Forbidden With Me - Leigh Lennon Page 0,48
evident.
My fingers trace his jawline, the scruff from the day barely seen, but I feel it. “I think it’s something that can be built so easily with minimal effort. I’m not saying it’ll be simple, and, hell, it’s forbidden, not just with the age gap, but, fuck, you’ve been my hero my whole life. Why not be my everything.”
“Malia…” A deep rush of air escapes his mouth.
“Nothing has to be decided today, you know?” I’m the voice of reason, and I will continue to be. “Can you answer me one thing?” I ask, and in the question, I silently beg for the answer I want to fall from his lips.
“What’s that?”
“Am I just a case to you, or am I more?”
He hooks his index finger under my chin, tipping my head to meet his gaze. “Hell, sweetheart, you’ve been more than a case to me from the day I carried you out of your house.”
I burrow my head into the crook of his neck. In his response, he gives me a peace I’ve not had in a long time.
I wake an hour later in the guest room, the room I’ll make mine until my life can find some form of normalcy. The outside light is gone, and the darkness has fallen on the house. My eyes are heavy, and it makes sense seeing as a normal sleep cycle has not been something I’ve had since returning to the Pacific Northwest with the new developments in my family’s case.
I stretch my arms over my head, and a part of me wants to stay in this room away from the world around me. Maybe in my dreams, I can find my mom and imagine a normal life where I’m an aunt to Annie’s and Gracie’s kids. Both would have had children by now. They were ready at an early age to settle down and get married. Cabe may have had children, but I choose to think he’d be in the NBA, a goal of his always. Mom and Dad would have been retired, and I’d be in my junior year in college. Who knows if I would have been the artist I am today. I think the trauma forced me into a hidden talent. But I’d have my family.
My mind drifts back to the nights of the murder, thanks to the pictures I looked at earlier, and I shoot out of bed, my brain remembering things I had never thought of before. I’m hurrying down the hallway, my mind on everything I can recall of the very last time Annie and Gracie had me in their rooms, showing me how to exfoliate, at the age of nine. I round the corner, hurdling into Wells’s solid chest.
“Slow down, sweetheart.” He pulls back, giving us space. It may take a while for him to come to terms with our feelings, but at the same time, he can’t deny our pull to one another.
“I remembered something, the bracelets, the guy who gave it to her. And her journal.”
“Whoa, whoa, sweetheart, slow down.” He has me by the arm, pulling us toward the living room where Stewart is on the couch with a file in his lap. As I come into view, he closes the manila envelope quickly.
“Did you have a good nap, Malia?” he asks.
“Um, yeah, but I remembered something, something I’d forgotten after all these years.”
Wells settles me onto the overstuffed seat, bringing a kitchen chair from the eat-in dining room to sit smack dab next to me. “What are you talking about? We never found a journal or a diary of your sister’s?” he says, and with as much as he knows about the case, I don’t doubt him.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s because she hid it out of the view of everyone. It’s under a floorboard but not any floorboard. There’s an alcove that goes under the house. If you don’t know it’s there, no one would know to search for it.”
“We need a warrant to search it,” Stewart says.
“Why can’t you just ask the owner?” I ask.
Stewart laughs. “Yeah, sometimes it takes forever to get the new homeowner's permission. It’s easier to just get a warrant.”
“I think I can help you out with that,” I say, eyes boring in on me from each side. “I happen to know the owner, and I’m almost positive she’ll give you permission. As a matter of fact, I believe she may know where the journal is, too.”
I walk out of the room with his call