Page 15 of The Last Call Home
Did I tell anyone?
Not a fucking word.
Let’s just say I’m improvising.If they come back later, demanding why I didn’t mention my history with the local sheriff, I’ll spin some half-truth wrapped in charm and plausible deniability.Not like they’re going to fire me for assuming they already knew.
It’s no secret that Malerick and I were partners in the Bureau.No one talks about it, but it’s there, between the lines of our service records.What they don’t know is how many nights ended with bruised knuckles, clenched jaws, and mouths pressed together like we were trying to forget where we were.What they don’t say—but maybe suspect—is that the line between us was crossed so long ago that it’s just dirt now.
Everyone assumes I left because I got a better offer.A promotion.A new start.And they’re not wrong.
But they’re not right either.
They’ve no idea of the version where I left because staying meant drowning.Because loving him—and hating him—was too tangled up for us to survive in the same space.Because there was a third heartbeat in our silence, one that made everything more combustible.And because every time I saw them together, my insides twisted into something cruel and hungry.
We stopped pretending one night and suddenly, everything we buried started crawling out between us, demanding blood.She wanted us to choose—she didn’t want us together.Three wasn’t an option.Not for her.
And he ...he wasn’t honest with himself either, so what was left for me to hold on to?I was in love with a man who couldn’t face what we were, tangled up with a woman who treated us like a game—until the moment she decided she wanted something permanent.But there could only be one.
Now here I am, a ghost returning to the scene of the crime—even if we’ve never set foot here before.There he is—same voice, same force behind every syllable.Time hasn’t touched him.His mouth still remembers mine.My body hasn’t forgotten a damn thing.
It remembers.
God help me.It remembers everything.
He looked at me like he never stopped.And I feel it—each glance, each breath—like it’s a question I’ll never be able to answer without bleeding.
We made choices once.I told myself that walking away was a form of survival.
But now?
Now we’re back in the same orbit.Him.Me.And that twist in my gut?It’s not just dread.
It’s memory.
It’s regret.
It’s the truth I never had the guts to say out loud.
The kicker in this whole scenario is that there’s something new too.Her.Delilah Mora.
What’s their story?
There’s something between them—undeniable, magnetic.I could feel it radiating off them like heat from a closed door.For a second—for one brief, sane moment—I considered walking away.Putting space between myself and the fire.But I didn’t.
No.
I leaned in.
I instigated.Provoked.Almost touched them both at once.Just to see what would happen.Just to feel the charge snap against my skin.
Because I wanted them.
Separately, together, all at once.A tangle of limbs, gasps, and desperate hands—everything we hadn’t dared say strung so tight between us it was bound to snap.
I know what it means to do something that reckless.To share someone you shouldn’t.To give a piece of yourself away and then watch it get devoured.You lose your heart, your fucking mind, and you never come back whole.
But still—God, I’m drawn to her.
Delilah.
