trying to find psionic people. Doing his job. He walked by your dad at a coffee shop and sensed he had some kind of psionic ability.” Tristan sighed and rubbed his eyes. “So the APR sent Dennis and his recruitment team to your house to talk to him. If they found evidence of psionics, they planned to invite him to the APR for testing and possible employment. While Dennis was outside talking to you, his team went inside to talk to your parents. He put you in his car when he heard what was happening in your house.”
I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “And what, exactly, was happening in my house?”
“Your parents were killing his partners, Tessa. He was just trying to keep you safe. Then he went inside to help his team, but it was too late. Your parents attacked him, too. Your mom gave him a heart attack. He barely escaped alive.”
The cell fell silent.
His words echoed in my mind, each one like a punch to the chest. I stumbled to the wall and sank to the floor as waves of dizziness brought back the fog. “Liar,” I managed to squeak, before the fog took me away.
* * *
“Tessa?” Tristan’s voice broke through the fog.
I didn’t move. I wanted—needed—to stay in the fog for a while longer.
“I need to tell you something else. About Dennis.”
“No more.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m holding anything back.”
“I can’t handle anything else right now. Please.”
“Okay. When you’re ready.”
* * *
We hadn’t moved in hours, it seemed. I remained huddled in a ball in the corner. Tristan sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, head hung low.
Finally he took a deep breath. “Tess—”
“Don’t say it.”
“I need to—”
“I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it. Please don’t say it.”
But whether he said it or not, I already knew what he wanted to tell me. Forbidding him to say the words wasn’t going to change it.
I gave a stuttery sigh of defeat. “He’s your father, isn’t he?”
Please, please tell me I’m wrong.
But he didn’t. He just nodded. “Dennis Connelly is my father.”
Perhaps knowing I was about to cry, he opened his arms in an offer of comfort. I shook my head and pulled myself into a tighter ball and cried alone.
* * *
“How did you know?” Tristan asked from the cot when my tears had slowed to sniffles.
I sniffled one more time. “Back in your kitchen. Kellan called you Junior.”
“Ah.”
I put my head on my knees. I just wanted to go back in time, back to Winterball. I wanted to go back to the running path. Back to laying on his bed with his head on my stomach.
But there was no going back. I was here, locked in a cell with the son of Dennis Connelly.
Tristan was the son of the man who’d tried to kill me. The son of the man who’d chased my family out of thirteen homes in eight years. The son of the man who would soon come and finish the job he started.
I was in love with Tristan Connelly.
“Oh God...” Dennis Connelly’s son leaped off the cot and scooped me up, rushing me to the bathroom and bending me over the toilet just in time. He knew I was going to throw up before I did.
He held my hair back as I vomited for the second time since Kellan had kidnapped me.
No, the third. I had a flash of screaming, screaming so long and so hard I choked and threw up all over his white shirt with the pink embroidered horse, and started screaming again.
But now I was too tired, too broken, to scream anymore. I coughed the last of the vomit from my mouth, and he handed me a plastic cup of water from the sink. “Sip and spit.”
I did, and he guided me back to the main cell. He tried to bring me to the cot, but I pulled away and slunk back to my corner. “Just leave, Tristan. I don’t want you here.”
He walked away but only to sit on the cot again. “I’m not leaving you.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The door to the cell slid open and I startled, lowering the fog, certain it was Dennis Connelly. But it was just a guard, holding a plastic tray. A gun hung in a holster on his belt. I’d seen him before somewhere; his yellow spiky hair looked familiar. I raised the fog again but kept it close.
Spiky Hair nodded to the tray. “Breakfast.”
Breakfast. It was the next day. I’d been in this cell for over twenty-four hours.
Tristan took the tray and placed it on the cot. “Thanks.”
“Congrats on the mission, Connelly,” Spiky Hair said. “Nice job.” His gaze flickered to me in the corner.
Tristan’s face reddened. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
The guard left, the door sealing itself shut behind him. Tristan held out a plate for me, but I shook my head. “How do I know it’s not poisoned?” I was imprisoned by a killer, after all.
He took a large scoop of scrambled eggs from one plate and ate it, then did the same with the other. “Nope. Not poisoned.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and moved from the floor up to the chair. He placed the plate on my lap. I looked with distaste at the eggs, toast and orange slices. “Are my parents getting the same meal?” Mom would hate this breakfast. Rubbery yellow eggs and white bread. She would’ve used egg whites and whole grain.
“They’re probably still unconscious. It takes a long time to neutralize someone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Their psionic abilities are being taken away.”
“You mean, so they can’t escape?”
“And so they can’t hurt anyone.” He looked pointedly at me, as if silently adding, So your mother can’t fly you into a wall anymore.
I blinked. “She didn’t mean to hurt me, Tristan.”
He swallowed his eggs. “I know.”
“She would never hurt anyone. There’s no way my parents did any of the things you said.”
He said nothing
