I decided to leave the dogfight in the storm cloud for later.
Isabella
“How did he manage to track us down?” Clint said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
I looked at Clint and then turned away sheepishly.
I’d never been the best at concealing my emotions.
“Isabella?” Clint said. “Is there something you know about this that you’re not telling me?”
I shuffled my feet.
“Um…”
“Um?”
“I might have… accidentally unlocked something.”
“Unlocked something? What?”
“I’m not sure exactly. I was keeping lookout, making sure Liam wasn’t going to crawl up our asses… which was a total joke, by the way, because he ended up showing up anyway… and then… I… I…”
He braced my shoulders and smiled calmly at me.
“No matter what you need to tell me, I’ll never blame you for it.”
I looked up into his eyes, my eyes shimmering with tears.
I wiped them from my cheeks and nodded.
I filled my lungs and let it out in a single long breath.
“I was keeping lookout when Liam appeared. But right before that, I was thinking about you and me and the amazing memories we have together—even after just a few days—and I felt this pulsing light in the middle of my chest. It feels sort of like an umbilical cord. I don’t know what it is or what it does but it connects us somehow. I bet if we split up and you went into a maze I could find you easily without making a single wrong turn. I’m not sure how much better I can explain it than that.”
“You don’t need to explain it any better. I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
My head snapped up.
“You do?”
“I feel the same connection with you. It’s strong, like you said. I could shut my eyes and point in your direction no matter where you are.”
I grinned at him, so relieved it was beyond words.
“But what does that have to do with Liam?”
My concern returned and I shuffled my feet again.
“I, uh, wasn’t paying much attention to the view out the window when I noticed him coming.”
Clint frowned, not understanding the significance.
“So?”
“So… I felt him approach. The same way I felt you lying in the bed. I didn’t see him until after that.”
“You’re saying… you share a bond with him the same way you do with me?”
I gnawed on my bottom lip and nodded my head.
The admission slugged him in the gut.
It was the very last thing he expected me to say.
And now, I wished I hadn’t said it.
I wished I could see what he was thinking.
He wiped his hands on his pants and stared between his feet with eyes so intense he might have been trying to melt the carpet.
Then it hit me.
He was thinking about how he had to share me with that creep, that he had some kind of claim to me the same way he did.
I couldn’t understand how I shared the bond with Clint, never mind Liam.
Couldn’t he see I didn’t want to be connected to him?
The sensation made my stomach twist.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He opened his mouth to speak but quit.
He wanted to tell me I didn’t need to be sorry, that none of this was my fault, and he must have known it wasn’t, but he still wore that hurt expression.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” I said. “I knew it could only cause problems.”
I turned away from him, but he wrapped his arms around me anyway.
“Hey, hey,” he said. “None of this is your fault. Do you understand? None of it. You didn’t ask for this—for any of this. You were lumped into this situation the same way I was. I only wish I could remember everything I was supposed to. At least then we might be able to make sense of this whole thing.”
I was slow to turn to him.
“You’re really not mad?”
“Not at you. I’m plenty mad at that asshole.”
He raised my chin, our lips less than an inch apart.
I could see the longing in his eyes, the same longing reflected in my own.
“You’re mine,” he said. “You belong to me. No one else. I don’t care if he shares the bond with you. We’ll figure a way around that. What I feel for you, that’s unique. That’s what joins us. He’s just an asshole with too much time on his hands. He won’t have you. I refuse to allow it.”
My concerns broke and tears rolled down my cheeks.
He gently kissed me on the lips.
“I don’t think I’ve ever cried this much,” I said. “Except when I watch America’s Got Talent. Some of those sad backstories really get to me.”
We embraced and I felt his heart race beside mine.
When we were this close, and we shared our body warmth, our heartbeats slowed until they matched, beating as one.
He completed me in all the ways I was deficient.
I wondered if I did the same for him.
“What are we going to do now?” I said.
“First, we’ll get moving. If he’s got a built-in tracking beacon and he knows where you are at any moment in time, he’ll be heading right for us.”
I put the pick-up in gear and pulled onto the road.
I worked through the gears until we sped around each of the long winding country roads, heading into the darkness that stretched out before us, infinite and long.
Neither of us spoke for a while, letting our minds wash over recent events and come to terms with what needed to be done.
And what our next steps would be.
I broke the silence first.
“If he knows where I am all the time, there’s no way for us to escape him, is there?”
“No. I don’t think there is.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
He must have sensed the edge of panic in my voice.
“Stay calm,” he said. “That’s the first thing. We can puzzle our way out of this.”
“We tried hiding. That didn’t work.”
“No, he’ll keep coming and looking for us.”
“Then what are we supposed to do? Kill him?”
It was a throwaway comment that I didn’t really mean.
The silence that yawned between us was incriminating.
“We can’t kill him,” I said. “We’ll get caught.
