Page 66 of Six of Hearts
I sat staring at Ronan, or Adam. It was a lot of information that I felt like should have been communicated to us much sooner, but I could tell he was telling the truth.
A man can lie about his name, age, childhood, and past, but he cannot truly hide who he is. I’d spent enough time with Ronan to know exactly what the man was about; we’d been naked in the same room, for god’s sake.
He wasn’t the kind of man that would hurt anyone, and looking at the pain in his face, I could see that he had been haunted by the notion that anyone would think he would, most of all Aria.
He looked at me. “I need you to go to her place and check on her. She wasn’t in a good place when she left, and I’m concerned for her. She won’t answer my calls, and given the circumstances, I can’t blame her.”
“And that?” Liam interjected, motioning towards the wall.
“She kept calling me all the same, horrible things the people back in Florida would call me, and I lost my cool a little bit. I honestly think it was a bout of PTSD.
I punched the wall to just let some of my frustration out, but it freaked Aria out, and she ran,” Ronan said.
“I hate myself for it. That I caused her any fear.” He dropped his head.
“I doubt I’ll ever forgive myself.”
I stood up. “Just relax. I’ll go to her apartment, I’m sure she’s there, and I will explain everything.” I put a hand on Ronan’s shoulder.
“We believe you, right?”
The guys all nodded and agreed immediately.
“He couldn’t hurt a fly,” Ethan said.
“Well, maybe just a fly,” Julian added.
“He’s bad in bed,” Liam said in a high-pitched voice, under his breath as though it wasn’t him.
Ronan cracked the first smile he had since we all arrived. He set a hand on top of mine.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll check Aria’s place and then call Noah and get him up to speed,” I said. “You need to go back to sleep, you look dead,” I told Ronan.
“You three, go home. We’ll reconvene tomorrow, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”
I wasn’t as certain as I sounded, but there was a need for leadership for the moment, and with Noah not there and Ronan a wreck, it seemed the task had fallen to me. We dispersed and I immediately made my way to Aria’s apartment. I used my copy of her apartment key and let myself in.
“Aria?” I walked through her apartment, making a mental note to immediately start trying to upgrade her hodgepodge furniture any chance a birthday or holiday would allow. Christmas was on the horizon and seeing her place made me want to just get her a whole new apartment.
“Aria?”
It wasn’t a large place, and it became evident fairly quickly that she wasn’t there. Between the travel to Ronan’s, having a conversation with him, and remobilising, the sun was peeking out into the sky, and morning was upon me.
I could see that some of the items in the apartment had been rather hastily handled, and I came across the pictures of Ronan that had been sent to Aria anonymously. I
took out a pair of latex gloves I always had on me just in case, and I pocketed the envelope that had Aria’s address written on the front and the pictures.
Whether from the sample of the handwriting or fingerprints on the pictures, there had to be a way to determine who sent her the items. I took one final glance around the apartment and then made my way out. She clearly wasn’t there, and we were probably going to have to dip into our bag of resources to find out where she was.
“Are you a friend of Aria’s?” I looked over my shoulder, and there was a young woman with a backpack locking the door to her own apartment.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Have you seen her?”
“I heard her fumbling around really early this morning, and when I came to check on her, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. I asked if everything was okay, and she said she was just really stressed out and had to get out of town.
