Page 36

The funny thing about promises is sometimes they’re kept. I mean, a lot of the time they’re not, but when they are, it speaks volumes to the giver’s character.

What’s wild is when you’ve been through Hell and back, rescued from the depths, and have been hanging on to your sanity with the nubs of nails bitten down to the quick only to discover that the promise you’ve thought was nothing more than a dream, was in fact given freely and was wholly honored.

The voice from my dreams belongs to Teague.

The scent that has always inexplicably calmed me is his.

The kind man who held me so carefully, so reverently, is the man who feeds me sorbet.

Tig, who killed men to rescue me from a fate my father willingly bestowed upon me, who threatened anyone who caused me pain, is Teague, the man who has cared for me gently, softly, fully since the funeral for Winnie’s parents.

“How…” I search for the question I want to ask first. There are so, so many rushing to the tip of my tongue, but I shove them down. I need to be careful, deliberate in how I approach the ever-expanding mountains of hows and whys so I don’t send myself into a spiral of overwhelm.

“When I lived with the L’Oursons, after the hospital…” I shake my head as a different question forces itself to the surface. “The hospital? Therapy—did you…?”

“I didn’t force it, but I made it possible for you to go for as long as I was able. I wanted you to get the help you needed.”

“But…but… they pushed me out. Told me I was okay to leave. To go live my life and they put me out of my…my…my room?” My brain is making bets that my mouth can’t quite cover, bringing my stutter up from the depths.

“And Winnie was there to take you home with her. She was there far quicker than made sense, yeah? One of the nurses called her to let her know and kept an eye on you until she arrived,” Teague fills in for me.

There is nothing but sincerity painting his features, so I go back to my first question.

“Henri and Claudette never touched me. They didn’t”—I swallow the urge to get caught on the consonants stacked together, controlling my breath until I can continue. “They let me be. Didn’t push me into their stable, make me work at the Honey Pot to pay them for living there. Was that you?”

Teague rolls his bottom lip between his teeth and nods. “I made sure Henri knew farming you out was not an option. I watched him closely and made sure it was me who took care of his drops and exchanges for les Milieu. Every time he saw me, it served as a reminder not to test how deep my commitment to your safety ran. Winnie’s too, but you became my paramount concern, and I made sure to stop by often.”

His confession hits me like a freight train, and it takes a few quiet moments to absorb the impact. The beautiful thing is that he honors that and allows me to just…be. Even when I couldn’t see him, didn’t know he existed, he was looking out for me. That’s a lot to take in. A lot to process. How many times was I upstairs in Winnie’s room, hiding in the closet or in the corner behind her bed? And all that time, he was right there…

I stare at him, my gaze bouncing left and right, from one eye to the other, and pull in a lungful of air. Jesus, he smells good. And with that thought, I blink slowly, once and then again.

“Were you there? At-at Winnie’s house? The day her parents died?” Could he be the one who killed them? I mean they were dancing with the devil well before then, but never that close.

His jaw works back and forth before he asks, “Did you see me?”

“I heard…heard voices. Heard… I don’t know, it wasn’t an argument, b-but none of the voices were Henri’s or-or-or Claudette’s.” I search for some kind of a sign, a smirk, a nod, a twitch of his brow… I get nothing. He gives absolutely nothing away. “But I think I would remember if it were you. I think… I think…” Shit, I don’t know what I think anymore. None of this makes sense.

“I was there twice that day,” he admits carefully.

“Twice?”

“But I never said a word.”

“Then how…? How… I feel like I knew. Like I recognized…” I shake my head trying to make sense of everything and I can’t. It just doesn’t want to come together for me, but this has happened to me a lot since I was taken. My brain fights me, doesn’t always want to make the connections that are right there.

Frustrated, I drop my head to his chest, burrowing against his warm skin, and inhaling. I pray that something clicks. That just one of those little neurons will fire and give me what I need.

“Hummingbird?”

Recognition jerks me upright. “You were there,” I say with more conviction than I’ve felt in a long time. “You were there. You… I…”

“You what?”

“Your cologne, I remember it. It was lingering, close to the foot of the stairs. That’s why I didn’t completely fall apart when I saw…saw that they were dead.”

His chin dips, finally giving me the acknowledgment I’ve been searching for.

“I checked on them, saw that they weren’t moving, that they were dead and then…and then…and then I”—realization slams through me—“I ran up to Winn’s room, then back to the stairs. I sat on the landing and tried to breathe like they taught me in therapy. I stayed there where I could see them. I felt safest there.”