Page 116 of Wicked and Claimed

He’d rather not. He ached to hold her close and talk about last night—what had happened onstage, what they’d discussed in the shower, the past she kept avoiding. Instead, he gestured her to the bathroom, his heart twisting as she closed the door between them.

Damn it, it wasn’t merely the physical distance she put between them that disturbed him. It was the mental distance. The emotional distance. It was palpable.

She felt betrayed.

Haisley returned a few minutes later with clean teeth, a freshly scrubbed face, and a gaze that wouldn’t meet his.

Swallowing a curse, he marched to the bathroom and reached for his toothbrush, wondering what the hell to do.

He’d fucking tried to protect her the best he could. She knew that logically, but that didn’t stop the feelings she must have of being exposed, of being taken in public. Then the Jasper thing and the ill-timed pregnancy question…

He spit out his toothpaste, then stared at himself in the mirror. He looked tired as fuck, and the danger was nowhere near over. How the hell could he repair what was between them if they couldn’t talk?

With more questions than answers, he settled himself at the table where Haisley sat picking at scrambled eggs and swallowing champagne. The tension between them made the celebratory spread of crystal and silver feel like a mockery.

He’d had enough.

After knocking back half a cup of black coffee, he dug out the Santiago brothers’ tech, disguised in a shaving can, and activated it. It might be reckless, but this couldn’t go on.

The green light on the device told him the signals had been scrambled.

“We have two minutes of privacy,” he murmured as he dropped back into his chair. “Talk to me. Are you okay?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Her voice cracked. “Last night…”

Of course she was reeling.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t have a choice.”

She nodded…but still steadfastly kept her eyes on her plate. “How much longer?”

“We’re doing everything we can. I promise. Look, I’m sorry about the Jasper business. If I had a do-over, I wouldn’t do it at all. When you got back to town, I just…wanted to talk to you. I missed you like hell.”

Haisley hesitated. “I get it. I know you weren’t deceiving me maliciously, but…”

Fuck. “Look, I?—”

“I know you’ve risked everything to rescue me?—”

“I don’t regret it. I’d do it again and again.”

Haisley bit her lip. “I’m trying to remember that and not…everything else.”

The seconds they had left to talk were counting down. He couldn’t scramble the signal again without raising questions, and they were nowhere near resolved. “Why won’t you talk to me about your pregnancy? What happened?”

She leapt to her feet and looked out the window, as if she were a million miles away. “It’s in the past. Leave it there.”

“Not when it’s affecting our present.” He crossed the room to her and grabbed her shoulders so she couldn’t run from him again. “And our future.”

Across the room, the device beeped in warning. Security had already reset their “glitching” surveillance, ending the signal scramble. Back to silence. Back to pretending she was a stranger he owned.

Frustration tore through him. He’d barely been here twenty-four hours, and he already hated every minute of this shit.

They spent the afternoon in strained silence. Nash pretended to watch reruns while Haisley curled in a window seat with a book she wasn’t really reading. They sat less than ten feet apart, but the distance between them felt vast. Occasionally, their eyes would meet, then quickly dart away. So much unsaid. So much he didn’t know when they would get to say.

Darkness fell. After another dinner in their suite, they went through the motions of preparing for bed. Tension lay thick between them. Nash waited until Haisley’s breathing evened out before he shut his eyes.

They popped open a few hours later when his sat phone dinged. Kane’s distraction—a carefully orchestrated power surge in the main building that would take down surveillance for precious minutes without raising major alarms—right on schedule.

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