Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANDREI. FUCKING ANDREI.
Lennon
“Is the library dungeon so bad that you’d rather sleep in your office and get ready in the locker room everyday than accept help from me?” Jett asks.
“Maybe,” I mutter. I think about my time at the library. Most people wouldn’t like sleeping in the basement of an ancient building, but I didn’t mind. There were creaks and noises, and it was even a bit drafty from the one small window that lines the ceiling, but I wasn’t scared.
I was alone. That’s all that mattered. I’m going to miss that little room. It gave me safety and the ability to breathe when I needed it. It felt like a gift.
That was before.
My palms sweat, and my heart speeds as Jett pulls into the parking spot in front of the three-story building that stands proudly at one side of the town square. He throws it in park and goes for his door.
I can’t move.
He walks around the front of his truck to open my door, but I’m frozen in my seat.
“If you insist on doing things the hard way, let’s get this done, so we can move onto more important things—like food and conversation.”
I ignore that and stare through the windshield at the steep steps that lead to double doors.
“Did you change your mind and decide to take me up on my offer to taxi you everywhere you want to go?”
I force myself to move and dig my keys from the bottom of my purse. “No, sorry. Let’s get this done.”
I hop down from his truck on my heels and move up the steps of the library slower than normal. There’s no pep in my step today like there normally is coming to the first place I’ve made on my own.
Jett takes the steps two at a time next to me. The library holds strange hours. I think today they were only open over lunchtime, so it’s not unusual for me to have the whole big building to myself.
“Can I just say, it’s weird as fuck that you live in a library,” Jett mutters as he follows me inside.
I flip on a light so I can lock the door behind us. “Good luck finding a place in Winslet. I’m not sure why you want to move if you have a never-ending reservation at the manor.”
“My newfound family is a lot to get used to. I’m adjusting to my new kidney better than the free ride.”
I hurry through the lobby to the office. The smell of books and decades of dust have become a welcome scent in the last few weeks. Familiar and safe. So much so, I don’t even mind the creaky stairs leading to the dungeon.
But there’s nothing welcoming about it tonight. The urge to return to the manor where I’m never alone nags at me.
Jett clomps down the old wooden stairs behind me. When I open the door to my makeshift apartment and turn on the light, I stutter to a stop.
This isn’t unlike the first time we met, but this time it’s him crashing into me. I almost fall forward, but he wraps an arm around my middle and holds me vertical against his muscled chest.
“What the hell happened here?” he demands.
Shit.
I’d ask the same thing, but I don’t need to. I know what happened. And it confirms what I was afraid of.
I’ve been found.
The small dresser that stood across from the double bed is turned on its side.
The drawers have been dumped upside down and my clothes are flung across the floor.
The mattress and boxspring have been flipped and ripped open.
Even the single clothes rod that stood against the wall and acted as a closet is toppled on the floor.
What few possessions I have collected since I got to Winslet are either broken or in such disorder, I’m not sure they can be salvaged.
My hand flies to my mouth to smother the cry that bleeds from my lips.
Jett’s hold on me tightens. His strength is palpable. I can’t help it. It doesn’t matter that he stole my car or made me weak at the knees when he cooked for me. I press into him. If I don’t, I’d fall to the floor in an ugly mess.
He shifts me to his side but doesn’t look away from my only belongings in this world. “Who would do this?”
I shake my head, not because I don’t know the answer, but because I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do next.
He hasn’t just located me, he’s here.
In Winslet.
Jett shifts me again, this time he forces me to look at him. He frames my face in his hands and bends far enough to look into my eyes. Our noses are inches apart when he repeats with even more agitation, “Answer me. Who did this?”
My tears spill. I shake my head and do what I’m accustomed to doing, because lying isn’t only engrained in me. It’s a survival tactic. “I don’t know.”
His brows pinch, and his stormy eyes siege me. “Someone got into your room, tossed your shit, locked the door behind them, and you have no idea who it could be?”
I glance around the space because looking him in the eyes and continuing to lie to someone who deserves better hurts. I thought I hit rock bottom yesterday, but it was nothing compared to this.
“I, um...”
He releases my face and doesn’t waste another moment asking questions that I’m clearly not going to answer. “Find a bag. We’ll pack what you need and get to the bottom of this later.”
He moves into action. Stepping over furniture and through the cluttered mess, he grabs the old duffle I packed with what little I owned right before I escaped. He grabs clothes and shoes and everything else in his path.
I swipe the tears from my cheeks and try to pull myself together. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Jett doesn’t look at me and continues to work as he talks. “You’re not staying here. Get what you need. I’ll call Dean to report this—”
“No!” I exclaim.
He stops what he’s doing and turns to me with my haphazardly packed bag hanging from his hand. “Your room was broken into. You need to report it.”
If there’s anything that will pull me out of my haze, it’s the mention of the police. “It’s okay. I’ll clean this up. It doesn’t look like there is any damage I can’t fix other than the mattress. I’ll figure that out somehow.
Jett shakes his head as he continues to pack my things. “And just when I thought I was beginning to crack the case on you. You take complicated to a new level.”
I drag my hands through my hair as despair nags at me. “I’m sorry you’re here dealing with this. Dealing with me.”
He stuffs the duffle full and can barely zip it before he drops it on the floor and turns to me. “Get what you need. We’ll come back for anything else, but I need to get you out of here to figure out what to do about this.”
I shouldn’t accept his help, and there’s no way I should drag him into the shit show of a life I can’t seem to escape.
But with no car, and my past nipping at my heels, I’m out of choices.
Again.
I force myself to wade through my things and take everything I can carry.
Jett
Lennon didn’t utter a word, apologize, or offer any type of explanation for any-fucking-thing on the way back to the manor. The moment I threw it in park, she was out the door loaded down with bags of makeup, hair shit, shoes. I’ve got her clothes that I loaded into what few bags she had.
As we enter the atrium of the manor, her heels click on the marble floors. I lean down and speak in a low tone no one else can hear. “We’re going to dump this stuff in your office, then we need to talk.”
When she glances up at me. “Not tonight. Someone broke into my room. I have more pressing issues to deal with right now than being interrogated over a homemade meal again. It doesn’t matter how much I liked it.”
I’m impressed at how she pulled herself together after finding her room ransacked. It helps that she’s a natural beauty. Just like last night, after shedding tears, she’s back to normal. It makes me wonder if she’s a practiced hand in pushing through and hiding the emotions I’ve seen glimpses of.
“I knew you liked it.” I try to change the subject. “It’s okay to be impressed. I have more skills than I give myself credit for. And I have a lot of skills, Lennon.”
She bites her lip. “If I didn’t have so much to worry about, that would be intriguing.”
I’m about to tell her to spill the truth about everything plaguing her so she can be intrigued, but we’re interrupted.
“Lennon! Hey, Lennon!” We stop and turn.
Blake stands in the middle of the atrium with a man.
Blake looks as happy as Smoke when I take him to the dog park, but the man is more like Panther—like he’s looking for his next kill shot and won’t let anything, or anyone stand in his way. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“Oh my God,” Lennon whispers. The color drains from her face leaving her several shades paler than she already was. “It can’t be.”
I look back to Blake who’s hurrying our way. The man follows but there’s nothing about him that’s rushed. His stare is intense and never wavers from Lennon.
“You know that guy?”
She doesn’t answer but she does shift closer to me.
Not just close.
She presses her front to my side.
This isn’t the first time I’ve touched Lennon, but it is the first time it’s been like this. I feel every swell and curve that I’ve appreciated since she literally bulldozed into my life.
I like it a lot.
So much, I shift her duffle from one hand to the other so I can hold her right where she is, not that it feels like she’s going anywhere.
I wrap my arm around her lower back. My hand lands low on her far hip and flirts with her ass in a way I’d love to take the flirt out of the equation.
From the feel of it, my dick would like that too.
Neither of us say another word, because Blake comes to a stop and motions to the man stalking toward us.
Blake’s smile spreads from ear to ear. “You have a visitor. I’ve been trying to call you.”
Lennon’s tits rise and fall against me as her breaths shallow and quicken, but she never shifts her stare from the stranger who comes to a stop next to Blake.
“Hello, love,” the man says. He’s got a slight accent I can’t place. “I’ve missed you.”
“I had no idea your uncle was coming to visit,” Blake goes on. “You never talk about your family.”
Uncle.
Interesting.