Chapter 20
AFTER YOU
PATIENCE
There’s a wave of relief that breezes through me when the plane lands in LA. It bounces when the wheels hit the pavement. Even that isn’t enough to rattle me after tonight because I’m finally, once more, at a distance from my family.
Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I wash Bristal from my mind. I let my mother’s judgmental tone fade. I focus on nothing more than Jacob’s firm grip on my thigh.
He doesn’t let go of me as we deboard. His arm stays wrapped around my shoulders while we walk through the airport. A few people glance, and I can’t tell if they’re judging the clear age difference between us or simply appreciating how absurdly attractive Jacob is.
It isn’t until we reach the curb outside that I try to step away from him. But he snags my hand, not allowing me to get far as his driver stops in front of us.
“I can call my own ride,” I assure him.
Jacob lifts my chin, forcing my gaze to his. “Get in the car, Patience. Let me take you home.”
“Technically, if I get in the car, your driver is the one taking me home.” I smirk, teasing him because it puts me at ease to provoke this man.
“The only man taking you home is me.” He taps his thumb on my lips. “Isn’t that right?”
My stomach flutters as I stare up into his green eyes. Everything about Jacob is commanding. Dominant. Downright sexy.
I shouldn’t want to be controlled by anyone, considering my upbringing, but with Jacob, when he takes charge, it’s different. Like he cares, possibly. Like he sees that I don’t want to think, I just need to feel. And that’s exactly what he offers. He has me in a chokehold.
“Patience—”
“Yes.” I swallow, finally answering his question.
His hand drifts down my jaw; his thumb traces the column of my throat. “After you.”
I climb into the car, and Jacob closes the door behind me, circling to the other side. His hand lands on my thigh once he climbs in, like he can’t help touching me every second we’re around each other. Regardless of who might be watching.
Jacob tells the driver the address for my building, and I frown, realizing I assumed he was taking me to his place.
Maybe it’s for the best that he’s making this decision for us. Especially when I’m feeling particularly reckless tonight.
“What’s that look?”
“Nothing.” I clear my throat, letting my gaze drift out the window.
“Patience.” He turns my face to his, and I wish he weren’t so beautiful that it made me lose my senses so easily. “Be honest with me. What are you thinking?”
“I just—” I press my lips together and take a sharp breath. “When we were standing on the curb, I thought you were implying that you were taking me to your place.”
“I am. Unless you don’t want that.”
My eyebrows pinch. “You gave your driver the address for my building?”
“There’s more than one apartment in that building, Patience.”
“We live in the same building?”
Jacob shrugs. “Apparently.”
He releases my chin and turns to glance out the window, but I don’t miss that he doesn’t seem nearly as surprised as I am.
Before I can ask him why that is, he veers the conversation. “How was your family dinner?”
“Fine. Terrible.” I shrug. “It’s always eventful with my parents. But at least my brother is doing better… he spoke to me.”
Jacob glances in my direction.
“Alex has had some… trouble”—I’m careful with my choice of words as I try to clarify—“these past couple of years. He was in a psychiatric ward, and he hasn’t talked to anyone for a long time.”
“That must have been hard on you.”
I scan Jacob’s face for judgment, or at the very least, curiosity. Most people want to know my family’s deepest, darkest secrets when they learn my brother was in a psychiatric ward. But Jacob doesn’t ask any of those things. If anything, he sounds genuinely worried about me.
“It was.” The words nearly clog in my throat. “He was the closest person to me before everything happened.”
Jacob turns my wrist over, and the turtle bracelet Alex gave me spins around. I forgot I told him my brother got this for me the first time we met.
“Turtles represent resilience. Their shells protect them from the outside world. That’s what Alex and I were to each other growing up, each other’s turtle shells.
The only one who understood what it was like to grow up—” I clear my throat, stopping from saying too much.
“To have an upbringing like we did.” I spin my bracelet around my wrist. “He gave me this when he went off to college to remind me that he would always be there for me, no matter what.”
Except that’s not what happened. Because Sigma Sin nearly killed him. And my brother—the only person in the world I cared about—spent the next two years silently locked in a psychiatric ward.
“I’m glad you had him.” Jacob brushes the inside of my wrist. “And I’m sorry that you lost him for a while.”
I can’t figure out why he sounds genuinely sorry when he doesn’t know what happened. But I appreciate it, nonetheless.
Growing up, everything was about my brother. His future was the only one my parents actually cared about. And then, after his trial, I disappeared almost entirely beneath Alex’s shadow. I thought I didn’t mind because being invisible is easier than being seen most of the time.
Until Jacob looks into my eyes and sees me as more than an extension of my family.
The car pulls to a stop outside our building, and Jacob climbs out first, walking around to open my door. That small action is one more example of how I’m not dealing with the immature boys who frequent Sigma Sin parties back at home.
Jacob is a gentleman. A grown man who knows who he is, what he wants, and what he’s doing.
While I’m all nerves and inexperience.
It should terrify me. But as Jacob takes my hand and leads me onto the sidewalk, I want him to show me what the world is like outside the fragile cage I’ve been locked in my entire life. I want to finally feel something.
He guides me into the building, and the man at the front counter nods at him. “Mr. Gray.”
“Ray.” Jacob nods in return.
I don’t say anything. In the time I’ve lived in this building, Ray hasn’t so much as looked at me.
“Aren’t you worried what he’ll think?” I ask under my breath when we reach the elevator.
“What is he going to think?” Jacob smirks, tucking my hair behind my ear while we wait for the elevator doors to open.
“That it’s really late at night to be bringing some girl to your apartment? A student nonetheless.”
“Ray doesn’t know you’re my student. And no, he isn’t going to think anything of it.”
“Because of your revolving door of women?” I roll my eyes but quickly drop my gaze so he can’t see that it’s filled with jealousy.
I’m never jealous, and I hate how Jacob brings that out of me.
Jacob chuckles as the elevator door slides open, and he leads us inside.
The second the doors close behind us, he spins me until my back is to the elevator wall.
In a swift move, he’s snagged my wrists and pinned them overhead, while his other hand skates around my lower back.
His fingers slowly stroke while his green eyes lock on mine.
“Do you want to know how many women I’ve brought home, Patience?” He drags his hand a little farther down, nudging his knee between my legs as he does. “Do you want to know how many women I’ve fucked in my bed? How about in this elevator?”
His knee presses forward, rubbing my core. And as angry as I am, my hips have a mind of their own as they rock against him.
“No.” I glare up at him.
He’s trying to piss me off, and I hate that all it’s doing is turning me on.
“Too bad. I’ll tell you anyway.” Jacob releases my waist and grabs my jaw, forcing me to look up into his beautiful eyes. “None.”
My eyebrows pinch. “None?”
He nods.
“You expect me to believe you’re celibate?”
“I never said that.” A dark smile lights his eyes. “But I don’t bring women here. And it’s been a long time since I’ve brought one anywhere at all.”
“Why?”
Jacob’s jaw tightens. “There are things you don’t know about me.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Not tonight.”
I tip my chin up. “Even if we’re being honest with each other?”
“There are some things you aren’t ready for, Patience Lancaster.”
Something about how he says that makes me believe him. Darkness rolls in his eyes, and I get a hint of the life he lived before I walked into it. Maybe he’s right, and I’m not ready to know what haunts his nightmares.
It’s not like I’m ready to share mine with him.
Jacob’s warm body presses close as the elevator dings with each floor, and even when he releases my wrists, he doesn’t step back. He rests his hands at the sides of my head and cages me in. Strong arms and apple spice cologne surround me.
“Why me then?” I ask after a long pause. “If you don’t bring women to your apartment, why take me there?”
“When I figure that out, I’ll let you know.” Jacob’s eyes stay locked on mine as he brushes a rogue hair out of my eyes. “But for the record, you should probably tell me to just take you home.”
“Why are you always trying to get me to run away from you?”
“Because it would be for the best.”
“Because you’re a gentleman?”
He huffs out a breath. “Far from it.”
His tone has me believing him, which means I should probably take him up on his offer to run. But for whatever reason, I want to trust him.
“I don’t want you to take me to my apartment.” I wet my lips, being completely honest and vulnerable. “I’d rather sleep in your bed.”
The growl that rumbles in his chest is animalistic. It sets my body on fire. And when the elevator comes to a stop and he backs up a step, my body is a magnet that moves with him down the hall.
Jacob takes my hand, and I don’t stop watching him until he finally pauses at a door that is too familiar.
“You live in the apartment across the hall from me?”
Jacob shrugs, turning the key to unlock his door. “Do I?”
His question sounds more teasing than anything, like he already knew that. And it makes me wonder what else he knows about me.
How well do I really know Jacob Gray?