I touched his hand. “I don’t have any stalkers. Do you?”
That got one corner of his mouth to hitch up at the same time his fingers landed on top of mine. “None that I know of. Keep close, will you?”
I agreed, and we got out. The weather had taken a turn for a couple of warmer days, but I still had my down jacket on—the tangerine one he’d given me for Christmas that he’d said made me look like walking sunshine. Rhodes rounded the hood and came over to where I was waiting for him in the middle of the parking lot. He slipped his arm over my shoulder and kept me right there, next to that long frame that made me think of safety and home and love.
But mostly of the future.
For such a quiet, private man, he wasn’t stingy with his affection. Part of me thought that he knew how much I needed it and that’s why he sprinkled it on everything. I’d even caught Am looking a little funny sometimes when he’d randomly put an arm around his shoulder or tell him he was proud of him for the littlest things.
I loved him so much.
And I was totally on to the fact that he’d been slowly moving my things over to his house. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be sneaky or just giving me room to get used to the idea, but it had made me choke up when I’d noticed little things appearing over there that I hadn’t brought myself. He rarely used the L-word but he didn’t need to. I knew how he felt like I knew my own name.
And that was exactly what I was thinking of when I heard the last thing I ever would have expected in my life.
“Roro!”
My brain instantly recognized the voice, but it took my body and nervous system a second to catch up. To accept.
But I didn’t freeze.
My heart didn’t start pounding.
I didn’t instantly start sweating or get nervous.
Instead, it was Rhodes who slowed down first. Him who, once we were over the curb and onto the sidewalk that ran around the school, came to a stop and slowly turned us around. How he seemed to know that the “Roro” was for me, I had no idea, but he did.
And I was pretty sure we both spotted the figure jogging across the parking lot with a huge man behind him at the same time.
It was my eyes that were the last to process who had called my name.
Kaden. It was Kaden running with his bodyguard, Maurice, behind him. I didn’t know Maurice well, he’d been hired right before I’d been freed, but I still recognized him.
In a bulky parka jacket and jeans, I’d bet he’d spent a thousand dollars on, the man I’d wasted fourteen years of my life with came running over.
How the hell he recognized me now that I’d let my natural hair color totally grow out again, I had no idea. Maybe his mom had told him. Maybe Arthur or Simone had.
He looked the same as he always did. Made up. Dressed nice. Fresh and wealthy.
But the moment he was closer, I noticed the bags under his eyes. They weren’t normal bags like the rest of us humans got, but for him, they were something. Something about his expression was anxious as well.
The black SUV Rhodes had spotted. That had been him. I just knew it.
“I’m sorry, Rhodes,” I whispered, leaning into him just a little, trying to tell him that it was him I wanted, who I was here for.
I knew Rhodes knew who he was.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, angel,” he replied just as Kaden huffed and slowed down as he approached.
He was looking at me with wide, light brown eyes, panting. “Roro,” he said, like I hadn’t heard him the first time.
The arm around my shoulders went nowhere as I asked him like he was a customer we’d banned from the store, “What are you doing here?”
Kaden blinked slowly, surprised, or… you know what? I didn’t give a shit. “I came… I need to talk to you.” He sucked in a breath. His bodyguard stopped short just a couple of feet behind him. “How are you?” he panted. His gaze tried to eat me up, but I wasn’t edible anymore. “Wow. I forgot how beautiful you are with your natural hair color.”
I definitely wasn’t going to pick at that hypocritical comment with a ten-foot pole. He’d never stuck up for me once when my roots would start to grow back in and his mom would nag me about making an appointment at the salon. If I’d given enough of a shit to go back through my memories, I would have picked up on the fact that he never had stood up for me with her period.
I didn’t have it in my heart to be bitter or angry or even be a bitch. I just didn’t care anymore. “I’m great.”