It was barely perceptible, however, I didn’t miss as his face softened. His eyes were still skeptical, but there was something else there too. Hope? Relief? Excitement? Whatever it was, it was all I needed to forge ahead.
“Remember when we met in high school?” I asked. “I never told you this, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you that night. You were so tall and handsome. A man in a sea of boys. I’d wanted to maybe ask you out, but then we kind of fell into the friends routine and I didn’t want to lose you, so I pushed those feelings away.”
His eyes rolled, but when he didn’t stop me, I knew I had him.
“You know how I always call you my big teddy bear? It’s not very sexy, I know, but it kind of is to me.” I pulled my bottom lip in between my teeth and shrugged. “There’s just something sexy about knowing a man can protect you. And I always knew that I’d be safe with you.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up in a grin as he turned his attention back to the road. “Sexy, huh?”
The phone buzzed again, and with Mark’s attention diverted, I took the opportunity to glance down. Sweet relief sang in my veins as I saw Bowen’s name light across the screen, and for the first time since I’d woken up in his truck, hope sprang inside me.
He knew. Thank you, God. He knew.
Bowen knew I was missing. There was no other reason for him to call Mark.
I couldn’t remember everything in our past, but in the few months we’d been together this go-around, history had taught me if Bowen had even an inkling something was amiss, he would be looking for me.
And if he was looking for me, he wouldn’t stop until he found me.
Once again, tears filled my eyes and I blinked hard to push them back. But the tears that threatened to overtake me were those of joy.
This was my chance.
This might be my only chance.
With a steady breath and a hard swallow, I leaned across the console and rested my cheek on Mark’s shoulder, a whisper escaping my lips. “You’re very sexy.”
Nerves vibrated inside me, my whole body trembling.
I had one chance.
One fucking chance.
I’d heard the stories of how Bowen had saved my life time and time again.
I could only pray he had one last ace up his sleeve.
Leaning my upper body across the center console, I wrapped my arms around Mark’s shoulders, but not before I dragged my hand across his cell phone in the cupholder, my finger swiping the screen to answer the call.
Bowen
Three rings.
That was all it took for my heart to stop beating in my chest. Not that it was truly beating after we’d found blood on the ground.
When one of the many calls I’d made that day finally connected, I nearly passed out as Remi’s voice floated across the line. “I should have told you.”
“Where the hell are you?” I barked, unable to keep the panic at bay any longer.
Her quiet laugh was all I got in answer.
“Remi?”
Her voice was smooth and even, but she wasn’t talking to me. “I’m telling you now, Mark. I am in love with you.”
My back shot straight. What the fucking fuck? Mark? She was in love with Mark? How was that possible?
The question died on my lips as her next words punched me in the gut.
“You didn’t have to take me. Not the first time or now. I would have happily gone anywhere with you if only you’d told me how you felt about me sooner.”
The brief reprieve I’d felt from hearing her voice vanished as my mind tried to process what the hell I was hearing now.
He’d taken her? Twice?
A vise cranked down on my chest as over a year and a half’s worth of puzzle pieces started to click into place.
He loved her. He was the one who’d kidnapped her the first time. Remi wasn’t the one who’d been spooked when I’d asked her to move in with me. It had been Mark. It had been Mark all a-fucking-long.
He was the reason this whole nightmare had begun in the first place.
He was the reason I’d nearly lost her to suicide.
He was the reason I’d lost her after the crash.
And now this motherfucker had her again?
Fury, white hot and damn near searing, shot through me.
“Hey, Bowen,” Aaron called out. “The cops want to know what time she left your house?”
With lightning-fast reflexes, I muted my end of the phone while shaking my head hard in his direction. I couldn’t risk Mark hearing us and ending the call before I could figure out how the hell I was going to save her.
I couldn’t speak. I just waved him over as I put the call on speaker.
He trotted over, confusion lining his face, his phone held to his ear. “Did you get ahold of Mark?” he asked, nodding toward the phone in my hand.
