Page 34 of Illusory

I turned and scowled at him. “I was talking to the bread!”Wait—fuck.

Yup. I just say that. Out loud.

Releasing a breath of frustration, I gripped the edge of the island with both hands and stared down at my supper—a sad looking, brutally oversaturated holey slice of bread. It looked like something a cat might puke up and I had absolutely no intention of eating it. Low blood sugar be damned.

“Where were you last night?” I asked in quiet defeat, my eyes still fixed on the bread. I’d meant to ask himwhythe hell he was still here, but that hadn’t been what came out of my mouth.

He hesitated and I inwardly dry heaved as invasive thoughts of him feasting on some blonde bombshell pinged through my mind again like a fire alarm blaring through my head. I was certain I was going to be sick.

“Dammit, angel. Will you sit down and eat.” It wasn’t a question or even a suggestion. It came out like a plea—fraught with desperation.

My gaze cut to his, my hands still braced against the edge of the island as though I didn’t trust myself to let go. “I’m not hungry.”

“Well, the complete absence of color in your face says otherwise,” he retorted and then lifted his hand as though he were going to touch my face just then, to coax the color out from my cheeks again, but then dropped his hand back to his side.

I sighed, too tired to even attempt to decipher that one. “Just answer my question, Dominic.”

“Eat and then I will.”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

He stared back at me, stone-faced, like he had all the time in the world to engage in a battle of wills with me.

Having lost all semblance of patience and grace, I grabbed the dilapidated slice of cat-puke-slash-bread from the kitchen island and then rammed it into my mouth like a lunatic, smearing the peanut butter all over my lips and chin in the process.

“There. Satisfied? Now tell me where you were,” I demanded, before I’d even had a chance to swallow the food in my mouth. It wasn’t one of my finer moments, but clearly that ship had sailed a long-ass time ago.

“I was following a lead,” he stated simply as he reached out and wiped the corner of my mouth with his thumb, making my chest warm from the gentle gesture. “I received some intel that the Roderick sisters may be heading back to town. According to my guy, they were spotted just outside Chapel Hill.”

It took me a second to catch up to what he’d just said because, well, he had been touching me and nothing good ever came of my brain when Dominic was touching me.

And then my shoulders sagged at the news.

Truth be told, after Morgan’s visit earlier today, I’d hoped (and then somehow even managed to semi-convince myself) that her vision was probably, most-likely,completelywrong,especially since she’d seen all three sisters alive and well when I had known in my heart that that wasn’t possible. Or so I had thought.

But, as with all tough pills to swallow, it was becoming increasingly impossible to continue denying what was right in front of my nose. So much for a restful sleep tonight.

“I admit, it doesn’t look very good,” he continued, mistaking my silence for shock, “but there’s no need to panic just yet. I have yet to confirm the intel is good. This could very well be a case of mistaken identity.”

“Mistaken identity? Really, Dominic? You can’t be serious.” Even if Morgan hadn’t already dropped her prophetic bomb on me this morning, there was still no way I’d buythatload of farfetched dung.

“Either way, we don’t know their motives. They could very well be heading to town simply to pay tribute to their fallen sister,” he said uniformly. “To memorialize her place of rest with a fine assortment of broomsticks and magic eight balls.”

“What?” I blinked at him.

“They may have even felt a plaque of some sort was in order,” he went on, his tone growing grimmer then. “They could be carving out her epitaph as we speak.”

“Okay, now you’re just being ridiculous,” I said, trying not to laugh at the image he’d conjured in my mind, but failing miserably.

His lips pulled into a lopsided grin as his eyes brightened with something that looked a lot like satisfaction. Like he’d wanted to make me smile and take the edge off. The thought spurred my wounded heart back to life.

Unfortunately, our daunting reality quickly swooped back in to pull the plug before I had a chance to enjoy it.

“They’re not coming here to memorialize anyone,” I informed, all amusement in my expression wiped fromexistence. “They’re coming here for the baby.”

And there went all the light from his eyes, and my heart, and the room.

“You know this as fact?” he queried.

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