“Except he didn’t come home last night after work,” he answered me before I could ask. “So... I don’t know where he is at the moment.”
When a soft tap came to the apartment door, I gasped. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. It was Knox. I lurched to my feet and glanced around wildly, thinking there had to be a way to prepare. I probably looked like shit with my hair uncombed and the first clothes I’d snagged in the dark to change into. I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee for the day.
But everything was happening regardless.
Pick was leaving the kitchen to answer the knock, so I rushed after him. His body blocked my view as he opened the door, but I could tell from the set of his shoulders and how he let out a relieved breath who he was greeting.
“So you decided to come back.”
“I guess I really don’t have anywhere else to go.” The low, gravelly voice I’d heard the night before filled the apartment and made me shiver.
“Well, come on in.”
Pick stepped back and opened the door wider. Still wearing the same tight black T-shirt from the night before, Knox kept his face lowered and took a step forward, until he looked up and saw me.
He jerked back into the hallway, and seared Pick with an accusing glance. “What—?”
Pick lifted his hands, claiming innocence. “She just showed up. I had no idea she was coming by.”
I gaped at Pick for taking Knox’s side, as if he wouldn’t have let me in if he’d known I was coming over, or if Knox had been here. And why the hell did Knox not want to see me?
Clenching my teeth as hurt anger filled my veins, I narrowed my eyes.
How dare he? How dare he run from me after six years, after I waited for him for most of that time, and missed him, and kept loving him? How dare he not even want to see me?
I marched forward, thrusting Julian at his father as I kept my gaze fixed on Knox. “Excuse us a minute.” Grabbing the door, I pulled it shut behind me and closed it in Pick’s face as he scrambled to catch his kid.
But once I was alone in the hallway with the stranger claiming to be Knox, my anger died.
The uncertainty grew.
He’d changed so much. His hair was shaved close; it made his head appear to be shaped different. The beard scruff he sported hid a lot, but I could still tell he’d grown some harder angles to his jaw and cheekbones.
Though his face had lost some baby fat and grown lean, his body mass had practically doubled. And it was all muscle, pure, steel bulging muscle. They were so freaking big, they seemed to obstruct his mobility until he didn’t move quite as smoothly as he used to.
Nothing, absolutely nothing looked the same, except maybe the eyes. I hadn’t gotten a very good look at them in the darkness of the bar last night, but what I’d seen of them then had made them appear black.
Now, in the full light, they were brown again and I could finally recognize some of my Knox, except only the color and shape were the same. They kind of had a dead expression to them now, or maybe severely broken, like something in him was damaged beyond repair.
Pain deep in my stomach knotted my guts into tight bundles.
What the hell had he been through?
My gaze moved back up to his face. “I didn’t recognize you last night,” was all I could think to say.
It felt like the stupidest comment in the world, but what else was I supposed to say? Hey, long time no see? I missed you like crazy? I still think about you every day? I can’t seem to stop loving you, no matter how hard I try?
Yeah, so not going to happen.
“I noticed,” he said, and God, even his voice was all wrong. There were little hoarse gaps, making it gravelly and deep.
I swallowed, unable to read him at all. He didn’t sound rude...or sweet, for that matter. He was just...indifferent.
Which killed me.
There was nothing inside me indifferent about seeing him. I was a disaster. My heart thumped with all kinds of crazy, my palms sweated with nerves, and my arms ached to reach for him, to just...hug him.
It’d been six years since he’d hugged me, and no one hugged the way Knox Parker hugged.