His skin was hot under my fingertips as I palpated around the three-inch-long cut.
“Lara—”
“I need to check for infection,” I repeated, looking up to catch Calder’s jaw as hard as flint and his gaze as sharp as steel. One wrong move and I might cause him to spark.
I leaned closer and carefully focused on my purpose.
The skin didn’t look puffy or inflamed. No sign of infection or bruising from deeper internal damage. He’d used butterfly bandages to pull the sides of the gash together and hold them tight, but he hadn’t used a bandage on top.
I squinted. “Did you put superglue over this?”
He grunted. “Easier than taping a bandage.”
Fair.I swallowed, the doctor in me convinced he’d treated himself sufficiently, but the woman in me ... the woman in me couldn’t be convinced to stop touching him.
“Satisfied?”
I stilled, heat toppling over my skin.Bad word choice.
I straightened slowly, a breeze blowing, bending around us rather than going between. Like there was so much tension and ache piled up between me and Calder that not even the air had room to squeeze by.
All my life, I’d been following a path—one that had taken me away from the life my mother had led, kept me safe from the kinds of relationships that had failed her and made me self-sufficient and independent, but this time yesterday, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where I wanted that path to lead. Today ... today, I knew exactly where I wanted it to go: right to the center of his warm embrace.
There were so many things we needed to talk about, but the only thing on my mind was those moments in the rain when he held me. Those minutes in the tent when we’d kissed. It wasn’t just nature or desire; it was a natural disaster. Forceful. Unstoppable. It destroyed everything we said we were.Every lie we’d told ourselves.
How did I even begin to talk about something that had changed everything?
“Sarah didn’t know anything else about Eden’s Children,” Calder said, saving me from sounding like a fool.
A fool who knew better.
My chest caved in on itself, hot hope deflating like a burst balloon. No matter what Cassius had hinted at, Iknewthis was the part of Calder that had sent my sister spiraling. The part that was stoic in the face of her wanting more. In the face of me wanting more.
I buttoned my arms over my front like they were a business suit, dressing me for a part I was reluctant to play.
“Did Callum find anything about its location?” I countered, at least confident I could match his cold practicality.
“No.” Calder’smasseterfired against his cheek, and he muttered, “We should walk. The sun’s already pretty high, and you’ve got nothing on your face. The cool breeze is deceiving.”
I followed his orders, but sensed he was holding back. “What is it?” I demanded.
Another pause. “The authorities just found Trent’s body.”
Trent’s . . .
I stopped short and strangled the words from my throat. “He’s dead?”
Cold crinkled over my skin, wrapping me in a frozen fabric of dread. Calder had said Trent was beat up pretty badly last night and that Matthew had taken him away, but not that he was dead.
Calder returned in front of me, his height blotting out the sun. “His body was recovered near a popular but difficult hiking trail in the park.”
“What?” I choked out, confusion shredding my comprehension. “I don’t understand. Did they leave him there without medical attention? The police should be able to see evidence of trauma—of the fight. If we tell them we know who attacked him and where—”
“His body was found at the bottom of a fifty-foot ravine. They won’t find any evidence of what Ben did to him,” Calder said tightly. “Or what they did to hide that evidence.”
I pressed my hand to my stomach, feeling it cave and crumble. I’d seen countless traumatic injuries, from motorcycle accidents to stab wounds, come through the ER, but nothing had made me physically ill like hearing this.A murder made to look like an accident.
“Last night, after attacking Trent, Ben said something,” Calder continued. “He told Sarah she would thank him one day for knowing how to get rid of Trent. I was focused on other things, but now ...”