Page 179 of The Sweetest Obsession

Nell goes tumbling forward as I surge to my feet and press my fingers to my mother’s throat, feeling for—thank God.

There’s still a strong, steady pulse.

I almost had a heart attack myself, but she’s fine.

Or is she?

Leave it to Aleksander effing Arrendell to nearly kill her a second time.

“Miss... Miss Philia?” Nell whines, clinging to my leg. “Is your mom okay?”

“She’s fine, sweetie.” I exhale, dragging a hand over my face before looking down at Nell and gripping her shoulder gently. “It’s hard on the brain to wake up when you’ve been resting for so long. She just wore herself out and fell back asleep, that’s all. C’mon, let’s give her some rest. I’ll take you out for lunch so your uncle Grant can have a break from feeding us.”

That gets a bright smile, even if I need to talk to Grant, myself.

Because I have no idea what my mother’s reaction means.

Not that boy.

It’s not right.

Sacrilege.

Heavy words.

It worries me.

Actually, it scaresme, and so does the fact that I have no answers, no idea what to do about it.

It’s almost a blessing that Mom’s out again. The last thing I need is her freaking out again and overstressing when there’s been a flicker of improvement.

I can only hope we dig up something ourselves—and soon.

We need to get to the bottom of this insanity before it’s too late.

21

ONE OF THOSE DAYS (GRANT)

Idon’t know what the fuck I’m doing here.

Staring at this almost-dead man like I can magically see through him, divining some answers from his bones.

From somebody’sbones, I guess.

Because goddammit, I really don’t know what to do about finding a whole human body out there in that clearing in the same place Law was bleeding out.

That’s what Raleigh PD forensics dug up in the end.

A complete human skeleton—and they’re gonna want me to have a look at the rotted remnants of clothing to see if I recognize anything.

From the looks of it, the perps stripped the victim naked, buried them, then buried their belongings close by. Not much survived over long years of decomposition besides a leather jacket.

Too much like the jacket Ethan wore when he started riding his motorcycle.

The big asshole just had to play the part, all leather and jeans and tough guy swagger as he grew into a young man. Once, I had to pull him away from a drunken fight with a dude from the Grizzlies MC. It was bad enough that we snuck into the bar without anybody carding us. Worse that this tank of a man was passing through town when Ethan mouthed off and the biker called him out as a ‘chickenshit poser.’

He totally was.

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