The Blonde Identity: A Novel

Zoe didn’t know how long she laid there, looking at the fire, feeling the rise and fall of Sawyer’s chest beneath her cheek and marveling at how soft his skin was. Because, seriously, his skin was really, really soft, which made no sense whatsoever for such a hard man who had probably never owned a skincare product in his life.

But she couldn’t keep her fingers from running through the light dusting of hair on his chest, over the ridges of the muscles.

Exhaustion wrapped around her, pressing her down. But she also felt like she might float away. Both. At the same time. She didn’t try to understand it. She just wanted it to last. Because, for the first time since she woke up on the snowy ground, Zoe didn’t care about her past or her memories. She didn’t want to know who she’d been or what she’d done or all the ways she’d almost died.

She just wanted this. She just wanted now. She just wanted him.

So she laid there, trying not to fall asleep because she wanted the night to last as long as possible. She wanted it to last forever.

She was just starting to calculate how much soup and vodka they’d need to never leave the mountain when she heard—

“My mother was a genius.” Sawyer’s voice was barely louder than the crackling of the fire and somehow Zoe knew not to ask any questions. “If she’d been a man, she probably would have been recruited by NASA, Harvard, MIT . . . But she ended up at this tiny university no one cared about, researching the electromagnetic spectrum. She was so far ahead of her time—so far out of their league—that the men in her department tried to deny her tenure because they couldn’t even comprehend what she was doing. Cell towers. Satellites. Signal Intelligence . . .” He spat out the last two words like they were bitter.

“Her work changed everything. But the men around her never understood that. Until, one day, she met a man who did. He was handsome and charming and he told her she was beautiful . . . He showed an interest in her work and told her she was brilliant . . . He told her all the right things. Because my mother was a genius . . .” He drew a haggard breath. “And my father was a spy.”

Zoe’s first instinct was to bolt upright and ask a million questions, but Sawyer pressed a kiss to the top of her head and traced circles on her back and, somehow, she knew the story wasn’t over.

“I saw him once a year. Here.” He gestured to the dark and dusty cabin. “He won this place playing cards in Monte Carlo, so it was never on any records. Which meant it was safe. For him. For me.” His fingers were in her hair then, a soft and gentle sweep that made her eyelids heavy. “It was the only place he ever let me call him Dad.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to make you go someplace you hate.”

He shifted until they were lying face-to-face, his hand a warm weight on her hip.

“That’s the worst part. When I was a kid, I loved it. I couldn’t wait to come back. I used to think that, someday, I’d stay forever and never have to leave. Someday Mom would come too. Someday we’d be a family, but . . .”

She heard the words he didn’t say: spies don’t get a happy ending. And a little voice in the back of her mind whispered, but maybe they could?

“As I got older, I figured he was just some jerk who used my mother and threw her away. But I was wrong, I found out later. He used her for sex, sure. But, mostly, he used her for secrets.” He looked into the fire, unable to face her as he finished, “And what she got was me.”

Zoe wanted to tell him there were worse things to end up with. She wanted to say his story wasn’t over yet. She wanted to crawl through time and tell that little boy he wasn’t just some spy’s collateral damage—he was hers now. And she wasn’t giving him up without a fight.

“Mom died when I was nineteen. Car accident,” he added numbly. “I was so fucking alone. But a few months later I got a call. Evidently, my test scores impressed certain people and I fit a certain profile—had a certain set of skills. Turns out there was a reason my deadbeat dad paid for me to take martial arts and learn archery and do summer exchange programs abroad. By the time I found out what he was, it was too late to change what I am.”

“I like who you are.”

His fingers made a slow sweep across her skin. “I swore I’d never be like him, sweetheart. That I wouldn’t use women. Leave them damaged or broken. I swore . . . But then I met Helena.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“Was tonight my fault?” Zoe saw it then—the ocean of pain and doubt Sawyer was swimming through, and she knew why he’d shared more in the last five minutes than he had in the entire time she’d known him.

“Is that what you think?” She didn’t know whether to be hurt or very, very angry.

“I followed in my father’s footsteps, but I don’t want to be like him.”

“You’re nothing like him.” She had to make him see, but all he did was push her hair away when it fell like a curtain around her face.

“That’s sweet, lady. But you don’t know him. Hell. You don’t even know me.”

“I know I wanted this. I know I wanted you. I know . . . I know you’d never hurt me.”

“I’ll kill any man who hurts you.” She felt his lips brush against her hairline, tracing over her fading bruise like he could heal it with a touch. “Even if that man is me.”

And then Sawyer closed his eyes. And slept.