Darker the Release by Claire Kent Page A

and pressed a kiss into her hair. “I don’t take naps.”
    “Well, you should. They’re very nice.” She stretched out against him and wrapped one arm around him, suddenly wishing desperately that they didn’t have this immovable obstacle between them.
    It would be so nice. To be close to him like this. Just a simple Saturday afternoon.
    No more lies or secrets.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked, one hand running down the length of her loose hair.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You got tense.”
    “Nothing. Not really. Just…” She didn’t want to lie to him. It felt wrong in a way she couldn’t articulate. She wanted to tell him the truth, so she managed to find the truest thing she could say. “It just feels complicated sometimes.”
    “What does?”
    “Us. Our relationship.”
    He didn’t reply immediately, but she could tell he was thinking about what she’d said. He proved it by eventually murmuring, “I guess it is complicated. We’re not easy people—either one of us.”
    “No,” she sighed. “I just sometimes wish…we were.”
    “You mean be like other people? Everyone has some sort of complications.”
    “I know. But I think we take complicated to a new level. With all our baggage, I mean.”
    “Any time you’d like to unload any of that baggage,” he murmured, very softly, “I’m happy to hear what you have to say.”
    She sighed, realizing it still bothered him that she was keeping secrets from him, even though he had no idea about the worst of her secrets.
    He wanted to hear about the fictional Albanian gangster that she’d supposedly had a relationship with in the past and who had trouble taking no for an answer.
    She couldn’t tell him about that, though, because it would be nothing but a lie.
    She was so tired of lying. She didn’t want to do it anymore.
    And she wanted to know the truth from him. She needed to know he was innocent.
    “I saw my dad die,” she heard herself saying.
    She felt his body tighten beside her. “What? When?”
    “When I was a kid.” She cleared her throat, knowing she couldn’t give him too many details or he could possibly put them together into her identity. But she needed to share something with him, and this was the deepest thing in her life. And maybe she could tell from his expression whether anything in the story hit home with him—not proof of his innocence but at least some clue to give her direction. “It was a…a hunting accident. But I was with him. He was shot, and I saw him die.”
    Caleb was silent for a long time, but his arm had tightened around her. “The woods,” he breathed at last. “That’s why you’re scared of the woods.”
    “Yeah.” Her voice broke, since it was so hard to talk about, even under the false pretense. “Sometimes I feel like I…I’ve never really gotten past that day, that my whole life just circles around it.”
    “That kind of trauma, when you’re young, it’s not surprising. That’s why you’ve not had many close relationships?”
    “I don’t think I’ve had any close relationships. Except with Reese, my best friend.”
    “And me,” he added, nuzzling her hair.
    “And you.” She stroked his chest over his shirt and realized how true this was.
    “What about your mom?”
    “I was never really close to her, and it got worse after my dad died. She couldn’t get over his death.”
    “When did she die?”
    She was about to correct him but caught herself just in time. He knew she was adopted, so naturally he assumed both her parents were dead. Knowing her mom was alive would be one clue too many. “Less than a year after my dad.”
    “Was it…was it suicide?”
    It made perfect sense—would explain two deaths in a short amount of time. So she just nodded.
    Her mom might as well have died the year after her father had.
    Caleb didn’t say anything, didn’t offer any superficial platitudes. It was a relief, since anything he said wouldn’t have come close to answering the way