Forbidden With Me - Leigh Lennon Page 0,5

“I begged you. I thought I’d done something wrong.” She finally looks up at me, having hidden her beauty for a moment. “You made me wonder if you had given up on my case, on solving the murders because I upset you.” Her words speed up. “Maybe you don’t like me anymore. Maybe I’m a pain in your ass. But you never told me why. I never understood why you’d stop writing me after I begged.”

It was never my intention, but with the look of longing on her angelic face, the appeal, her request is not simply a request of the mind, but a request of the heart. And she’s no longer that little girl who’s taken over my heart, but an adult woman who now overtakes the younger girl I’ve thought about for years.

“Oh, sweetie, I didn’t mean to ignore you.” What can I say to her? I’ve upset her, and I would never purposely heap more hell on her already shattered life. “It’s just that…I didn’t think it was right for a grown man to write a young girl. I just—” She twists her body to the side, her eyes focusing on something in the kitchen, and she begins to almost squeal as she interrupts me.

“That’s my drawing I painted for you.” She points at the fork, knife, and spoon painting, hanging on the one spare wall near the stove. “You kept my pictures.”

I give her a quick bob of my head, my smirk evident as my lips turn up from my concern to a smile.

“You read my letters?”

I nod.

“I thought you hated me,” she imparts, as her eyes widen.

“No, I don’t hate you, sweetie, it’s just, I didn’t want—”

“Oh, yeah, okay, you don’t have to say it. I just wanted to make sure…” She has nothing but a long-sleeve shirt and a small purse on her shoulder. She’s shivering as she starts to my door. I block her path.

“How did you get here? I can’t let you go out in this cold.” I stand my ground, and she doesn’t try to challenge me.

“I’m here with my art class. Here for an exhibit.”

I pull out one of my coats from a closet. “Put this on.” I shoot Matt a text, telling him I can’t make it to the football game. “Come on, sweetie. I’ll take you back to where you’re staying.”

I do eventually take Malia back to the hotel, but first, we stop at a little diner down the road, and I feed her. It may have only been an hour of my life mingled with hers, but it’s enough to understand that this girl, the one I saved, is living her life on her terms. And it gives me hope for her future. And it has to be a future without me.

Malia

He drives me back to my hotel after I spend the afternoon with him. It has been the most I’ve been given of my police angel since the night of my parents' death. I’ve always been left to recognize that I’ve been able to live as normal of a life that someone with my past can because Wells Shanahan shielded my eyes from my family’s dead bodies. Those images don’t haunt me, and I’d also covered my ears, so I heard very little. In the nine years since the murders, I’ve read my share of books that talk about how I most likely blocked those sounds from my mind.

I have nightmares. My imagination is wild, but they aren’t from the memories, only what I’ve allowed my brain to concoct in my mind.

I’ve kept tabs on him in the form of a made-up persona under someone who supposedly attended his high school and graduated with him.

After spending the day with my police angel, I recognize how textbook simple my obsession with him truly is. But regardless of this psychological profile, it doesn’t and won’t ever diminish the true nature of my affections toward this man.

I’m in this fog, the day I’ve spent with him, when a text message comes through from my aunt Mally.

Aunt Mally: Hey, I just got word from your teacher that you’ve been sick and in your room for the day. Do I need to come get you?

My partner in crime and best friend aided and abetted my need to go see Wells by telling the teacher I was having bad cramps. Mr. Aims wanted to stay as far away from me and my menstrual cycle as he could get.

Me: I’m better. As a