Chapter 16 Jenna
Chapter sixteen
Jenna
He didn’t move when I closed the space between us, not even when I pulled out the battered chair across from him and sat, hands folded so tight in my lap it cut the blood off at the knuckles. The safe house air was as stale as old cigs, and colder than I remembered. I tugged my blazer closer.
Seneca watched me with cop eyes, not lover’s eyes. Jaw locked, shadow in the sockets. I could count each pulse beat in his temple. His hand drummed the side of the Formica, the other tucked into the crook of his arm like it might go for his sidearm at any second.
I opened with the truth because it’s always the only move that works on men like him. “I used her,” I said. The words made the air vibrate.
He didn’t blink. “You used everyone,” he said, voice flat as the surface of the table.
“I cultivated that relationship. Played her taste in whiskey, played her taste in jazz, even figured out her dumb allergy to shellfish and used it to get her to meet at my favorite place for lunch.” I looked at my hands, twisting the hem of my blouse.
“I made her trust me. Because it made me better at my job. And at first, that was all.”
Seneca’s fingers kept tapping, but slower. “You’re proud of that?”
“No,” I said. “I’m proud of winning. I’m not proud of the next part.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with her.”
He didn’t recoil, didn’t even exhale. Just a slow, reptilian blink.
“I’m not some tragic lesbian,” I went on.
“I’ve had men. I even liked a few. But her, well, she was like a wall I wanted to break.
The more she pushed back, the more I—” I could feel the mask start to slip.
“It stopped being a game. And she knew. She always knew. But she let me get close anyway, even after I was supposed to be the enemy.”
He leaned forward, elbows digging into the table’s edge. “So why betray her?”
I let the silence have a minute. I thought about lying, then remembered what happened the last time I lied to a man with a gun.
“Because I saw you,” I said. “The night after the hearing. She let you in, and when she walked you out, her whole body was different. I’d never seen her let go around anyone.
Not once. And I was jealous.” I ground the heel of my palm into my thigh, hoping the pain would steady my voice.
“Not just of her. Of you, too. I wanted it to be me who made her that way.”
He grunted, not quite a laugh. “Could’ve tried harder.”
“Don’t,” I snapped, sharper than intended.
I pressed my nails into my thigh to bleed it out.
“You ever want something so bad it makes you stupid? That’s what I was with her.
When I got the call, Martini, the Bellini old man, all of it, I saw a way to hurt her and win at the same time.
But I didn’t factor you in.” I hesitated, and the words came out softer than I wanted.
“I didn’t factor in how much I’d want you, too. ”
He finally stopped tapping. The room ticked with the sound of the fridge cycling. “You’re saying you sold her out because you wanted her. And me.”
“Don’t say it like that,” I said, because I couldn’t stand the simplicity of it.
“It wasn’t about sex. It was about...being seen.
” I swallowed, forcing the next part up like a swallowed razor.
“You ever have anyone see you, Seneca? The way you really are? Not the soldier, not the outlaw, not the broken thing on the slab.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
I exhaled, then reached for the glass of tap water, my hand shaking just enough to spill it down my sleeve. I dabbed it with a napkin, glad for the excuse to not look at him for a second.
“The thing with Catherine,” I said, “it was real. Even when I was lying, it was real. I just...didn’t know how to want something without wrecking it. My whole life, I’ve been two steps from losing everything. So when she let me in, I had to break it before it could break me.”
Seneca’s eyes were shark black. “That’s not how she sees it.”
I shrugged, because what else was left? “She’s a Bellini. She’s got a code. Even if she never forgives me, she’ll understand it, eventually.”
He braced his hands on the table, as if steadying for recoil. “You came here to confess, or to ask for forgiveness?”
I laughed, the ugly kind. “Forgiveness isn’t in the cards. I just wanted you to know I didn’t do it for money. Not the way they think.”
He nodded, slow, like he was winding up to make a decision that would cost him. “So what do you want, then?”
I dropped the napkin and stared at the water stain on my sleeve. “I want you to look at me the way you looked at her. Like you could kill me or save me, and you haven’t made up your mind which.”
He leaned back, cracking his knuckles, face unreadable. For a second, I thought he might come across the table and break me open, then and there. Instead, he just looked, really looked, at all the cracks I’d spent years spackling over.
He said, “You’re a goddamn mess, Smart.”
“Yeah,” I said, and it sounded like a compliment.
We sat there, staring each other down, the smell of old beer and gun oil between us, and I let the last walls come down. No more case prep, no more lawyer tricks. Just me, and the man who saw every inch of me, flaws and all.
I thought he might get up and leave, but he just stared, jaw flexing, like the truth was something that could be chewed and swallowed if you worked at it long enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because it was the last card in the deck.
He didn’t say anything. But his hand, the one that always went for the gun, drummed once, then twice, and then lay flat on the table, as if making a peace offering.
I put my hand over his, fingers wrapping around the sinew and scar tissue. He didn’t pull away.
For the first time since the bakery, I let myself breathe.
***
The thing about a safe house is that it isn’t. Not for people like us. There was nowhere in this world you could put me and Seneca Wallace and expect the outside to stay out. But for a minute, with my palm over the wreckage of his, it was almost possible.
He gripped my hand like a drowning man, and I gripped back, the pain good and grounding. The table was between us, but we both knew it was just a line in the sand.
I drew in, and the movement felt like it pulled the whole room with me. “What if we didn’t have to pick?” I said. The words came out so softly that I doubted he had heard.
He did. He always did. “You mean what, you, me, and Catherine? Like a fucking throuple?” There was bitterness in the way he spat the word.
“Like a family,” I said. It sounded childish even to me, but I was past caring. “We’re all too broken to fit with anyone else. We’re the only ones who understand the rules.”
He looked away, out the slit window where the night was already creeping up the walls. “I don’t share,” he said. But his hand didn’t let go.
“Neither do I,” I countered. I used my free hand to drag his wrist closer, so our hands met in the dead center of the Formica battlefield. “But she already left us both. Why not build something better?”
He yanked his hand back, stood, and paced the small perimeter like a caged animal. I let him. I watched the way his back hunched, the way he flexed his hands open and shut, how every movement looked like it wanted to be violence but couldn’t find the right target.
“Do you love her?” he asked, eyes still on the cheap blinds.
I exhaled. “I do. And I hate her.” The second part came easier.
He turned, his whole body coiled and ready. “You hate me, too?”
I shook my head. “No. Not even a little.”
He stalked back, leaned across the table. “I should hate you.”
I reached up, touched the scar above his eyebrow. “You’ll get over it.”
He bared his teeth, then bit down on the urge to laugh. Instead, he grabbed my chin, thumb rough under my jaw. “What are you doing, Smart?” His breath was hot and sharp.
“Trying to see if you’ll hit me or kiss me,” I said, and let my mouth hang open just a little.
He closed the gap in a single, brutal motion.
His mouth found mine, and it was nothing like I remembered.
The kisses were wet, raw, off-target, full of teeth and tongue, and the taste of something that might have been blood or just whiskey.
He bit my lower lip so hard I thought he’d take it off, then sucked it until the pain melted into want.
I reached for his cut, grabbed a fistful of leather, and yanked him closer, until the table threatened to tip.
He twisted us both around, slammed me against the wall, and pressed his whole body into mine.
I was small, but he made me feel smaller, like he could have folded me in half and stuffed me in his pocket.
I let my hands roam, finding the holster at his hip, the hard planes of his chest, the tattooed arms that had once wrapped around Catherine.
He let his hand trace my face, not gentle, but careful, as if he wanted to memorize every edge before it was gone.
He shoved my blazer off, and the sleeves caught on my wrists, pinning my arms. He held them there, used his thigh to keep my legs apart, and kissed down my neck, his stubble burning fresh tracks over skin that hadn’t healed from the last round of bruises.
“Fuck, you’re cold,” he said, voice muffled by my clavicle.
“Then warm me up,” I whispered, and ground my hips into his.
He tore my shirt open, buttons ricocheting off the baseboard. His hands were everywhere, palming my breasts through the thin mesh, sliding under my skirt, fingers pressing into the damp heat between my thighs. I gasped, and he smiled against my skin, tongue flicking along the pulse in my throat.
I wanted to say something clever, but all that came out was a moan and his name. “Seneca,” I breathed.