I nodded then headed into the kitchen, past the empty motel rooms, and finally to the stairs. Here goes nothing. My boots were nearly silent, but each step reverberated throughout my body. I reached the top and paused, the familiar hallway stretching out before me. I suddenly found the air oppressive and heavy, my lungs seemingly having to work twice as hard to function. Just as I took a step forward, towards whatever fate awaited me, Dalton’s door swung open, and he stepped into the hallway. I froze.
He didn’t see me at first. His head was down, hand tugging on a hoodie sleeve as he moved toward the stairs. But when he looked up, he stopped dead. My eyes raked over him, taking in the stubble of a beard. The bags under his eyes. The bruise across his jawline. Holy crap, he looked awful. And it was my fault. Those last two words rang in my head over and over. All of it. Mine.
His eyes locked onto mine, wide with shock and something deeper. Something buried. His lips parted like he meant to say my name, but then snapped shut like he thought better of it.
He turned his head slightly, towards his brother’s room, his voice calm but low and urgent. “Mac,” he called, “You better get out here.”
My eyes snapped to the other closed door, and then Mac stepped into the hallway, shirtless, sweatpants slung low on his hips, clearly mid-workout or maybe trying to outrun his own thoughts. His abdomen was slick with a thin sheen of sweat. When he saw me, his whole body stilled. Then the storm hit. His expression twisted, raw fury bleeding through every line of his face.
“What the hell is this?” he snapped. “No one called 911, cop. You’re notwanted here.”
I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t afford to. Wasn’t sure I had the right to.
“Mac, Dalton… please. I came to talk,” I said, voice level despite the ache clawing at my throat.
“Talk?” Mac laughed—a sharp, bitter sound. “Nowyou want to talk? After you lied to us for over a year? After you tore our lives apart and walked away without a goddamn word?”
“Oh, don’t discount that bullshit note she left behind.”
I glanced at Dalton, then back at Mac. “I had to—”
“Youchoseto,” he growled, stepping closer. “Don’t twist it. There is no had to. You made a conscious fucking decision. And you chose to leave us behind. To live the lie.”
“I’m not here to make excuses,” I said quietly. “I know what I did. I know how much it cost. But I’m here because I couldn’t stay away. Because I love you. Both of you. And I want, more than anything to explain—”
Dalton guffawed, and Mac’s jaw clenched hard enough I could see the muscle tick. Dalton frowned at me. “I’m not falling for you or your bullshit again. You’ve got some nerve coming back here and talking about love like that fixes anything,” he muttered. “You don’t just get to drop in and expect forgiveness.”
He strolled past Mac into the bedroom, and then Mac turned his back on me too, slamming the door so hard the walls rattled. Damn it all to hell. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. But I had come this far. I walked over to the door they had shut in my face, fists clenched at my sides. My heart thundered against my ribs like it was trying to break free. For a minute, I just stared at the grain of the wood. Willing myself not to tuck tail and run. I was better than that. They deserved answers. Finally, I knocked.
No answer.
I knocked again, harder this time.
“Please,” I said,my voice cracking. “Please just… just listen.”
Nothing.
“I know I don’t deserve it. I know that. But I need you to hear me. I need you to know the truth. I—” My throat tightened, and then I tossed out the only card I had left to play. “Mia Huntington. Anastasia Little. Gabriella Santiago. Kelly MacIntyre. Ruby Johnson.”
There was a long pause. Then the latch clicked. The door opened just a few inches—just enough for me to see Dalton’s eyes, shadowed with something unreadable. He stepped aside without a word, leaving the door wide enough for me to slip in. The room hit me like a punch to the gut. It was familiar—same paint, same shelves, same bed—but it looked like a storm had rolled through. The same storm that had gone through my house. Clothes were scattered, drawers half-open. The sheets were twisted, the floor littered with half-empty bottles of whiskey and a broken picture frame.
Mac stood in the far corner with his arms crossed and his eyes on the floor. Dalton leaned against the dresser, watching. Guarded. Then he said, “You wanna explain the names you dropped like they meant something?”
I stepped further in, careful not to disturb anything, even though everything already felt broken. My hands still shook, but I didn’t try to hide it anymore. “When I was a detective, before I took this assignment, those are the names of the five little girls that went missing in Charleston. My partner Shelly and I were hitting fucking dead ends at every turn. It was like these kids just vanished. You ever have to knock on a mother’s door, and tell her that you still haven’t found her baby? It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. The Feds told me it was the DiAngelos, a name I had only heard in passing before. They gave me a chance, and I had to take it.”
I continued in a voice barely above a whisper. “When I first met you both, I didn’t expect any of this. It wassupposed to be a job. I was supposed to get in, get what we needed to take the DiAngelos down, and leave.”
I looked at Mac. He didn’t lift his gaze.
“But then I got to know you. The club. Holly and Maria. Everyone. I saw the things you were doing—saving people, protecting them when no one else would. And I saw you. Both of you. And suddenly, the lines I was supposed to follow didn’t make sense anymore. Things didn’t feel so black and white.”
Still nothing. But neither of them had left, so I kept going. “I tried to keep it professional. I tried to remember my mission. But it didn’t matter. Every day I spent with you, every time I woke up between you, every laugh at the dinner table, every damn ride on the back of our bikes—I was falling in love. Not with an assignment. Not with the job. With you.”
Dalton’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t interrupt.
“I never meant to lie to you. But I couldn’t tell you the truth, either. If I had, I would’ve ruined everything. I was trapped between duty and my heart, and I made choices I have to live with now. I’ll carry that guilt for the rest of my life.”
Mac finally looked up, his eyes red-rimmed, his voice hoarse. “And we’re just supposed to what? Forgive you? Let you back in like nothing happened? I get why you did it…Katie. It’s not that. But you used us. You used the people we cared most about.”
