They weren’t falling because Kian had left me. They were falling because, for once, I didn’t have to hide.
Kian was gone for an hour when my phone started ringing. I moved to the couch earlier and grabbed a blanket. My phone was next to me on the nightstand, and I grabbed it, bringing it to my ear.
I hit the Answer key. “Hello?”
“Dude, where are you?”
It was Erica.
I yawned into the phone. “What time is it?”
“It’s one in the freaking morning.”
“It is?” I sat up on the couch and checked my phone.
She was right. Kian had been gone longer than an hour.
“I must’ve fallen asleep.”
“Yeah, about wherever you fell asleep, you need to give me an answer to give to Jake—in, like, two seconds.”
“Why?” Alarm filtered in. “Is he there?”
“Uh, yeah. He’s been going crazy since you left.”
“He called me earlier, but I told him I was fine.” I frowned, trying to remember what I had said to him. I’d been too distracted by Kian. My thoughts had been jumbled when I was on the phone with Jake. “Didn’t I?”
Her voice lowered. “You told him you went back to work, but, Jo, I called your job. You weren’t there, and they told me what happened. I covered for you, but I don’t know what to say to Jake anymore. Are you in a hotel or something? I mean, you didn’t go and do something crazy, did you?”
“What?”
“The baby,” she hissed into the phone.
I jerked to my feet, pressing the phone even tighter against my ear. “What?”
“Jo, don’t lie to me. I know about the pregnancy. That host guy told me all about it. He sounded worried about you, but between you and me, I wouldn’t trust that kid as far as you could shot-put him. He had a wicked look in his eyes the one time I met him.”
I wanted to smack myself on the forehead. My head fell back, and I groaned, “Oh my God, that stupid rumor.”
“Come on.”
“No, no, no. That’s all a rumor, Erica. I swear.”
She grew quiet on the other end.
“I called in sick twice this last month, and my boss jumped to the worst conclusion ever. I think he partly did it to joke with me. Worst joke ever.” I laughed. “I haven’t even had sex since Jake.”
She remained quiet.
Oh, no! “Since the first time with Jake, last Christmas time.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you and Jake—I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re doing something.”
“No, no, no.” I couldn’t say it enough. “We’re accountability partners, but we’ve just been hanging out. That’s all it is. He,” I hesitated to what I revealed here, “He needed help staying away from Tara.”
“For real?” Her voice was suddenly louder and clearer. “Are you sure there’s nothing going on?”
I gripped the phone tighter. “Nothing’s going on. I mean,”—there was, and it was Kian—“Jake’s still not over Tara. And, I don’t know, I haven’t been feeling the same attraction as I did before.”
“Oh. I gotcha.”
“You do?”
“Once bitten, twice shy. That sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Okay. Well, whatever. Back to the problem at hand. Your boy toy, who’s not really a boy toy, is here and looking for you. What should I tell him? And where are you, for my own nosiness?”
“I…” I glanced around. I needed a lie and quick.
Kian spoke up from behind me. His voice was soft enough so Erica wouldn’t hear. “You had an upset stomach, so you stopped to grab some food.”
I whirled around, taking in the sight of him, as his lie stumbled from my lips.
His hair was wet. His clothes were soaked, but he had never looked so good. His eyes were stormy and heated, holding my gaze. His jaw clenched, making the air snap with tension between us. I licked my lips and averted my eyes. Erica would hear the lust in my voice. I didn’t need a new interrogation from her.
Erica believed it and questioned once more if I was pregnant. She wanted to make sure.
“No,” I said into the phone, staring right back at Kian. “I’m not. I just had an upset stomach. I’m fine now.”
“Are you coming home soon? If you aren’t, I’m coming to eat with you. Where are you at?”
“Uh…” I had no idea.
My eyes got big, and Kian moved closer.
He murmured into my other ear, his hand touching my hand at the same time, “You’ve not been discovered yet. You should return home and be there for as long as you can.”
“I-I’m coming home,” I stammered into the phone.
“Well, good then.” Her relief was obvious. “I have to warn you about the other part. If your stomach really is okay, Jake wants us all to go to a house party with him. Apparently, we’re his new best friends, even Wanker, too. I’m guessing Susan and Tara have officially cut the strings. Doesn’t he have other friends? He’s adamant that we come with him. What’s that about? Wait, I know. No matter what he says, it’s you. He still wants in your pants.”
My tongue lay heavy on the bottom of my mouth. I had no words for her. Kian was standing so close to me, watching me the entire time. He could hear everything my roommate said. The tortured look from before was gone. It was replaced with something else, something ominous, something I wasn’t going to like.
His hand left my hand and fell to my hip. A tingle started as his thumb slipped under my shirt and rubbed over my skin, back and forth, back and forth. And Erica was still talking. I couldn’t hear her anymore. My pulse was so loud with my blood rushing through me.
“Tell her you’ll be home in a few minutes. I’ll give you a ride.”
The words fell from my lips.
She said good-bye, and so did I. The phone call was disconnected, and then Kian took the phone from me. I noticed all of this in the back of my mind, but the forefront was fully focused on Kian. He was so close. I wanted to close the distance again.
Instead, I asked, “Where did you go?”
“To clear my head.” His gaze lingered on my lips. His eyes darkened, and then his hand caught the back of my head in a commanding hold.
I did nothing. I waited, my heart about bursting out of my chest. “And?”
“And”—his forehead rested against mine—“I meant what I said. If I take you, I want you to be mine all the way. Not mine in hiding. Not mine when you have a separate life. Mine. Just mine.”
“Kian,” I whispered. My hands found his arms, and I held on to him. “That—”
He cut me off, his chest heaving up and down, “Can’t be done until you’re forced to go public.” His hand squeezed my neck.
He paused, dipping down so that his lips touched mine. It was so brief, so quick. It was a fleeting graze. My heart skipped a beat.
He added, “And I could never ask that of you. I won’t. I’ll do everything in my power to help hide you.”
“Kian?” I pulled back. What was he saying? I sensed a different urgency from him.
Tilting my head to the side, I gazed at him. He did look different. A resignation had settled on his shoulders, and it kicked up a flare in me.
What was happening? “What’s going on?”
His hand pulled me close. “I came here to watch over you. I wanted to be close to you, and, yes, I wanted to be with you. I was wrong.”
“What?” No…
His hand gentled on my neck, and his thumb began rubbing up and down in a soothing caress. “I shouldn’t have come here. I should’ve left once I knew you were fine. You were happy, Jo, and I messed that up.”
“You didn’t.”
A voice inside my head said, He did. Let him go. You can still be free.
I shut it up.
“All those times in the courtroom, I felt like you knew me, like you were the only one who could know me. I wa
nted you to be let free. I didn’t want you to go to prison, and you’re out now. And you said your team will do everything possible to keep you from going back.”
“This is your life.”
No.
My heart pressed against my rib cage. It wanted out.
He added, “If you’re found, your life will be ruined. If you hide again, I won’t find you a second time. I’ll have to let you go, so I’m doing it now. I’m letting go. I booked my flight. I’ll be returning home, and I’ll make a public statement.”
“What will you say?”
“The real scandal is the dirty judge. The DA is trying to cover it up by making the media look for you. I’ll tell them the real story. A dirty judge is a bigger story than where you are. You’ll be forgotten in a week. And I’ll stay away.”
“No.” My heart was splitting in two. I closed my eyes.
“I’ll stay away and make sure that you’ll never worry about the media finding you.”
“No, no, no.” I grabbed on to him.
He cradled me to him, his hand leaving my neck to smooth down my back in comfort. He propped his chin on top of my head, his other arm holding my shoulder, holding me to him. “This is for the best.”
I winced, closing my eyes even tighter, as I burrowed into his chest. I didn’t want to let him go and even thinking about it, I wrapped my arms tighter around him.
I drove Jo home myself. She was quiet on the way, and a few times I looked over. I felt like I should say something, anything, to ease her pain, but it was weighing on me, too. And when she held my gaze, right before getting out of the car, I saw the same pain in her eyes. There was nothing to say. Anything I said would’ve cheapened the situation, or taken away what we were both feeling, but when she got out without a word, it was like a silent rejection.
I drew in a shuddering breath, gripped the steering wheel tighter, and tried not to think about who I was driving away from as I went back to my penthouse. Once I got inside, my phone rang. It was Cal, and he never called with good news, not this late at night.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s public.”
My blood turned cold. “How?”
“You didn’t tell me that she’d left a note for you in the hotel room.” His tone was accusing.
My eyes narrowed. I bristled. “Because that was none of your business.”
“Yeah, well, it’s my business now. A housekeeper had to go back into the room. She’d left something from cleaning it in the morning, and then she saw the note. She was so kind to take a picture of it, and Jo had signed it as Jordan.”
“It’s been days. Why is this now going public?”
“It took time. She sold the note to a local news station. They went to the hotel and got the tapes. There’s a tape of her leaving the room. They backtracked from there, and you guessed it.”
Shit!
“They found Jo Keen, and they think it’s hilarious that her roommate was one of the reporters who interviewed you.” Cal paused, grunting into the phone. “Find her. Call your lawyers. Call her lawyers. Shut this down now.”
“I dropped her off at her place.”
“Did you put the tracking app on her phone?”
“She was sleeping when I got back before, and I did it then.”
“Hold on. I can trace her from here, and…she’s on the move. She’s not at her apartment.”
“Her roommate mentioned a party. Give me the address. I’ll get her.”
“No, I’ll get her,” Cal argued.
I was already out the door and hurrying for the stairs. “I’m already on my way.”
“Damn it, Kian. Your face is going to make it worse. Let me do this. I didn’t alert you, so you could run after her. I called you, so you could call your team and start devising a plan.”
It didn’t matter. I was already down the stairs and through the garage door. The penthouse had the closest parking spot—perks of the wealthy. So, I was in the car within minutes. Jo wouldn’t have wanted to go to the party, but she would’ve gone to make her friends happy.
“I need the coordinates,” I said to Cal.
“This is crazy. You’re going to make it worse. Let me get her.”
“I’m already in the car. Coordinates, Cal.”
After he gave them to me, he grumbled, “I’m going to meet you. You’re going to need help.”
I didn’t argue. I might need him after all, but I’d learned a few things in prison, like how to be discreet and how to disappear.
When I pulled down the street, it wasn’t hard to find the party. Thirty cars lined the sides of the streets along with eight cars packed into the driveway of a lit, large house. The music wasn’t too loud, but after parking and heading down the sidewalk toward the house, conversation and laughter became clearer. In the back were a beer-pong competition and a group throwing a football around. I stayed on the outside of the house but close to the shadows. Most of the windows were open, and I thanked the partygoers for that small blessing. It would make my job a lot easier.
I saw Jo, and the wannabe boyfriend was hovering over her. His hand was on her back, and my teeth gritted. The need to wrench his hand off her was rising quickly in me. I scooted closer to a window. They were moving to the kitchen. I followed. A group had taken up the space by the back door. A girl saw me, but I pulled my hood over my head and lit up my phone. Holding it to my ear, I turned my back to her and waited. Glancing back, I saw her attention had returned to her group, and I moved closer to the side of the house.
She wouldn’t be able to see me from her angle, but I could still see Jo. I couldn’t then. She wasn’t there anymore. Scanning the kitchen from my view, the wannabe boyfriend was there. Another guy I saw with Jo before was there.
Wanker?
I looked for the roommate. I saw her earlier, too, but not now. Jo must’ve been with her. Leaving my view of the kitchen, I moved further to the front of the house. I couldn’t find her. That raised my alarm. I’d have to go inside. I was regretting that I hadn’t grabbed a baseball cap, but I would have to proceed without it.
Spying an open window on the second floor, I stepped up on a closed window frame and hoisted myself the rest of the way, grabbing ahold of the house’s jetty to swing my legs up. Once I had a secure foothold, I moved to the window and removed the screen. I slipped inside a bedroom. The hallway was lit up, and I heard voices.
A girl giggled. “Oh, Rob.”
The guy laughed and pressed her against the door. The door handle started to turn.
I quickly locked it.
“What the hell? Trent locked it?”
“That was smart of him.”
“Fuck. Hold on. I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.” She giggled again. “Hurry back.”
I had to move. On the way, I grabbed a baseball cap. A connecting bathroom led to another bedroom. A quick scan showed it was empty, and I hurried to the next door. It was only a matter of time before Trent would come this way to get to his room. Peeking