“All over the place is one way to say it. Happy, sad, relieved, scared…alone. That’s the scariest part. I’m thirty-four, and I’ve never been alone before.”
“Are your bodyguards still in the house?”
“No,” I sigh. “They finished their job. On to the next gig.”
“It’s a big house you have there in the middle of nowhere. Are you sure it’s safe to stay there all by yourself?”
“I still have the alarm system, not that I’ve ever needed it. There was no vigilante stalker, taking down the people who have wronged me. It was just my psychopath husband scaring me into taking all my money.”
He pauses, like he doesn’t know how to respond.
“Did I make you uncomfortable? It takes some time to get used to my classic, nonhumorous verbal vomit humor.” Tristan picked it up easily.
“It’ll be my honor if you make me more uncomfortable tonight…at dinner. You pick the place this time, and I won’t bring flowers or books with NSFW drawings.”
I chuckle, but then reality hits. “Are you sure you still want to do this, RJ? You almost died because of me.” Blake still got the blame for Miami. I haven’t told RJ about Tristan. I owe my former bodyguard that much.
“I’ve never been sure of anything more in my life.”
Something warm and fuzzy blankets me. “Dancing. I want to go dancing tonight.”
“Then it’s a date.”
I hang up and start writing. The words pour out of me. I haven’t felt inspired like that in a while. Later, I shower and get ready for dinner. In the dressing room, I slide hangers one by one, inspecting every dress I’d hidden away years ago. Blake never let me wear bold designs unless it was for him—his private little theater where my body was the costume. Eventually, I’d given up on wearing them in public, so I tossed them far in the back.
My fingers pause on one I’d nearly forgotten. Hot pink, plunge neckline, a high slit that leaves nothing to the imagination. My favorite.
I tug it forward, but the fabric catches on something at the back panel of the wardrobe. Frowning, I push the other dresses aside and reach in. My hand presses against the wood, and instead of the solid resistance, it shifts. Gives.
“What the fuck?”
Heart pounding, I push it open and cross over. The narrow passage leads into the room next door. Blake’s room. Tristan’s after him.
Have I just walked out of a secret door in my own closet? I turn on the lamp next to the bed and stand in the middle of the room, dumbfounded. Did Blake build this? A way to spy on me? To sneak into my room when he was no longer allowed into my bed? Is that how he got in there the night he violated me with his own gun?
“You sick bastard.” I try to breathe, but the air is stale, as if it’s been locked for years, yet a chill crawls up my spine. Suddenly, the feeling of being watched is back.
A draft stirs the air, brushing against my skin. I spin on my heels, searching the room for ghosts. “Is someone here?”
Of course, silence answers me.
I run my hands through my wet hair. “Blake is dead, Reagan. What the hell are you doing?” That’s when I see it.
On the meticulously made bed, placed like an offering on an altar, lies a piece of paper.
My pulse skitters as I take a step closer, every nerve in me screaming not to.
I slap a hand over my mouth when a butterfly flies out of the piece of paper. “No. No.”
This isn’t real. I fell asleep when I was writing, and I’m having a nightmare. But when my quivering fingers unfold the dark note, I realize what I see is so very real.
Nothing is what it seems
XOXO, little butterfly
Under it, there’s a pasted photo that shows Blake and RJ together, laughing like old friends. They both have their Miami PD shields on.
The room spins. The note falls on the bed. Blake and RJ knew each other. They worked together.