At the sound of my moan, Jason pulls back, only a few inches, and stares at me, his gaze intense, full of lust. But there’s something else there too. Something that looks like curiosity mixed with shock.
We stare at each other for a moment, neither of us speaking, both of us breathing heavily.
I feel hot everywhere, my skin is buzzing, and I’m certain my heart is beating somewhere in the imminent heart attack zone.
“Wow,” I finally whisper when I get my breathing somewhat under control.
He cups my cheeks in his warm palms, his thumbs brushing along my jaw. “I shouldn’t have let you sleep last night,” he murmurs. “I should have fucked you until you knew that you weren’t going anywhere. Until you never wanted to leave. I came fuckin’ close to waking you up to do it. I can’t believe I didn’t.”
Oh my God.
I don’t know what to think.
Does he really mean that?
Is it crazy that I want him to mean it?
I swallow hard.
Okay.
Okay, okay, okay.
Just breathe.
He’s not serious. He can’t be.
So what if we kissed, groped a little, and slept in the same bed?
So what if he wants to fuck me?
It means nothing, right? Just a little fun on the job. He can’t really mean what he just said, right?
Right?
But even with all of this, there’s something about the way he’s stroking my jaw, possessive and gentle, that says something.
Something that I’m entirely not ready for.
Something that scares me more than Peck ever could.
Stop analyzing, I scold myself. Just enjoy it. Live!
I swallow hard, and deciding not to acknowledge his comment, I ask, “Um … what was that kiss about?” my voice coming out breathless.
Jason looks down at me, wearing his double-dimpled smile. “You were stressing,” he says. “I don’t like it when you stress.”
I scoff. “And you thought a kiss would fix that?”
His eyes turn soft and sexy, and his grin widens. “It worked, didn’t it?”
I choke on a laugh and swat at his chest playfully. “Jesus, you’re full of yourself.”
Amusement touches his lips, travelling all the way to his eyes, but he doesn’t respond. Instead, he leans into me, kisses my forehead once more, and climbs off the bed.
“Read the file, darlin’,” he mumbles. “Gonna make breakfast.”
And then, he walks out of the bedroom, leaving me alone with the file.
Chapter Seventeen
Jason
“I’ve got to get out of here for a bit,” Elena says, as she swallows her last bite of toast. She reaches for her coffee cup and clasps her hands around it, but she doesn’t take a sip. She just stares down into the mug.
My gaze shifts to hers. It’s the first thing she’s said to me since I left her alone to read the file.
I have no idea if she read it.
I think she must have. It would explain why she seems so withdrawn.
Or maybe she’s pissed at me for something.
It could be either. I don’t have a clue.
I’ve been trying to get her to say more than a grunt or mumble for thirty minutes now, and hearing her speak a full sentence is a fucking relief.
“Sure,” I say, leaning forward to rest my elbows on the table. “Where do you want to go?”
“Just out,” she says and shrugs. She glances back up at me, looking a touch uneasy. “Do you have my car keys?”
I contemplate how to respond to that. The question sounds innocent, but there’s something about her shift in attitude that’s making me tense.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like the thought of her going out alone, either.
“You don’t need your keys,” I say. “I’ll take you wherever you wanna go.”
She stares at me, blinking a few times as she considers my response. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to. Her lips purse, her eyes narrow, and her back straightens. Her displeasure is clear.
“Don’t want you out of my sight, darlin’,” I tell her. “Not until this shit with Peck and your brother is sorted out.”
She closes her eyes and bites her bottom lip. When she reopens them, there’s an uncertainty there that doesn’t sit well with me.
“I need some space,” she says, looking away. “I need to be alone for a bit.”
She needs space. She needs to be alone.
What the fuck does that mean?
I have no response. I don’t even want to acknowledge that I hear it.
Fuck. Maybe I did do something to piss her off. Forcing the file on her? I hope that’s it. That, I think, she’ll get over.
Fine. She needs space. I’ll give it to her. Whatever.
I open my mouth to tell her where her keys are when a thought dawns on me. “Where did you get that car?”
She doesn’t respond. She only stares at me as though she thinks that maybe I’ve recently sustained a head injury, and she’s not entirely sure that I’m sane right now.
“Where did you get that car, Elena?” I ask again, more firmly.
She scrunches her nose, still looking at me oddly. “Why?”
My brow furrows, surprised and slightly confused as to why she’s dodging my question. “Just answer the question.”
She glances away. Her eyes are fixed somewhere on the table. She looks lost and uncomfortable. Almost scared.
I hate it.
I thought we were past that nonsense.
“I’m not going to leave, Jase, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she says, her tone edging on spiteful, as though I’m prying into something that is none of my business. “I just want to get out for a bit.”
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.
It should have.
Elena running again wouldn’t really be a stretch.
But it didn’t.
Taken aback by the bite in her tone and her words, I hesitate, shaking my head. “Did I say I thought you were gonna run again?”
She says nothing. Her lips thin into a scowl and she glares at me.
Swallowing back an exasperated sigh, I grit my teeth. “I just want to know where you got the car.”
“Why does that even matter?” she asks, staring at me expectantly, waiting for an explanation.
She doesn’t understand why I want to know. She doesn’t get why it’s a big deal.
Fair enough. It’s a valid question. I’ll give her what she wants.
“Because if the plates can be tracked to you, you probably shouldn’t be driving the damn thing around town.”
“Oh,” she whispers, dropping her eyes to the table once again. She’s quiet for a bit, sitting back in her chair, fiddling with her fork.
“So if you need to go out,” I continue, carefully, “maybe you should be taking my car.”
Her eyes swing back to mine, wide with disbelief. She shakes her head, her hair bouncing back and forth with the movement. “That’s not necessary. The car isn’t mine.”
“Where did you get it then?” I ask again.
“Drop it, Jase, please,” she says quietly. “Stop trying to pick a fight with me. You already know who the car belongs to. I’m sure you ran the plates.”
Pick a fight? Is she fucking serious? There’s sarcasm in her tone, but the look she’s giving me says she truly believes I already know the answer and that I’m trying to be difficult.
“I didn’t run your goddamn plates,” I grit out. “But I’m getting the feeling that maybe I should.”
She motions toward me. “You’re doing it again.”
I let out a shocked laugh, shaking my head. “You think I’m being an ass again.”
Maybe I am.
But she’s being incredibly stubborn.
“Just a little,” she says, holding up her fingers about half an inch apart. She doesn’t smile, but some
thing flashes in her eyes. It looks like amusement. She thinks this is amusing?
If I weren’t so goddamn frustrated, perhaps I’d think so, too.
“Don’t be cute, Elena,” I say. “It’s not gonna work.”
She shifts, tilting her head slightly, and she sits up straighter. She stares at me. Seconds pass. Five, fifteen, thirty, and then she smiles. It’s soft, hesitant, sweet, and it lights up her face all the way to her eyes. “You think I’m cute?”
I smile, chuckling. I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it. Her smile is addictive, and I don’t want it to fade. “I think you’re fuckin’ adorable most of the time.”
“Now isn’t one of those times, is it?” she asks, propping her elbows up on the table.
Sighing, I relax back in my chair and shake my head.
It’s a lie and she knows it. I can see it in her doubtful gaze.
She’s adorable all the time.
Even when she’s getting under my skin like she is right now.
She blows out a breath. “But you’ll get scary angry if I tell you.”
“I won’t get scary angry,” I promise. “Just spit it out.”
“You will,” she tells me, seriously.
“No. I won’t.”
“Fine.” She huffs, tossing up her hands. She hesitates for a second before whispering, “Your dad leant it to me. I’m supposed to give it back to him when this is over. Same as the cell phone.”
She’s nervous again. She says it as though she’s afraid for me to hear it, as though she’s scared of my reaction. I guess she’s justified, but it makes me flinch anyway. I want to put her at ease, but it’s fucking hard when another part of me wants to strangle her.
She doesn’t get it.
She doesn’t understand the kind of person my old man is.
She thinks he’s a goddamn saint, when he’s really the devil.
I should probably enlighten her, but I can’t.
I can’t think about him, let alone talk about it.
When I say nothing, she rolls her eyes. “See,” she says. “I told you, you’d get mad.”
She’s wrong. I’m not mad. Not at all.
Actually, I think I get why she’s been so distant since she came downstairs. It has nothing to do with her brother or Peck or me. I’m almost certain it’s that she wants to talk to my old man.
I don’t like it.
But I’m not mad about it.
She spent months with him. He’s probably the closest thing she has to a friend. And I’m certain, one-hundred percent sure that she knows nothing about all the family bullshit.
Perhaps it’s stupid of me, but I want to believe she wouldn’t do anything to betray me.
I want to believe he isn’t using her, too, but that’s a stretch.
“I’m not mad,” I say. “I just understand why you want to go out alone now.”
She makes a startled sound from the back of her throat, and eyes me curiously. “You do?”
I nod. “I do.”
A flush spreads across her cheeks and down her neck, and she quickly adverts her eyes. “So you’ll drop it now?”
She’s fidgeting nervously. I wish she’d stop that. I hate that I make her so nervous.
“You don’t need to take off, darlin’,” I say, an unintended bite comes out in my words. I take a breath, forcing my voice to smoothen. “You wanna call my old man, call him. I won’t stop you.”
“You won’t stop me,” she says, blinking with disbelief.
I shake my head. “No, I won’t stop you.”
The last of her nervousness turns to confliction as though she wants to believe me, but she’s not sure if she should. “Okay. Um … thanks. I’d prefer you were with me anyway. You can listen if you want. If it’ll make you feel better.”
I stall, furrowing my brow. I don’t know if I’m offended that she’d think that I’d listen in on her calls, or angry about it. Yeah, she showed me her text messages, but I’d never have gone looking for them without her telling me to.
“I ain’t gonna screen your calls, darlin’,” I say slowly. “Who the fuck does that?”
She smiles sadly. “Peck did.”
My hands clench into fists involuntarily and the urge to punch something nearly overwhelms me. Each time I hear something new that that prick did to her, white-hot anger engulfs me.
Goddamn asshole.
Almost as though she can sense my anger, Elena stands up abruptly, and comes over to me. She nudges my shoulder, pushing me to lean back in the chair and slides herself onto my lap, taking one of my rigid arms and winding it around her waist. She doesn’t say anything. She only curls her arms around my neck, and rests her head against my shoulder.
“Tell me something,” I say after a moment, and she looks up at me, her face tense. “Did my old man ever explain to you why he was helping you?”
Her expression softens, shoulders relaxing. “Maybe it’s just because it was a decent thing to do.”
I laugh once. “I doubt that.”
She shrugs. “Maybe you should ask him.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You won’t, will you?” she asks, her voice falling flat.
“No,” I say, “probably not.”
She sighs dramatically and then leans in, placing a light kiss on my lips. “I’m going to give him a call. Could you set up that meeting with the detective? I want to get it over with.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, and with that, she gets up and walks out of the room.
Chapter Eighteen
Elena
I leave half a dozen voicemails and send a dozen text messages to Mr. Chapman and he doesn’t return a single one of them.
It’s nine-nineteen in the morning.
Two hours and nineteen minutes of waiting for him to call me back.
I don’t mind waiting. I’ve done a lot of it over the last year. Waiting to be found. Waiting for the moment I have to leave again.
Waiting, and waiting, and more waiting.
But these last two hours and nineteen minutes have been the longest wait of my life.
I try to keep myself busy. I shower and dress, spending far too much time on my hair and make-up. I clean the kitchen, the bathrooms, and make the bed. Anything that will keep me from reading the file on my brother again.
And I wait.
I wait for the phone to ring.
I wait to meet the detective.
I wait for Jason to find something—anything—we can use.
I’m in the bathroom, washing my face so I can fiddle with my make-up again. Jason is somewhere in the house doing whatever it is he does. Each time I see him, he’s either on the phone or on the computer.
He seems to be doing a lot of waiting, too.
I’ve been avoiding him as much as possible and he knows it. His concern for me doesn’t make me feel any better about my situation. In fact, it’s making me crazy. I swear he’s acting like he wants me to be his. Like I am his already.
The things he said this morning run a constant loop through my mind … “I shouldn’t have let you sleep last night … I should have fucked you until you knew that you weren’t going anywhere. Until you never wanted to leave. I came fuckin’ close to waking you up to do it. I can’t believe I didn’t.”
A part of me wants to tell him that he’s wasting his time. That it can’t happen. That we can’t happen.
But another part of me aches to have his lips on mine again.
I like him. I really, really like him.
He might be bossy and he can be overbearing, but he’s also kind and generous, and God knows I love his protective streak but …
My phone rings as I’m sponging the water from my skin with a fluffy yellow towel. Reaching into my pocket, I pull it out and glance at the screen.
Unknown caller.
I don’t know why I bother looking. Mr. Chapman always comes up as an unknown caller, but even if he didn’t, he’s the only person who has this number anyway. I
guess it’s just an old habit.
Sighing, I answer it, muttering quietly, “I’ve been calling you for hours.”
I’m greeted with silence. So much silence that for a second I think that maybe I let it ring too long and missed the call altogether. I’m about to hang up and call him back, but then I hear it.
A whispered breath.
A rustle.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
“Hi, El.” The voice on the other end of the line belongs to a man. It’s deep and gravelly, whispering my name in a way that sounds familiar and threatening.
My body freezes and my heart stops.
It’s not Mr. Chapman.
It’s Peck.
I can hear him breathing on the other end of the phone. It sounds so close, rattling in my ear; I can almost feel the phantom warmth of his breath against my cheek.
Chills spread up my back and my hands tremble ever so slightly.
It’s not him. It can’t be him.
Oh God.
Trying to control my ragged breath, I ask softly, “Lawrence?”
“Yeah, baby, it’s me,” he murmurs.
Baby. He says it like a caress, but my body jerks and my stomach clenches as though he hit me with the word. I close my eyes. My lips quiver and I feel tears crawl up my throat.
This isn’t happening.
This cannot be happening!
I say nothing. I just stare straight ahead in the mirror, unable to process this.
I don’t even breathe. It’s as though my lungs have forgotten how to expand and my mouth has forgotten how to draw air.
“Come on, baby,” he says, his voice deceptively gentle. “Talk to me. I’ve missed hearing your voice.”
My hand trembles, knocking the phone against my cheek. I need to hang up. I want to hang up. Good God, why can’t I hang up?
“Don’t call me baby.” The words are hardly more than a whisper.
He lets out a light laugh. “Almost three months this time,” he says. “You’re getting better at hiding; although I have to say I’m not happy to hear that my fiancée has moved herself into another man’s house.”
His words hit me, but they refuse to sink in. My knees are giving out on me, and my vision blurs with tears. I try to understand how he could possibly know where I am or who I’m with. I haven’t been here long enough or left a trail. The few people who know I’m here don’t have this phone number and the one that does …