Page 29 of Taking Denver

Fuck it. I knock.

Wesson barks excitedly when Denver opens the door.

“Ethan.” She glances back into the room and steps into the hall, closing the door behind her. “You can’t be here.”

“I was worried.” The corridor is cast in shadows, but her gray eyes are still bright. Despite the dangerous man waiting in her room, the pull to her is too great, and I cup the back of her neck. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes shine as she nods. “I am. He would never hurt me.”

“Are you sure?”

Her silence has my gut lurching, but my heart slows when she places her palms on my chest. “I promise. He was worried about… about what happened.”

How is it possible that she radiates such calm while simultaneously being a force of nature? I can’t decide what to do around her—brace for impact or enjoy the ride. Either way, I pull her closer.

“You really can’t be here while Ranger is,” she says quietly. “He’s only staying tonight?—”

The jealousy that roars through me has me tensing my jaw so tight my molars grind together. “Denver?—”

“I’m not sleeping with him.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck,fuck.

She doesn’t owe me an explanation. I’m nothing to her. We haven’t even been on a date. We’d spent hours asking each other pointless questions, but does that really mean anything?

The answer to that question hits me harder than the jealousy.

Denver touches my face. “Just avoid him. If you see him, just walk away, okay?”

She pulls from me, and I don’t look as the door to her room opens and shuts.

I spend the rest of the afternoon in my room. Sebastian tried to encourage me to join them at the pool, but I told him I needed to think. Truthfully, I’d lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling, watching the shadows move across the room until I can’t resist it anymore and give in to my curiosity.

I google Denver’s name, and fall down a virtual rabbit hole of their lives. Photos, videos, fan accounts, gossip websites—everything comes up Deluxe. She and Ranger seem to be celebrities of the underworld, hounded by paparazzi, with accounts praising Denver’s outfit choices, discussing the kind of coffee she drinks and her day-to-day routine.

My heart stalls when photos of Denver show her pregnant. Heavily pregnant. In most of them, she’s with Ranger, security flanking them, though she seems unfazed by the armed men around her. In one photo, she’s eating ice cream, and Ranger has an arm around her waist, whispering in her ear, and she’s grinning around the spoon.

Denver never mentioned having a kid. From the night we spent talking and scrolling through our phones, I never once spotted a photo of a child, either.

I keep scrolling and find photos of her and her husband. Wyatt Ledger. He’s around my age, or at least he was before he died. With short brown hair and a full beard, most of the photos with Denver show them holding hands, or he has his arms around her. They seem happy, and in the only wedding photo I can find, Wyatt is gazing at Denver like he’s won the lottery.

The story of his death has endless theories. He worked for Ranger for years and then, three months ago, was killed in a carjacking. He’d been shot in the head left on the side of the road, but that doesn’t seem to be the story anymore. The story is how he was cheating on Denver, sleeping with numerous women, with dozens of tapes being leaked on the internet.

My thumb hovers over the play button of one of the videos. One I shouldn’t fucking press.

But I do.

Most of the picture is blurred, the camera clearly hidden, so not much can be seen, but everything can be heard.

“—around her, anyway,”a male voice says.

A woman responds,“She seems nice.”

“She isn’t.”

“Hasn’t she been through a lot, though? Losing the baby?—”

Wyatt’s laugh is cold.“She’s better off never being a mother.”

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