LITMIR.BIZ

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sultry smile.

      She blushed and looked away quickly. She was a little taken aback by how much she enjoyed seeing him in such a flirty state.

      “Look,” she said. “I need to grab a shower. You’re welcome to anything in the fridge if you want breakfast. There’s not much there, though.”

      “Thanks,” he said, seemingly unable to take his eyes away from her.

      She left him in the kitchen and went into the bedroom, which the larger bathroom was connected to. She stripped down, turned on the water, and stepped into the shower. She almost felt like giggling over how the night had gone. It had made her feel like a teenager, enjoying the feeling of him there with her and feeling comfortable enough with him to know that he wasn’t going to pester her for sex. It had been romantic in an odd way and there had been two moments where she had nearly gone back on her claim of not sleeping with him. With a glee she was not used to, she secretly hoped he might decide to summon up the nerve to come join her under the water.

      If he does, all restraint is going out the window, she thought.

      She was just about done with her shower when she did indeed hear him enter the bathroom.

      Better late than never, she thought. Her entire body tensed up with excitement and she found herself instantly eager for him to join her.

      “Hey, Chloe?”

      “Yes?” she asked, a bit provocatively.

      “Your phone just rang. Maybe I was being nosy…but I looked. It was from the bureau line.”

      “Really? I wonder if something has come up…”

      She then heard the ringing of another cell phone. This one was closer, presumably in Moulton’s hand. Chloe peeked out of the shower, pulling the curtain slightly to the side. They exchanged a look before Moulton answered his phone.

      “This is Moulton,” he answered. He stepped back out of the bathroom and into her bedroom. Realizing why, Chloe turned off the water. She grabbed a towel from the rack and stepped out, grinning at him when he stared while she quickly wrapped the towel around her. Just because they had made out for about an hour and a half last night did not instantly mean she was okay with him seeing her completely naked.

      There wasn’t much of a conversation to eavesdrop on. It was mainly just Moulton listening and saying, “Okay…yes, sir…” a few times.

      The call lasted about a minute and when he was done, he comically poked his head into the bathroom.

      “Is it okay for me to come in?”

      Wrapped in a towel that covered all of her private spots, she nodded. “Yes. Who was that?”

      “That was Assistant Director Garcia. He said he tried to call you but you must have slept through it.” He smiled at her and then went on. “He said I should call you or come by and wake you up. There’s a case they want us on.”

      She chuckled as she stepped out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. “You think last night will affect the way we work together?”

      “It might cause me to sneak into your motel room after hours. Other than that…I don’t know. We’ll see.”

      “Would you pour me a cup of coffee? I need to get dressed.”

      “I was sort of hoping I could use your shower.”

      “Of course. Though it would have been nicer if you’d asked ten minutes ago when I was still in there.”

      “I’ll know better next time,” he said.

      As he went to the shower and Chloe started to get dressed, she realized that she was happy. Quite happy, in fact. Throwing a new case on top of all that had happened last night…it seemed as if her day had not been devastated by the sudden appearance of her father at all.

      But if living with such an estranged family history had taught her anything, it was that you never truly escaped it. One way or the other, it always seemed to catch up with you.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      At roughly the same moment Chloe was being reminded what it felt like to lose herself in a man, her sister was in the middle of a nightmare.

      Danielle Fine was dreaming about her mother again. It was a recurring dream she’d been having since the age of twelve or so—one that seemed to take on a different meaning with each stage of life Danielle entered into. The dream was always the same, never changing in detail or plot.

      In the dream, her mother was chasing her down a long hallway. Only, it was the version of her mother that she and Chloe had discovered that day as young girls. Bleeding, wide-eyed, and lifeless. For some reason, the dream had always assumed she’d broken a leg in the fall (even though there were no official reports of any kind that had ever suggested such a thing) so the dream version of her mother dragged herself across the floor in pursuit of her daughter.

      Despite the injury, her dead mother was always right on her heels, just a few fingertips away from grabbing her little ankle and pulling her down to the floor. Danielle ran away from the grisly vision in terror, her eyes cast to the end of the hallway. And there, standing in a doorway that seemed a universe away, was her father.

      He would always be kneeling, opening his arms to her with a huge smile on his face. But there was blood dripping from his hands and in a moment of dream-panic that always woke her up, Danielle would stop running, stuck between her dead mother and her maniacal father, unsure of which direction was the safest.

      It was no different now. The dream came to a crashing conclusion, jarring Danielle awake. She sat up in bed slowly, so accustomed to the dream now that she knew what it was even before she was fully awake. Groggily, she looked over to the clock and saw that it was only 11:30. She’d only been asleep for about an hour this time before the dream had come sneaking in.

      She lay back down, knowing that it would take a while before she’d be able to go back to sleep. She shook the dream away, having learned many years ago how to shut it out by reminding herself that there was nothing she could have done to keep her mother from dying. Even if she had come clean with all of her little secrets about things she had seen and heard and experienced in regards to her father’s toxic personality, there was nothing she could have said or done that would have kept her mother alive.

      She turned over and looked toward the bedside table. She almost reached for the phone to call Chloe. It had been three weeks since they’d last spoken. It had been tense and awkward and it had been her fault. She knew she had been projecting a lot of negativity toward Chloe, primarily because Chloe didn’t hate their father with the venom and angst that she did. It had been Danielle who had made the call three weeks ago, realizing that Chloe was waiting for her to make the next move since the last conversation they’d had before that had not gone so well—with Danielle practically telling her sister not to reach out.

      But she didn’t know Chloe’s schedule. She had no idea if 11:30 was too late. Truth be told, Danielle had been having trouble falling asleep before two in the morning as of late. Tonight was one of her rare nights off from the lounge and also a night where she was not needed for any sort of sign-offs or approvals for the renovation of the bar her boyfriend bought for her.

      She quickly pushed all thoughts of work out of her head as she searched for sleep. If she started thinking about work and everything on her plate, she would never get back to sleep.

      Once again, she thought of Chloe. She wondered what sorts of dreams and nightmares her sister had about their parents. She wondered if she was still hung up on the idea of freeing their father and, if so, whether she had decided to keep it to herself.

      Eventually, sleep caught back up to her. When it did, Danielle’s last thought was of her sister. She thought of Chloe and wondered if it was finally time to forgive and forget—to let the memories of their father stop roadblocking her from a meaningful relationship with Chloe.

      She was surprised at how happy the thought made her…so happy that when she did fall asleep again, there were the thinnest little traces of a smile on her face.

***

      The

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