Page 153 of Sunrise

Sunrise means sitting in the dark with the ones you love. It means breathing for one more minute, then one more minute after that. It’s holding onto each other and staying together even though you’re desperate to run until you’ve disappeared into the ether. To be the sunrise is to outlast the dark. Be the glimmer of hope on the horizon.

Having Knox and Vault with me makes the fear less debilitating, but I can’t shake the fact that something doesn’t feel right.

“I don’t trust that he killed himself,” I say, rehashing the part that confuses me the most. “All this time he’s stalked me… lived only a few blocks over from me…he had too much patience to just give up so fast after I escaped. Him committing suicide doesn’t make sense.”

Silence falls upon us, and I keep running my hands through Knox’s hair to comfort myself.

“You’re right,” Knox says in the darkness. “Itwasn’t suicide. But he’s still dead and can’t come back. He’ll never come after you again, Sophie.”

My fingers curl against his scalp, tugging his hair as his words sink in.

Knox killed him.

For me.

I let go of my fear with my next exhale. “Thank you,” I whisper, closing my eyes in relief and fall asleep somewhere around four in the morning.

When I wake up, the sun is high in the sky.

Chapter 49

Knox

Sophie made it through another night. I’m so proud of her.

Getting over her attack hasn’t been easy on any of us, but in true Sophie Motherfucking Ross fashion, she’s a goddamn baddie. Seriously? Best main character energy I’ve ever seen in my life. And as a top tier bookworm, I’ve lived a thousand lives.

“Where are we going?” Vault asks.

“To the bookstore.”

“What? No. You already went there last week.”

“Are you trying to hold me back from living my best life?” I smack Vault upside his head. “Not cool.”

Sophie laughs from the back seat.

It’s the first time she’s giggled in weeks.

Every day she’s returned more and more to herself, but it’s hard to watch the progression. I want to speed it up and can’t. Good thing I’m a patient boy when I need to be.

She starts work on Monday, and I think that’ll help a lot. She’s not good with having downtime. And get this… the team she created at work? They showed the fuck up for our girl. Bill-the fucktwat and James-the-shitstick got canned. Sophie’s back on the roster as lead researcher and she’s got a brand-new office and state-of-the-art lab to work her magic in.

Our girl is going to change space fuel with her big, beautiful, sexy brain.

I honestly think when she learned what all her team did for her, it helped her work through her trauma. They’re one more layer of people surrounding her, watching her back.

The gun I killed Christopher Rivetti with was the same one I took away from Vault all those years ago when he tried to permanently delete himself. It wasn’t registered and only fired once. Vault caught that one and only bullet in the shoulder to save me all those years ago. Talk about weird symmetry, am I right?

If I’m going to Hell for my sins, I’ll freefall down there and high five Satan when I arrive. I’ve gotten away with murder number two, thanks to the detective wanting to wrap the case up fast and put a pretty bow on it. They didn’t think too hard about why Rivetti killed himself beyond the fact that he was too injured to run after Sophie got away, which meant he would finally get caught. Death was the easy way out, so suicide made sense.

Who am I to argue with that logic?

“And when we’re done blowing aninsaneamount of money on smut, we’re going to Midnight Run for lunch.” I waggle my eyebrows.

“You said you were taking the day off,” Vault growls at me. “We’re supposed to be—”

“Shhhh.” I blindly shove my hand over his mouth while I drive. “No talky.”

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