into the dark of the property, well away from the lights of the house, becoming little more than a shadow that faded away to nothing after a few more moments.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
I returned to the bedroom, threw on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, then grabbed my phone, shoved my feet into shoes, and followed him, skirting the pool, hurrying down the steps, moving in the direction I’d last seen that shadow disappearing.
The moon was high overhead, illuminating
