Drake had vanished.
The reporters had stayed close.
But not as close as Noah.
Noah cleared his throat and said, “And they’re letting Ethan go to the funeral.”
She looked up. They weren’t in the suite now. Instead, they were working in one of the offices downstairs. They’d spent the morning going over blueprints for the Washington restaurant addition. Talking marketing. PR. Noah wanted to open the roof-top restaurant with a bang on New Year’s Eve. Throw a huge party and—
“Claire.”
She swallowed and focused on him. She’d already known that Ethan was being allowed to attend the funeral.
“You’re wearing a mask, Claire. Talk to me.” He caught her hands. Pulled Claire to her feet.
“What do you want me to say?” There wasn’t anything to say. She wasn’t going to pretend some sort of grief for the senator’s death. It was wrong, but she felt relief now that he was being buried.
He can’t hurt me anymore.
“I want you to talk to me.” The words were hard, but his hands were light on her. “Claire, it’s me. I won’t judge anything you say. Just…talk to me.”
“I’m scared.” There. She’d said it.
His hold tightened on her.
“I saw on the news that the Alabama governor was granting some sort of special release for Ethan.” A temporary hardship release or some other kind of bull. “I don’t like knowing that he’s out there, free, not even for a second.” She wanted him locked away behind as many bars as possible.
“He won’t touch you.”
His gruff words sounded like a vow, but Noah didn’t understand. “That’s what my parents told me, too.” She pulled away from him. Headed to the nearby window. Stared out at the city. “They told me I’d be safe. That Ethan wouldn’t hurt me again. That I could just walk away from him.”
Behind her, Noah swore.
“I wasn’t safe. Even with a restraining order on him, he came after me. He killed them, and he found me.”
He’d told her that when he first found her on the dock. Been so proud.
“He watched me in that courtroom. Watched me like he owned me.” She’d been sixteen. So terrified. “And when I left the courthouse each day, there’d be people outside, yelling at me. Calling me so many names. There’d be spray paint on my house. People were believing his story. I thought…” This was the part that twisted her insides, but saying it out loud…I have to do it. “I thought Ethan was going to get away with what he’d done.”
Noah’s hands wrapped around her shoulders. He turned her around and forced Claire to face him. “He didn’t.”
“I thought he was, though, and I knew if he got free, he’d come after me.” She looked down at her wrists. Covered by her long sleeves. Always covered so carefully. “So I took the razor.” A hard smile lifted her lips. “I made sure I cut myself just the right way, and I waited to die in the same house that my parents had died in.”
His hold on her was bruising.
“I know it was weak,” she said, voice husky, “but I was sixteen, and so scared, and death was better than having to see him again.”
He yanked her against his chest. She could feel the mad drumming of his heart.
His scent wrapped around her. His arms held her close. She felt safe there, in his embrace. Once, she’d thought that she’d never be safe.
“You won’t see him again,” Noah promised her. “He’s going back to jail.”
But one day, Ethan would get out, for good. In five years, eight months, and seven days. Yes, she knew exactly how much time he had left to serve.
“Sara found you, didn’t she?” Noah asked her.
Claire pulled away from him, just a little bit. “She came home early.” Her big sister. Older by four years. “She saved me. She got there in time.” Her lips trembled as she thought of Sara’s recent death…and how she’d just been minutes too late to save the one person in this world that she loved. “I couldn’t do the same for her.”
Claire had lost everyone that she loved.
So much pain. Sometimes, she felt as if it were choking her.
His lips brushed against her forehead. “We’re getting the f**k out of here,” he said.
Claire blinked. “What?”
“I’ve got a place in the Hamptons. We’re going to the beach. You’re going to drink wine with me, and you’re going to relax on that beach—even if it is getting a bit cold now—and you’re not going to think about death, Senator Harrison, or that ass**le Ethan.” He tipped up her chin. “You’re only going to think about me. Got it? Me…and you…and the way we can make each other feel.”
“But…the Washington hotel, the restaurant—”
“Will still be there when we come back. We’re leaving, Claire. Because you’re alive, I’m alive, and the rest of the world can just screw off.”
***
He hated funerals. Particularly this funeral.
The overdone mourning. All the fake tears. The talk about the “good” man that had been taken too soon.
Such bullshit.
Drake Archer shifted beneath the hanging branches of the old oak tree. Spanish moss clung to the sprawling branches, and the moss blew lightly in the faint breeze.
It was a packed funeral, but Drake had expected nothing less. Old senators, law enforcement personnel, reporters…and, of course, just the curious had turned out for this event.
It’s like a freaking circus show.
Noah hadn’t asked Drake to attend the funeral. After he’d left New York, Drake had actually planned to just head back to Biloxi, but the funeral in Fairview had been too close for him to pass up. Maybe he was just curious, too.
Or maybe I’m a suspicious bastard, and I wanted to see Ethan Harrison with my own eyes.
Because the guy was there. Not wearing prison orange, but instead dressed in a black suit. Drake sure never would’ve guessed that man had spent the last nine years in a cell.
It turned out there were actually two Harrison boys. Ethan Harrison, and his older brother, Austin. Ethan was the black sheep, but the brother who currently sat beside him on the front row, right next to the casket, well, it seemed Austin Harrison was supposed to be the savior of the family.
He was an attorney, some big corporate deal. Drake had done a little digging, and he’d discovered that Austin was the one who’d kept the family afloat for so many years. After the senator had crashed and burned, it had been Austin who made sure the family never lost their position in Alabama society.