Counterfeit Love

"For what?"

"For doing this. For coming with me. For forcing me to shake things up. For not fighting me when I wanted to take over last night. For holding me. For letting my little freak out roll off your back this morning. For not judging me for any of it. Thank you."

"Nothing to thank me for, Chris," I said, shaking my head.

"You're still sure you want to sign up for more of.. all this crazy?" she asked, waving a hand down at herself.

She was smiling as she said it.

And my lips curved up in response.

"I've never been more fucking sure of anything in my life, doll," I told her, watching as she beamed before turning her eyes to the road again.

I was telling the truth, too.

I was excited.

I wanted more.

I wanted everything she was willing to give me.

There was a pulling sensation in my chest that I didn't exactly recognize, but was starting to suspect was the beginning of something that everyone else worked toward in life, to something I had never given much thought to.

Love.

Sappy and not like me.

But true nonetheless.

Of course, I couldn't have known that there was something coming, something that was going to change everything, something that was going to threaten everything we had just barely started...Chapter ElevenChrisI should have expected the welcoming committee when I got back to Hailstorm.

I would have expected it if I had been thinking right. But, to be honest, I had driven the whole way home on autopilot, in a daze, alarmingly unaware of my surroundings.

Not because of the anxiety.

Nope.

This world was because when I'd parked outside of Finch's place to drop him off, he had leaned forward, gently framed my jaw with his hands, and given me a slow, tentative kiss. When he met no resistance, he deepened it, harder, more demanding, making every inch of me feel buzzy and warm, creating that chaos of attraction from head to toe yet again.

Then he pulled away, gave me one of his devilish smirks, told me he would call after he settled in, then grabbed his bag and was gone.

So that was why I wasn't in my right mind all the way back to Hailstorm. Even through parking and unpacking my car.

But news spread fast in a place like ours, and by the time I made it back to my room, shuffling all my bags with me, I opened the door to find my parents waiting for me.

"Oh, I know that look pretty well," Mom said, giving me a warm smile that made her eyes dance. "So, you had a good time with this Finch gentleman, did you?" she asked.

Finch would probably laugh at being called a gentleman, but there was no denying that was exactly what he was. This man who was patient as could be with me, who was willing to be even more patient in the future.

"Lo," my father said under his breath, trying to cover it with a cough, but trying to get Mom back on point.

"Right. So. We have a question."

Oh, God.

I really hoped they weren't about to ask me about sex. That would be incredibly uncomfortable.

"Okay," I said, shrugging my purse off my shoulder.

"We heard chatter this morning. Underground chatter, mind you. But we heard some chatter about someone being killed in their pedo shed."

She knew?

Not about his death, that was perfectly like my mother to know.

But she knew about the connection to me?

How?

"I knew a lot about the people who took you, Chris. They were the types who had been on our radar for years. Once it all... went down, once you came to live with us, I put your Aunt Janie on this hard. And you know Janie..."

I did.

My Aunt Janie was the only person I knew who truly understood what I had been through, having been in a similar situation herself. And much like me, Lo took a very young Janie in, helped her heal, trained her. And she got one of the world's best hackers out of the deal. So if Aunt Janie knew about some traffickers, if she knew what they had done to me, she would not rest until she found them, found the people they were connected to.

"Yeah, I know how she works," I agreed, nodding. She went days on end without sleeping, drinking too many energy drinks, avoiding everything else until she got what she wanted.

"So she came across some names. She looked into them. She found out the sick shit they were into. We pieced it together. Michael. And some other people. We didn't come to you with it because we knew you needed time and space from it. And then, well, you never came to us about it. Not really. So we just sat on it, figuring maybe you didn't know who they were, didn't want to know. We were wrong."