Chapter 38
Sutton
“I think I’m going to head home.”
My mother frowned. “What? No. You barely even slept last night.”
I didn’t point out that I actually hadn’t slept a wink.
How could I after the last seventeen hours?
When we’d left Silas’s apartment, I’d gone down to the police station, where Edmund’s lawyer, Kent, had met me.
It hadn’t actually been necessary since I didn’t have anything to hide, but I didn’t want to say or do anything that might incriminate Jagger.
The police detectives had asked me questions for about an hour and then thanked me and told me I was free to go.
Jagger, on the other hand, was not. As far as we knew, he was still there now, at ten o’clock the next morning.
“I’ll sleep better at home.”
Edmund walked down the hall, fresh from the shower. I looked at him and didn’t even have to speak. He shook his head. “Still nothing.”
My shoulders slumped. “They can only keep him for a few more hours, right? Kent said they could question him for up to twenty-four hours.”
“Unless they decide to charge him. But if that’s happened, we’d know about it because all hell would break loose in the media.”
I blew out a heavy breath.
“That would be absolutely ridiculous,” Mom said. “He had to do the police’s job for them.”
Edmund frowned. “He held the guy at gunpoint, Mia.”
“The man is a violent criminal. He was just holding him until the police arrived.”
I loved my mother for defending Jagger, but her point of view wasn’t exactly correct. Jagger had had no intention of calling the police, and I couldn’t even bring myself to think about what he might’ve done if I hadn’t gotten there in time.
I stood. “I’m going home.”
Mom pointed. “Edmund will drive you.”
I shook my head. “I need the fresh air.”
“You can put the windows down in the car.”
I smiled. “Thank you. But I really need to do this on my own.”
“I don’t understand why—”
Edmund interrupted. “Mia, she’s safe now. Give her a little room.”
Mom threw her hands in the air. “Is anyone ever really safe in this City? We should think about moving.”
I went to my mom and hugged her. “Thank you for everything.” I smiled. “Don’t think it went unnoticed that you were up at six o’clock this morning.”
Mom pouted. “I would have puffy eyes for you every day if you needed me.”
I smiled and kissed her cheek. “I know you would.”
My mother’s apartment was seven stops away on the Six train, but I got off after five so I could walk a little.
The late-morning sun cast a golden glow over Manhattan, making it feel softer than it was, and the normally bustling sidewalks were sparse even for a Saturday.
Manhattan felt mellow, as if it were exhaling along with me.
A young woman in pajamas and Uggs walked a poodle with its tail dyed pink while talking on her phone.
An older couple strolled arm in arm, him wearing a gray-checked newsboy cap and her a red fascinator.
A woman smacked the hood of a taxicab that had almost run over her feet turning against the light. Everything felt almost…normal.
A block from my building, my phone buzzed with the Google alert I’d set up last night for Jagger’s name.
My heart raced as I prepared to open it and find a headline saying he’d been arrested.
But it turned out to be an article about Apex settling with the DOJ.
Before I tucked my phone back into my pocket, I went to my contacts, scrolled to Jagger’s name, and hit call.
It went right to voicemail, without even ringing, same as it had the dozen other times I’d tried since last night.
I stopped at the food truck on my corner and picked up my third—or maybe it was my fourth, I’d lost count—coffee for the day and waved to Nestor, the doorman, who was on the phone as I walked in.
I stepped off the elevator and checked my phone for the gazillionth time, hoping maybe my service had been spotty on the ride up and a message had come in.
No luck. Still no text from Jagger. But two strides down the hallway, movement up ahead caught my eye, and I froze for a heartbeat thinking it might be Silas.
At least until I saw the man rise to his feet.
“Jagger!” I ran to him and jumped into his arms. “Oh my God. Are you okay? Did they just let you go?”
He nodded. “I came straight here.”
Jagger’s eyes were rimmed with dark circles, as well as being bloodshot and swollen, and his hair was sticking up all over. It looked like he’d spent hours pulling on it. Yet he was still the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
I pressed my lips to his, but when he didn’t kiss me back, my heart sank. He gestured to the door. “Could we go inside and talk?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. Of course.”
I unlocked the door, walked in, and put my keys on the kitchen counter. Jagger looked uncomfortable, standing just inside the doorway. “Do you want coffee or something?”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
He took a seat on the couch while I buzzed around making a pot of coffee.
We hadn’t been together the last few weeks, but I thought him going after Silas had meant something.
Perhaps I was wrong. He was a protective man, and maybe I’d read into his actions, making them mean more than they did.
I’d been jumping out of my skin, anxious to talk to him, but now that he was here, I took my time preparing his mug because I was nervous about what he might say. Eventually, I couldn’t stall anymore.
I passed him his cup and took the seat on the chair across from him, rather than the couch. “Did they charge you with anything?”
He gulped down half his coffee and shook his head. “Not yet.”
“But they still might?”
Jagger shrugged. “My lawyer said it was a possibility. He doesn’t think the detective believes I didn’t do what the guy said I did, but I’m not sure they care.” He caught my eye. “Thank you, by the way, for not telling them what you saw when you walked in.”
“It’s the least I could do after what you’ve done for me.”
Jagger looked down for a long time before meeting my eyes. “Come here.”
My heartbeat sped up. I wanted to be close to him more than anything, but I still had an ounce of self-protection left in me. “Why?”
“Because I need you, Sutton.” His voice was raw and gritty. “So fucking much.”
I moved to the couch, but left space between us.
Jagger looked at the gap, then me, then the gap, and shuffled closer.
The simple gesture said so much—Jagger was the kind of man who took what he wanted.
If he wanted me close, he normally would just pull me to him.
But now he was giving instead of taking.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand what happened between us.”
He nodded. “I know. There’s a lot I need to tell you. Most of it doesn’t have anything to do with you, but it might explain why I am the way I am.”
“Okay…”
He reached for my hand. “Before I start, I need to apologize. I’m so sorry I hurt you, Sutton.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” He shook his head. “I knew I was going to, but I’m so damn selfish, I couldn’t keep away. There were a million red flags waving around, a million reasons why it was a bad idea to get involved, yet I fucking ignored them all.”
“There might’ve been very good reasons to keep your distance, but there was a stronger reason for us to be together.” I put my hand over my heart. “What feels right in here outweighs all the wrongs.”
Jagger wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. I could barely breathe, but it didn’t matter; I would’ve stayed like this forever. It felt so good to be in his arms again. Too soon, though, he pulled back. He looked into my eyes for a long time before taking a deep breath.
“When I was six years old, I learned to pick the locks on mailboxes because my mother believed the government was sending all of our neighbors a letter about her. I would break into a dozen a day and bring my mother the mail I found, and she would burn it all in the bathtub. When I was twelve, I convinced the guy who owned the pizza place I was fifteen and got a job delivering pies on my bike in order to pay the rent because my mother hadn’t come home in a few weeks. ”
I squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”
Jagger shook his head. “I’m not telling you this because I want you to feel bad for me.
I’m telling you because I want you to understand what having control means to me.
Paying the rent meant I was certain to have a roof over my head, and burning the mail meant my mother might not ramble all night and I could sleep.
But I was also a dumb kid with no one watching me, so I was out of control.
When I was a teenager, I got arrested four times in a year, and I wound up going into the Marines because it was that or prison.
I hated the military when I first enlisted, but as time went on, I grew to appreciate the rules and order.
And I realized if I did what I was told, I’d move up in the ranks, which meant I got to be the one making the rules instead of listening to them.
But I never fully understood the gravity of what could happen when I fucked up. ”
He looked down, and when he looked back up, there were tears in his eyes.
“I met my buddy John Nelson in boot camp. We had a team of men we were responsible for, but John always deferred to me when it came to tactical decisions. One assignment, we were supposed to be checking a village, making sure no insurgents were hiding out. We’d been there two days, and the only things around were a bunch of families and happy kids who liked to play jump rope.
The night before we were supposed to leave, I made the stupid decision to let our men make a fire.
I still have no idea what the hell I was thinking. ”
He paused, and his eyes became distant. It made me wonder if he was reliving what had happened.