Page 35 of Unchained

“Cam! Oh my god. What’s going on? You’re on the news.”

She threaded her fingers through the roots of her hair. Grease met her fingertips, reminding her she’d missed her hair-wash day. “I know, Mom.” She kept her gaze on Brooks’s back as he placed her go-bag on the bed.

One king-sized bed.

That meant they’d share it, or one of them would take the tattered brown armchair by the window. Her mom’s voice droned in her ears. Cam closed her eyes as frustration mounted at her lips. She couldn’t blame her mom for going off the deep end, but her frantic demands weren’t helping the situation. “Mom, slow down.”

Linda let out a shuddering sigh. “I’m sorry, honey. It scared the life out of me. The police are looking for you and, well, could that mean Isaac is behind this? There can’t be any truth to this wild story.”

Cam winced. The story held a tad more truth than she cared to admit.

“Cam?”

“Uh, well, no, not really.”

“Not really?” Her mom’s voice hit an earsplitting note. “What does that mean? When we spoke yesterday you were heading to your second shift at work and everything was fine.”

Cam massaged the space between her eyes that had started to throb. “There’s a lot I can’t say, Mom. I don’t want to endanger you. But the facility was doing something awful with a patient and I couldn’t let them continue.”

Silence crackled through the phone as abrupt and catastrophic as a missile.

“Oh, heavens,” her mom whispered. “What have you done? We were supposed to stay under the radar—just for a while, you said. He knows from the news you were in Utah. He’ll find you now.”

“Mama, he won’t find me. I promise. Look, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you.” She disconnected, cutting off the blast of her mom’s voice. She lifted her chin and her heart stopped and restarted.

Brooks stood at the foot of the bed, his brows drawn into a scowl so deep it looked as if there were a bike trail across his forehead. “Who won’t find you?” The question rolled out on a growl. Every line of his body was still. Only his chest moved as he inhaled and exhaled. Rapidly. The sinewy muscles in his forearms, defined and large, stretched the sleeves of his T-shirt. He looked ready to rip apart the walls.

A lump pressed against the base of her throat, gluing her tongue to the floor of her mouth. She forced a breath into her lungs. “No one.”

He crossed the short distance between them, moving as if he were a G.I. Joe with a hand grenade. “You’re lying.”

She swung her gaze away from his burning eyes and twisted her hands at her midsection. “We all have a story. Mine’s long and I don’t know where to start. Nor do I want to talk about it right now.”

“Tough,” he barked.

She drew her head back. The word as sharp as a slap.

“They said on the news that your name is Camryn Bayfield but you’re using the last name Royce. Start explaining there.”

Part of her wanted to scream and storm outside. But now, her face was known to everyone who’d watched the news. She couldn’t just walk around freely. She couldn’t be mad at Brooks, but dang it, she liked to do things on her terms. Not be told what to do. She searched Brooks’s pained gaze. He had so much aggression inside of him, had felt so alone for so long. Maybe her telling him about her past would help him feel more connected to someone.

“Okay,” she said, gesturing at the bed. She sidled around the thick wall of his body and dropped onto the mattress. He turned to face her then slowly took one heavy step after another until lowering himself on the mattress as if he were afraid it’d crack beneath his weight.

Jutting her tongue over her dry lips, the ball of anxiety that had been waiting in the wings of her subconscious since Isaac attacked her and her mom making itself known. “That night you were battling your withdrawal symptoms, you asked me to talk about anything.”

A weird sensation overtook her senses. Brooks’s being agitated should have sent her into a tailspin of fear—she knew what he was capable of, and about the anger he held on a tight leash. Yet the only thing she was worried about was him judging her.

“You talked about your sister a bit.” The words came out steady. “And a nephew. I forget after that.”

“My nephew, Isaac, has a drug problem. He’s a cop but was put on probation after he got caught stealing opioids in a drug bust.” She rolled her lips together then tentatively lifted her lashes to take in his reaction.

Some of the tension had left Brooks’s body, but his eyes stayed fixed on her. “And he’s looking for you?”

She brought her gaze to the ceiling. “I’m ashamed to say this, but until you know what my mom and I went through after my sister died, you wouldn’t understand.” The shield she kept around her heart cracked, and grief poured out. God, she couldn’t think about Stacey without getting choked up. “My sister, Stacey, died in a car accident. She was thirty-six at the time and Isaac was twenty and already a handful. He didn’t take her death well and began using drugs. Mom and I got him help. We went to AA meetings, and she used every penny of her retirement money to send him to the best rehab center. He was clean for a while and then started using again.”

“How old is he now?”

“Twenty-five.” She looked down at her hands, which were on her lap, but her lips moved into a nervous smile. “I was four when Stacey had Isaac. So he and I grew up close. You’d think there was a bigger age gap between the two of us. He was always so immature and irresponsible.” The rest of Isaac’s story weighed heavy on her tongue, but she couldn’t tell Brooks any half-truths. “We hoped that after he passed the police academy training, he’d want to be better. But it was almost like that bit of success unraveled him. A few months ago, the Detroit precinct made a big drug bust. I overheard Isaac boasting to a friend on the phone that he’d been the one who’d found the drugs during the search.” She finally flicked her eyes up to meet his stare. The groove in his forehead had diminished, and his shoulders had softened.

---