Page 978 of One More Kiss

Magnolia

SeeingDrex again nearly drops me to my knees. Gone is the teenager teetering on the edge of adulthood. Every glorious inch of his muscled body is man. And I’m finally old enough to appreciate it. I’d been twenty-one when I left. Scorned by nightmares I was unable to escape.

He’d tried so hard to be everything I needed, and as much as I wish he’d have seen it—it was me who wasn’t enough. After everything I saw, everything I lost, it was just too much. While this isn't the first time I’ve seen him shirtless, it is certainly different.

Every inch of bared skin is toned with muscle. The scar he received the night his family was killed seems larger now, stretched out across his body. It should have healed, would have if the assholes who gave it to him hadn’t slathered salt in the open wound.

I long to reach out and run my fingers over his skin. To feel the beat of his heart beneath my ear as we lay in the dark like we’d done so many times before.

But things are different now. I’m different. And so is he.

“We were young, Drex.”

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t know what I wanted.” He crosses his arms, and it takes everything in me not to reach forward and brush a strand of dark hair from his forehead. It’s longer now than when I last saw it, curling just over his ears. And his eyes—they’re breathtaking. Haunted.

For him, it’s been eight years. But I’ve checked in on him at least once a year, using a location spell to track him. Boston, Dallas, Washington, Tennessee, South Carolina…more states than I can list.

Letting him go proved to be far more difficult than I cared to admit. But not nearly as difficult as seeing him move on with random women he crossed paths with. Though, I have no right to be angry. It’s not as though I gave him a reason for it to be me.

“Then I was too young,” I lie. In reality, I was way too broken. “Are you going to help me or not?”

He leans back against his counter, and my mouth waters as my gaze helplessly drops to his abdomen. Damn.

“Do you have any proof you’re being followed?”

“Random things. A few times, my items have been rearranged when I’ve gotten back to where I was staying. A few times, I thought I spotted the same person a few states apart.”

“Description?” he questions.

It’s easy to see the influence Rainey Astor had on him. He always had a sharp mind, but when she’d trained him, it had gotten sharper. More methodical. Drexel thinks like a detective. “A man. Late forties. Greying hair. But I only saw him three times. Twice in Salem and once in Texas.”

“You were in Texas?”

I swallow hard. “Yes. Last year.”

He nods, and I wonder if he’s putting together that we were there at the same time. Or if he even cares. “When was the most recent time you saw him?”

“Last week. When I was back in Salem.”

“And you were there looking for what—”

“Rainey said I could scour her family archives for information on my lineage. I was staying at her bunker, and I spotted him when I surfaced for food.”

“Seeing him twice in the same city isn’t alarming. But Salem is a good distance from Texas.”

“Yes.”

“Was anything missing? When your things were rearranged.”

“My hairbrush.”

“So the sick bastard took strands of your hair.”

“It would seem that way.”

Lips flattened, he begins to pace. “When did it go missing?”

“Texas.”

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