“Fake your death.” He leaned against the doorjamb, folded his arms, tapped his foot. A dragon breathed fire down his right bicep. Unlike Rafe’s tattoos, which were beautiful, symmetrical, and understated in their simplicity, Zach’s begged for attention with detail and flaming color. “Better yet, how’d you get past your fear to do it?” He clenched his jaw. “You must have been desperate to get to him, for you to go anywhere near the river, let alone crash your car into it.” He tilted his head. “Must have been desperate to get away from me to fake your own death.”

I averted my gaze. Zach read me too easily. What would he do if he found out Rafe had kidnapped me? He might read something into it that wasn’t true. Just because Rafe had taken me, that didn’t mean I hadn’t been where I’d wanted to be in the end. But even worse he might get the same idea as Rafe and use the phobia against me. If he hadn’t thought of that already.

“Answer me,” he said, bringing me back to the moment with his biting tone.

“It wasn’t easy.” I stood, straightened my shoulders, and the muscles in my thighs tightened, readying to fight, to flee. I quelled the urge, as he had me trapped and there was no way I’d get past him and out that door. My stomach grumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours, and it gave me the perfect excuse to try and get out of the room. “Is there anything to eat in this place?”

He signaled for me to go to him, and I couldn’t help but notice the tremors in his fingers. I tried to pinpoint when he’d started drinking, but the onset of his alcoholism had been gradual, like a bad cold that begins with a sneeze and a vague ache in your glands until the next thing you know, you’re laid up in bed feeling like death incarnate. His drunken fits had been sporadic at first, beginning somewhere around the time I’d graduated college and escalating after I’d started dating Lucas.

“I’m sure there’s gotta be some soup or something.” He clamped his hand around my upper arm and ushered me from the bedroom. On the way to the kitchen, I eyed the front door, just a few feet away, yet it seemed like yards. The promise of escape disappeared from view too soon, leaving behind the fleeting idea of freedom. He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, wooden legs scraping across the floor unnervingly, and shot me a pointed look, but he didn’t push me into the seat.

Rafe would’ve shoved my ass into it.