Page 104 of You Found Me

Remember the mission, and remember what happened last time you failed.

Chapter Seventeen

Sunflowers weren’t enough to lift the cloud that followed Della home.

They’d almost kissed.

Her warden had almost, but not quite, kissed her. They had a real moment. An I-want-you-and-you-want-me moment, and then…nothing happened.

Well, not exactly nothing.

His rejection there in the field stole her breath, but when it ambushed her in the middle of the night, it really started to hurt.

The next morning was cold and quiet. Ward wasn’t in his room. He wasn’t in the backyard.

The office door was closed. He was probably in there. She raised her hand to knock, then hesitated. He hadn’t said a word on the drive home. Not one.

Still. Nothing ventured…nothing won, or something like that.

She knocked. “Good morning! Want some coffee?”

A beat. Then two.

“No.” Another beat. “Thanks.”

Della’s chest hurt. “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”

She sounded pathetic.

Her warden had changed from the man she wished would go away to the man whose attention she desperately wanted, and he’d made it very clear she’d never have it, or him.

She wandered into the living room and flopped down on the couch. The book she’d been reading taunted her.

She wanted that moment on the cover. She wanted Ward to press her up against a tree and look at her like he’d do anything to have her.

That obviously wasn’t going to happen.

Stupid book. Making her want something she couldn’t have.

It was sunny outside, but cold air pushed through the drafty windows. Her flannel shirt wasn’t warm enough, but she couldn’t find the energy to go scrounge up something warmer.

She could light a fire to drive out the chill. They certainly had enough wood.

Della glared at her book. “You didn’t tell me it could end before it even started.”

She tossed the book aside and buried her face in her hands. She wanted to call her sisters so much that it brought tears to her eyes, but she brushed them away.

She couldn’t…wouldn’t…do that.

As long as the stalker was out there, she was Lucy Carmichael, and Lucy didn’t have sisters.

Had she become Lucy so completely that she’d dreamed what happened in that field?

No.

“This is ridiculous. I’m not a teenage girl with a crush,” she told the sunflowers in the vase by the couch.

The sunflowers gave her side-eye.