I smirk. “Curious would mean I’ve been thinking about you, which I haven’t.”
“Liar.” He sighs. “I wish you would tell me.”
“Tell you what, Your Highness?”
I can tell he’s running his finger over the screen by the way he’s looking at me. “All your secrets. All the things you don’t want me to know.”
I stiffen as a gnawing chill sweeps through me. I tuck myself under my blanket, covering my body from his view. “What makes you think I have secrets?”
“Just a hunch.”
“I probably should tell you. Then you’d finally listen and stay away from me.”
He frowns, and I wish I hadn’t said that. His hand is moving, but now all I see is him from the chest up. Ferocious sorrow has me rolling to my side and tucking in on myself at the truth of my words. All this is so fleeting. This joy. This excitement. This…feeling. The one that resonates in every fiber of my being when I look at him. When I think about him. When my careless mind gets swept away and imagines my life as something other than what it actually is.
I clear all of that away. Antonia always told me emotions are useless and make us act hastily and carelessly. She’s not wrong. Everything I’m doing with him is utterly reckless. My midnight prince.
“Are you drawing me again?”
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever drawn.”
“Rowan…”
“Mia stella, you can tell me. I swear you can. I’m safe for you. I’ll never hurt you. Not ever.”
“Rowan!” I gasp and cover my face with my hand. “Please.”
“I care about you. I haven’t been shy about letting you know that.”
“But why? Why do you care about me? You’ve known me for like three weeks. This has to be about the sex.”
“Look at me, Marcella.”
His voice is commanding, and I obey, needing to hear him, to see him.
“The sex with you is incredible. Best of my life. But it’s because it’s you that it’s that good. We could have something. I know it’s new. I’m not a fool. But I also know if we gave it the chance, it would grow into something real. Something incredible. I’ve never felt this kind of spark with anyone before. There’s a reason for that.”
I feel it too. I know it’s there. “We can’t be together. This won’t turn into a relationship or anything real.”
“There are only two reasons to put that sort of limit on us. One, you’re hiding something from me that you believe would change the way I feel about you. Two, you’re scared for whatever reason that I’ll hurt you. Which is it?”
I can’t answer him, but I don’t have to. He knows it’s the first.
“I’d take care of you. I’d protect you. I’d keep you safe. But at some point, you have to trust me in order for that to happen. Think about it, okay?”
He disconnects the call, leaving me reeling. I want to believe him. But I don’t see how any of that will be possible. Once he learns the truth, he’ll hate me.
33
ROWAN
“No one knows who they are or what they do,” Gabe tells me as he gets back in the car and starts it up. “But the neighbors who called the police were scared. I know that much. They didn’t answer many questions, and their eyes kept shifting about. She said she wished she hadn’t called the police.”
“Interesting. So they’re likely drug dealers, mafia, or professional thieves…”
He nods, his dark eyes shifting about as he puts the car in drive and takes us out of here. “One of those would be my guess.”
“Lovely. They’re smart, but not smart enough if Marie was able to break in, get into their safe, steal whatever she wanted, and leave without being caught. We have her fingerprints, but that’s only because we have them from the cottage. Otherwise, they’d be useless to the police.”