When someone reached up and pulled me down off the planter, I first thought it was Derek.
Until I looked up and saw it was my nightmare come true.
His grip was iron as he pulled me close to his chest.
“How did you find me?” I breathed.
And then wondered why I bothered asking.
Of course he’d found me.
The real question was how I’d ever believed I could get away?
I closed my eyes and felt myself slipping. Detaching. Stepping back from my body, and watching myself from the outside with all the numb disinterest of a bystander. I knew it. I always knew it.
Killian’s hand closing tighter around my wrist felt almost right. I felt the soothing surrender of the inevitable.
Why fight? Fighting makes it hurt more. Just let it happen and then it will be over.
The last three months drained away like someone had pulled a plug. Or like waking from a dream. I blinked, and blinked again, but the life I’d built away from him was already going fuzzy.
“What the hell did you do to your hair?” Killian snarled.
Like the picture adjusting on an old TV set, reality snapped back into focus. I touched my hair - my real hair - with my other hand…
And then wrenched myself free of his grip. “Let go of me, Killian!”
And suddenly, Derek was there.