Page 83 of Knox
“Tate and I went to find him and shut him down. To tell him to leave you alone, forever.”
She stared at him so intently, with so much undisguised hope, that he hated the answer to her next question.
“Did you find him?”
He shook his head. “He’s missing.”
She swallowed hard and looked away, back at the game.
“But we’ll find him, Kelsey. And until we do…please…” And he didn’t care that it sounded like begging. “Stay here, with me. I know I’m not a bodyguard, but I promise I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep you safe.”
She drew her hands into the long sleeves of her shirt, her knees up to her chest. “But that’s the thing, Knox. You can’t.” She wiped her face with her sleeves, shook her head. “Oh! I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.”
“Do what?” he asked softly.
“Fall apart. Be weak. I hate it!” She drew in a breath, and when she looked at him, her jaw was stiff. “Listen. I know you mean well, but…please, don’t make me a promise you can’t keep.”
Like,I’m going to get you out of this?And maybe she didn’t mean that at all, but it sat at the top of his mind like a dagger.
“I won’t—”
“But you’ll try, and that’s the problem.” She closed her eyes. “I suppose you…you probably talked to Detective Rayburn.”
He said nothing, so she looked at him.
He nodded.
Her mouth tightened. “Read the police report? Saw the pictures?”
He nodded again.
Her breath shook, and she looked out the window. “You know the worst part about the entire thing?”
He had some guesses—like waking up naked in a tangle of weeds, nearly bled out, hypothermic? Or having to learn how to walk, talk, and dress yourself again? Or maybe the moment when, at fourteen, she realized she’d had her innocence stolen.
“When my brother Ham came to see me.”
He didn’t see that one coming.
“He was deployed at the time, and since he was my closest relative, they brought him home. He was sitting by my bedside one morning, a couple days after I woke up. Alone, mind you. Disoriented, in the ICU, beeping and hissing all around me. But then one day, he just appeared.”
She leaned her head back against the recliner. “He was my father’s son, from his first marriage, and Hamilton was…larger than life. Tall, like my father, and muscled—he played football in college before he dropped out to join the Navy. The SEALs, actually.”
Huh.
“He’d come to visit on the farm in the summers and was the only one who knew how to put the saddle on the dumb horse without it falling off. Then we’d ride her all over the farm, pretending we were settlers of the Old West. He’s ten years older than me—can you imagine, a sixteen-year-old playingLittle House on the Prairiewith a six-year-old?”
Maybe.
If she was as cute as Kelsey.
“I wept for weeks when he went off to boot camp. I was eleven. And when I opened my eyes that day and saw him, I just knew…I knew everything would be okay.”
She turned to Knox. “He stayed with me every day I was in the hospital, through rehab and even flew out with me to Wisconsin to settle me with Dixie’s family. Her dad was a cousin on Mom’s side that I’d never even met before.” She drew in a breath. “Silly me, I thought Ham was staying, too.”
Oh no. He wanted to reach out, touch her hand.
“The worst part about the entire attack was the day he packed his duffel bag and walked out of my life.”