Chapter 5 Four
I paced the carpet from the window to the door and back. The hotel room smelled like mildew and stale smoke, and the AC rattled every time it cycled on, which wasn’t often enough. I’d been wearing a track in the carpet for four hours now without any sign of Jasper.
My abuela would've smacked me upside the head and told me to sit down, pray, trust God. But God wasn't the one who'd let him walk into those headlights.
So I paced instead.
When he walked through that door, I was going to kiss him or kill him, maybe both, probably both. If he didn't walk through that door, I was going to find Zeus and everything Zeus loved and burn it all to ash, take my time with it, make it hurt.
"Stop, you're making me dizzy." Lorenzo pushed himself up on one elbow from the floor, moving carefully around the stitches in his side. "Sit down already. You look like a lost dog."
"Lorenzo, I will rip those stitches out myself and let you bleed on this carpet just to give me something else to think about."
"Listen, I’m just saying, wearing a hole in the carpet isn’t going to bring him back faster."
He lay on the floor between the beds, crayon in hand, exactly where I'd told him not to be.
The man had a knife wound in his side and the survival instincts of a suicide bomber.
Eight sprawled on her stomach next to him with crayons scattered between them on the carpet and six inches of space between their shoulders, close enough to work together but far enough she could bolt if she needed to.
I glanced at what they were drawing and frowned. I expected horses, castles, the kind of thing kids draw when you hand them crayons and tell them to keep busy.
Instead, they'd mapped the hotel floor, marking kill zones and optimal attack angles. Eight had printed STAIRS in careful block letters at the hall's end and underlined it twice.
I had to look away.
I wanted to scoop her up and drive until we hit the ocean, find some beach town where nobody knew our names, teach her to draw horses and castles and anything that didn't have body counts and choke points. Later, when we weren't running for our lives, when Jasper came back.
If Jasper came back.
She looked up at me, and I sat down hard on the bed's edge before my legs gave out.
"Everything's fine, pequena," I said to the room, to Eight, to myself. "Nothing's coming. The man we left in the headlights is absolutely okay, and your tío Diego has it all handled."
Every single word tasted like a lie.
Eight held my gaze for one long beat. Then she picked up the red crayon and added another mark to the stairwell.
The door beeped in the next room, and I jumped up.
Then I was moving across the room, hand on the connecting door, yanking it open before my brain could catch up.
I stood there in the doorway staring at Jasper's back like an idiot who'd spent two months learning how to talk to this man and suddenly forgot every smooth thing I'd ever said.
He was alive. He was here. He was moving.
The relief hit so hard my knees nearly buckled.
But something was wrong. Jasper was just standing there, his back to me, staring at the katana sitting on the mattress where he’d put it.
The building could be on fire, the roof could be caving in, and this man would make sure his weapon stayed within reach and his exits stayed mapped.
Something had pulled tight across his shoulders that I would've missed three months ago.
Eight appeared at my elbow with the first aid kit. She was a smart girl, always three steps ahead.
"Not yet, pequena." I took it from her and kept my voice gentle. "Back to your drawings. Let me handle this one."
She looked past me at Jasper and studied him with that same flat assessment she used for threats and exits and things that might hurt her. Then she looked at me. My face must've told her enough because she went back to the floor plan without a word.
I locked the connecting door behind me, and the click landed too loud in the quiet.
"Jasper."
He didn't turn.
I gave him a quick once over without touching. No obvious open wounds, no serious injuries. Whatever was wrong with him was the kind of injury that you couldn’t heal with stitches and bandages.
I pulled the joint from my jacket. I kept my hands steadier than they had any right to be. I lit it off the nightstand lighter, and he turned at the click. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring past me, to some middle distance where I couldn’t follow.
I held out the joint and waited. I didn't move closer, didn't push, just stood there with my hand out like my mother taught me with the strays behind my grandmother's house. You don't rush. You offer. You wait. Eventually, they come to you.
He crossed the room, took it from my fingers, and put it between his lips, taking a long, deep drag. His shoulders dropped and his jaw unclenched, and in the space of a few seconds, he was almost back.
I wanted to be that joint. I wanted to be the thing he put to his mouth without thinking, the thing that made him soften.
He exhaled slow. Smoke curled off his lips in the parking lot light, and Jesus Christ, I was so gone for this man it wasn't even funny anymore.
He opened his eyes on the fourth drag, met mine, and held.
"You hurt?" My voice was rough. "Talk to me, guapo."
He turned his head, revealing a shallow cut across his throat, thin and crusted at the edges.
My hands clenched into fists. I was going to find whoever hurt him and break every finger they'd used to hold that blade, and I'd make them beg while I did it.
"Sit." I kept my voice level even though rage was crawling up my throat. "Let me see it."
He dropped onto the bed without argument.
I tilted his chin up with two fingers. “Doesn’t look too bad,” I murmured, and opened the first aid kit.
He let out a slow breath and leaned into my palm while I cleaned the cut with my other hand.
Then I smoothed some gauze over the wound and taped the edges.
There was no reason to keep touching him now that I was done, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop.
I let my fingers trail from the bandage down to his collarbone.
He closed his eyes and held still and let me.
"Jasper." I waited until he opened his eyes. "I need to know something, and I need you to be straight with me. Brussels. Was that a one-time thing for you?"
The silence stretched. My pulse hammered in my temples.
"Because it wasn't for me. I want more. Maybe that makes me selfish, wanting you the way I do when you've got enough problems without me adding to the pile. But mierda, Jasper, I want you and I’m tired of pretending I don’t."
He swallowed. The bandage on his throat shifted with it, and I tracked the movement like it was going to tell me something his face wouldn't.
"You smoking on the porch every night, and me finding excuses to be out there with you," I said. "Neither of us saying a damn word about it." I shook my head. "I can't do that anymore. I can't keep pretending I don't want to put my hands on you every time you're in the same room."
He clenched his jaw and looked away. My stomach dropped because I'd pushed too hard, said too much, ruined the one good thing I had left.
"It wasn't a one-time thing," he managed, voice rough.
"Then why haven't we..."
"Because I'll ruin it." He said it like a fact he'd already accepted, like he'd run the numbers and knew exactly how this ended.
"I ruin everything I try to keep. You're already a target because of me.
Brussels made it worse. Every morning in that kitchen made it worse.
Every time you got within reach and I wanted.
.." He stopped and swallowed hard. "If I start, I won't stop. I can’t afford to not stop. Not with you."
I peeled his hand off my wrist where he'd grabbed without realizing and pressed it flat against my chest. "Feel that?
My heart's still beating. I'm still here.
You don't get to decide for me what I can handle.
My family's been making that call since before the Nazis showed up, and we're still here, still standing, still fighting.
You're not scarier than the Nazis, guapo. I promise you that."
He spread his fingers against my chest and pressed through the fabric like he was trying to reach skin, heat, something he could hold on to.
Then he fisted my hoodie and pulled me closer.
I went. I'd been going since Brussels. I had zero intention of making him ask twice.
He pressed his forehead to my collarbone, and I slid my hand into his hair. A shudder ran through him hard enough to move my ribs, and I tightened my grip, held him closer.
"Yeah," I said into his hair. "I know. Come here." I sat down next to him on the bed.
He started climbing into my lap, then hesitated, that brain of his trying to catch up with what his body already knew it wanted.
I pulled him up by the belt loops. "Get up here. Now."
He groaned into my neck and ground down against my thigh. He was hard and God, I’d missed this, missed him, missed getting to touch him.
I buried my face in his shoulder and just breathed him in. I gripped his hips hard enough to bruise and couldn't make myself let go.
"Diego?" He pulled back. "Hey. You okay?"
I shook my head against his shoulder. I was not okay.
I was the opposite of okay. I was holding onto this man like the floor was gone and he was the only solid thing left.
All the smooth, competent shit I'd been telling myself I'd do when I got my hands on him had burned up.
All I had was my face in his shoulder, my hands locked on his hips, and a pressure in my chest that wouldn't let up.
"I thought you were dead, Jasper."
He went still. Then he put his hand on the back of my head and held me there.