4. Elsie
Elsie
It’s been two days, and Jesse still hasn’t answered my question.
I’ve noticed, even through the fog of the last forty-eight hours, the careful way he’s steered around it every time I’ve opened my mouth like I might ask again, how he finds something to do with his hands whenever the silence between us stretches too long.
I haven’t pushed. Mostly because I’ve barely had the energy to do anything except sleep, wake for water and crackers, and sleep again.
Today’s different.
I wake slowly, blinking up at unfamiliar wooden beams instead of the water-stained ceiling of my old apartment, and for one disoriented second I don’t know where I am.
Then it comes back — the cabin, the loft bedroom, Jesse’s bed, because of course it’s Jesse’s bed, his scent worked so deep into the sheets that I spent half of last night pretending I wasn’t breathing him in on purpose.
He’s been sleeping on the couch downstairs since we got here. I heard him get up at night and come upstairs to check on me. I lay still and let him think I was asleep.
For the first time in weeks, I feel human. No dizziness when I sit up. No immediate lurch in my stomach at the thought of eating. Whatever Silas put in that IV worked. That or two solid days of sleep finally caught me up on all the sleep I missed over the last month or so.
The smell of bacon reaches me before I’m even fully out of bed, and it pulls me down the loft stairs faster than I probably should be moving, one hand on the railing, the other pressed briefly to the small of my back where the twins have started making their presence properly known.
Morning light’s pouring through the cabin’s front windows, the kind of light that only exists at altitude, and for a second I just stand at the bottom of the stairs and take in the whole scene.
Jesse at the stove in a grey T-shirt that does absolutely nothing to hide the width of his shoulders, sleeves pushed up over forearms inked dark, bacon popping in the pan while he moves like he’s done this a thousand mornings before.
“Morning,” he says without turning around, like he heard me on the stairs before I made a sound.
“How did you know I was up?”
“I always know.” He glances back at me then, and something in his face softens at whatever he sees there. “You look better.”
“I feel better.” I make my way to the little table, ridiculously grateful that Silas took the IV out when he visited last night. It’s great to move around unencumbered by tubing.
He sets a plate in front of me. Eggs, a little bacon, toast cut into four triangles with the crusts removed. The little three-sided, crustless shapes make me want to smile. I never would have expected big, burly, grumpy Jesse Simmons to do something so cute.
I look around properly for the first time since we got here.
The cabin’s solid, well-built, warm in a way that has nothing to do with the woodstove sitting cold and unused in the corner.
But it’s bare. There are no photographs on the walls, no clutter on the shelves.
Apart from the bright apron, there’s nothing that says a life happened here beyond the essentials.
It makes me want to fill it, the same instinct that had me sticking photo strips to my apartment mirror and hanging fairy lights.
I wonder if Jesse’s ever wanted that, or if he built himself a place this quiet on purpose.
We eat mostly in comfortable quiet. It surprises me, given everything unresolved sitting between us.
“We’ve tightened security around all our land. Tucker is closely monitoring the surveillance around the mountain. There’s no way Zidaru will come near you without us knowing.”
I bite my lip. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.
“Tucker is looking into him and his dealings.”
“That sounds dangerous. What if there are traps in his systems that get him caught?”
His brows raise.
“Tucker is the best hacker in the world. There is no system that can keep him out or catch him unless that’s what he wants.”
I hide my smile.
“What happens when you get information on him?”
“My team and I handle him.”
I set my fork down.
“Jesse, he’s not some guy who’s going to back off because a security team tells him to. Even if there’s evidence. He has men in law enforcement. I used to serve some of them coffee before I even knew who they worked for.”
His eyes turn a cold shade of blue that overpowers the green in his blue-green eyes.
“Elsie, dealing with monsters like Andrei is what I do best. And if he comes after you, he’ll die.”
There’s no heat in it. No posturing like some men do when they want to sound dangerous.
Just a flat, quiet certainty that should terrify me, yet somehow doesn’t.
Because I understand, watching his face, that whatever that certainty is built on, it isn’t aimed at me.
That coldness is something he carries for people like Andrei Zidaru, not for those he’s decided to protect.
I don’t feel afraid of him. I never have, not once, even standing in my apartment while he told me I wasn’t leaving town.
He changes the subject before I can push further, asking about my family instead, and I let him, because some small, cowardly part of me is grateful not to keep circling Andrei’s name over the breakfast table.
“There are three of us. Actually six. Me and my parents, my cousin Rosalie and her parents. We lived in two houses, but we spent so much time together while growing up, it’s like we’re one family. Mom and Dad live in Michigan.”
Jesse cocks his head.
“How did you end up in LA?”
“I was born and raised there. My dad and Rosalie’s dad are brothers. They moved out to LA together as young men, with their new wives, after having a double wedding. They got houses two streets apart from each other.”
“Growing up with family nearby must have been fun.”
There’s a wistful tone to his voice.
“I suppose you spent holidays together.”
We’ve finished eating, but he’s not getting up. He’s staring at me with something akin to fascination, as if he were a child listening to a magical story.
“We had barbecues on weekends, rotating between our backyard and Rosalie’s, our dads arguing over whose ribs were better while our moms chatted about the weekly dance class they attended together.
Rosalie and me are only a few months apart.
We did everything together, including suffering through our parents ridiculously, loving displays of affection. ”
I smile at the memory.
“Thanksgiving and Christmas were the best time. We always went to our grandparents in Michigan. They spoilt me and Rosalie so much, we never wanted to come home. Two-and-a-half years ago, our parents moved back to Michigan to be near them, as they’re getting older.”
I don’t tell him what Rosalie does for work.
Who she works for. I’ve turned it over more times than I can count these last two days, the fact that the man Rosalie’s been keeping house for is a name people in LA say carefully, the way you’d say the name of something you don’t want to summon by accident.
I suspect, though she’s never said it outright, that Rosalie’s more than half in love with him.
I don’t know how Jesse would react to that information.
“She found somewhere safe,” is all I say when he asks where she is.
Jesse doesn’t push, though I catch the flicker of something behind his eyes that tells me he’s filing the gap away, noticing exactly where the story stops short.
“What about your family?”
Without taking my eyes away from him, I move the chair back a little, place one foot on the opposite knee and start massaging it.
Instead of answering, Jesse stands, comes round to me, stares at my feet and hands. I squeal when he picks me up, his muscular arms wrapping around my back and under my knees.
“The dishes. I should do them.”
“Later, I’ll do them. You need rest.”
He places me on the couch then sits on the other side to me with my feet on his lap. His large, calloused hands are gentle as he kneads my aching feet.
It feels so good, my eyes close. Then I remember he hasn’t answered my question about his family. I glance at him.
“I’m an orphan. Grew up in an orphanage in LA.” There’s no emotion in his voice, as if he’s practiced saying this countless times. His eyes are on my feet.
“I am sorry.” Imagining the little boy he was growing up without a family hurts. My family is everything to me.
“It was all I knew. I survived. Are your feet always this swollen?”
I hesitate before answering, wanting to know more about him, my heart still hurting at the way he dismissed what sounds like a tough childhood.
“Only the last couple of weeks.”
He asks so many questions, it feels like he wants to know everything about my pregnancy. I tell him because he’s obviously not ready to share his past and I’m fascinated by the growing wonder in his usually guarded eyes, with every detail I share.
That night, alone in the loft bed while he keeps his silent vigil on the couch below, I can’t make my mind stop.
I shouldn’t want him the way I do. I know that a sensible woman, five months pregnant with twins, half-kidnapped by a man who told her point blank he could give her only one night, should not be lying awake cataloguing every reason he’d make a good father.
I keep thinking about the careful way he held my hair back two days ago, when I was sick.
The way he’s determined to protect me against Andrei, patiently massaged my feet and cooks for me.
The look in his eyes when he asked about my bump makes me want to believe he wants these babies. Is even excited about them.
I should be a little mad at him for half kidnapping me because I’m pregnant with his babies. Instead I lie here wanting him so badly, making a lie of every good reason I have to guard myself against exactly this.
I’m in love with him.
My gigantic crush on him has turned into love. Longing for him those five months after our night together, his tender care, hell everything about Jesse, has made me fall in love with him. My desire to know everything about him has intensified.
But loving him doesn’t answer the question that matters.
If he only wants me physically and to fulfil what he believes is his responsibility to me and the babies, I don’t know if I can accept it.
I’ve watched my parents madly love each other for over twenty years.
They’re each other’s best friends, sharing everything.
I don’t know if I can let go of my dream to have that kind of relationship, even pregnant and hiding from a man who wants to hurt me, and the father of my children asleep one floor below refusing to tell me why he ever walked away in the first place, despite wanting me.
The tears come before I can stop them, falling sideways into the pillow.
Hormones, I tell myself, pressing the heel of my hand against my eyes. That’s all this is.
“What’s the matter? I’m coming in.”
“Don’t.” And because my voice came out all weepy, I try again, “I’m fine. It’s just hormones.”
I don’t quite believe it. I’m not sure Jesse does either, because he hangs outside the door for a bit before leaving.