Page 191 of Secret Obsession
“You keep six feet away from her at all times, and we won’t have problems,” I seethe. “I can’t leave you alone for a fucking minute, can I? You just—”
“He was apologizing,” Willow says from behind me.
I spin toward her.
Her blue eyes are bright with unshed tears. “He was just apologizing, Miles, it’s okay.”
“It’s not.” I glower at him.
Knox looks… maybe not dejected, but certainly not happy. He mutters something, rubbing the back of his neck, and leaves the kitchen without a word.
Dad watches me passively, but he returns to cooking dinner without a comment.
The lightheartedness from just a few moments ago seems broken.
Willow rises, taking my hand and pulling me into her. To my astonishment, she tips her head back and starts singing the Frank Sinatra song my dad was howling. She’s got a much,muchlovelier voice, and I don’t resist the urge to sweep her into a dance.
A smile cracks her lips, even while she sings, for the first time in over a week.
Anything to distract her.
Or to make it better.
* * *
“I took care of the body.”
I face my brother.
After dinner, Mom tasked me with starting the fire. S’mores are on the menu, apparently, and the weather is just tolerable enough to be outside around the fire pit.
Willow is inside, shoulder to shoulder with my mom cleaning dishes.
“How’d you find it?” I finally ask, stuffing my hands in my pockets.
Daniel Freeman. He was the last missing piece, which Caleb Asher—Willow’s lawyer—recommended we take care offast. I don’t know who told him the full story. Willow or Steele, who recommended him, or maybe Knox.
All I know is that it wasn’t me, but I did get a phone call from him late one night, saying that my best bet for not getting roped into any of this was to make it disappear.
Yeah, some lawyer.
Knox shrugs. “I went back through the conversations with the brother.”
Conversations, plural. Because the asshole called him after I was dragged out of the rental car, and then again once he had Willow.
“He wanted to make you pay,” he says quietly. “The grief had driven him mad. All I could think about this past week was where he might put his dead brother. Where I might put you, if someone had killed you.”
Gruesome. I wrinkle my nose and wave my hand for him to continue.
“Willow told Greyson and Steele that he mentioned framing her after the fact. After you were…” He swallows.
Guess he can’t saydead. Of course, that reminds me that I had a gun pointed at my forehead, and my ear is still ringing as my eardrum repairs itself. I came out of that basement with bruised ribs, a ruptured eardrum, and some scrapes and scratches. Oh, and a concussion from the car crash.
I faired better than Willow, whose toxicology results showed lingering drugs in her system. They set her up with an IV to help her body flush it. A doctor stitched the cut on her forehead, too, so cleanly the scar will be nearly invisible.
“He had him in Willow’s car,” he finally says.
My eyes almost bug out.
