19. “IT JUST TAKES SOME TIME, LITTLE GIRL, YOU’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RIDE, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING WILL BE JUST FINE” #2
Paranoid and not in the mood for games, she scanned the shadows. “Soren?”
Crickets.
She pinched her nose. This was not how she planned to spend her evening.
“Both of you, in the house.”
Cordelia proudly marched inside with her head high. King tromped after her like an obedient Clydesdale. If this was some elaborate prank to get her to call him, he was getting an earful when she got a hold of him.
Irritated, she picked up her phone and went through the prompts to unblock his number.
King pranced over to Cordelia’s tiny food water bowl and drank, flipped it onto the floor, trying to get his oversized snout inside.
“Hey! King, get out of there!”
The rhino swallowed a whole bowl of Cordelia’s food in one bite.
The call went to voicemail. “Soren, your dog is here. I know you did this on purpose and I really don’t appreciate it. Call me back, or better yet, come get your moose of a dog.”
She ended the call and paced, waiting for him to call back. Then she realized she just invited him over.
“Shit.”
She didn’t want him here. This was her space, her sanctuary. Plus, she was currently rocking zombie-glam and not really giving the impression she wanted to leave him with.
With a huff, she marched upstairs to change. After throwing on a pair of jeans and a sweater, she faced her reflection in defeat. She was too far gone and would need a firehose to fix her appearance at this point.
Deciding it was better if she looked scary—safer—she called the dogs, “Come on, you two, we’re going for a car ride.”
The moment the dogs heard the magic words, they went ballistic. Getting King into her tiny hatchback was an exercise of determination and a lesson in ergonomics. Honestly, there was more of him out of the car than in the car when she pulled away.
Navigating the back road at a crawl, she thought through all the things he might try to say to her, mentally drafting rebuttals to shut him up.
Cordelia sat like a princess, safely latched into her car seat, while King sat in a tangle of limbs, with his chest and head hanging out the passenger window.
Not once did her phone ring on the drive to Soren’s, which only proved this was some elaborate setup to get her to talk to him.
It helped if she pictured punching him in the dick for disrupting her evening. She had been on a roll, and now her characters were stranded in the climax where she so rudely abandoned them.
Her lips pursed when she pulled up right behind his Escalade. She should just let King out there. But she’d never forgive herself if the big dummy got hit by a car or dog-napped.
“Come on, you big oaf.” She opened the door, and King loped out with a proud bark.
Jocelyne unclipped Cordelia, and the chihuahua pranced after him like a love-blind conspirator.
“You’re both traitors,” she grumbled, climbing out of the car.
She marched up the step and pounded on the double doors. When he didn’t answer, she knocked again. “Soren! I know you’re in there. I have your dog.”
She jiggled the handle, but the door was locked. She pounded again.
The dogs bolted off the porch and darted around the side of the house.
“Hey! Get back here!”
Jocelyn rushed after them, but her body was broken from days of sitting and they moved as fast as a racehorse and a squirrel.
“King! Cordelia! Come!”
They darted around the enormous house before she even made it to the side.
“Deelie, you listen to Mommy!” This was why she didn’t have kids.
Just as she rounded the side yard, they bolted for the back. Their claws carved divots into the sod as they picked up speed, racing toward the back as if the hounds of hell were on their heels.
Already getting a cramp in her side, Jocelyn cursed and fell into a lazy trot. Breath ragged, she rounded the back corner and stumbled back as the world collapsed into a glowing swirl of beauty.
Her brain took a second to catch up and register what she was actually seeing. Soren’s entire backyard had transformed into something that defied reality. Twinkle lights and the golden glow of a thousand candles flickering under a bright pink sky.
Autumn exploded across his property with deliberate orchestration. Dozens of cream-colored lanterns hung from wrought iron posts, their golden flames casting shadows across the terrace.
A tight ache pulled at her chest the second she saw him.
No. She couldn’t look at him. He didn’t get to make it this easy.
Tears shocked her eyes, and she ripped her blurred stare away.
Pumpkins in graduated sizes clustered in deliberate arrangements, burnt orange ones bleeding into deep charcoal, pale sage baby pumpkins that had yet to ripen, and cream Cinderella ones.
Chrysanthemums in wine and burgundy spilled from copper urns, their petals dense as velvet, releasing a green-sweet scent that coated the back of her throat and made it hard to swallow.
The air tasted of everything autumn, awakening sweet nostalgic memories she’d all but forgotten. Her eyes blinked rapidly as a cool breeze carried woodsmoke, challenging the faint chlorine sharpness of the heated pool beyond.
Hay bales layered with quilts in shades of emerald, sapphire, and deep plum. The flagstone terrace curved into the landscape and swirled about the copper firepit.
Beyond that, the jacuzzi churned with gentle insistence, sending ribbons of steam curling into the night sky.
Stars sparkled in the sky above as the sun dropped below the horizon in a final, dramatic bow.
The twinkle above reflected in the sparkle below, where thousands of fairy lights strung from the bare branches of the orchard beyond.
Her blurry gaze returned to Soren, and her breathing stopped.
His tailored black suit emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and accentuated the sharp lines of his face. And there she was—banshee bag lady, frizzed to the nines and dripping with sweat. She hated him for being so damn pretty.
“Why are you doing this?”
“It was the only way I could think of to get you here.” Even the sound of his voice cut into her. She was defenseless against him.
Completely disarmed by his efforts to impress her, she shook her head. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to like him this much. But ever since that first day he was nice to her, the day she warned him not to be, she’d been unable to resist him.
“You tricked me,” she accused, unprepared for whatever this was. “Deelie, come on. We’re leaving.”
“Don’t go. Please. I had to get you here so I could explain. I just need five minutes, Joce. That’s all I ask.”
In one hand, he held a dog whistle. King and Cordelia—the turncoats—sat obediently at his side. In his other hand, he held a small, terrifying velvet box.
“Soren, what is this?”
He took a slow step forward, thumb holding the whistle to his palm as his fingers splayed in a calming motion as if silently commanding her to stay. When she stepped back, like a frightened rabbit ready to bolt, he stilled.
“Don’t run away.”
Shaking her head, she looked up at the sky through blurry eyes. It was too much. Tears slipped past her lashes as she struggled to speak past the lump in her throat.
“Soren…” His name was a plea. “Whatever you’re about to do, don’t. You don’t want this.”
“I know what I want, Jocelyn. I love you.”
Her head fell forward as her heart spasmed. More tears fell and she was embarrassed when she couldn’t stop herself from leaking.
“I think I loved you since the day you snapped my mechanical pencil in half and Mr. Schaffer made you stay for detention.”
A watery laugh slipped past the lump in her throat. “I got grounded for that.”
He shook his head. “Detention, grounding, there was no disciplining the brat out of you.”
She laughed again, because it was true, especially when it came to picking on him. “You deserved my wrath. You called my pigtails dumb.”
“I remember.” He grinned, as if looking back, still able to see her as the new third grader in town. “You were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.”
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Could only stand there, caught between disbelief and the visceral understanding that he was actually saying the things they silently agreed to never say out loud.
“I fucked up, Joce, and I know it. I never should have prioritized business over being there for you. But I swear, it was only business. I spent the whole time wishing I was back here with you.”
Her chin dropped to her chest. “What about—”
“The picture was a setup. Yes, Olivia Aldrich was there, but so were two hundred other people associated with her mother and father. It was a charity event. She used the opportunity to manipulate me and hurt someone I love, and she’ll never do it again. I made sure of that.”
He spoke with such certainty, such protectiveness, it sent a shiver of awareness down her spine. But no matter how much she wanted to believe him that the photo was innocent, she couldn’t stop picturing it in her mind.
“She was touching you like she…” Her words cut off as the pressure in her throat tightened.
“If you look at my face, Jocelyn, really look, you can see how uncomfortable I am. My hands were balled into fists, and my jaw was clenched tight enough to break a tooth. But none of that should matter. I’m telling you the truth.
I would never, ever hurt you that way. All I ever wanted to do was love and protect you.
” He let out a breath. “Please tell me you know that.”
Despite all her anger and heartache, she couldn’t deny the truth. She nodded and rasped, “I know.”
“I’ve spent the last few sleepless nights trying to figure out how to fix this. King and I had some long, honest heart-to-hearts about my stubbornness, and I’ve been informed that being a control freak is not the same as being in total control.”
A small laugh puffed past her lips. “King told you that?”
“Well, not the last part. That came more from Grey and Logan.”
“They’re not wrong.”
“I know,” he admitted. “I knew that the second I fucked up. I tried so hard to be there for you, but I…” He shook his head. “I took on too much. Turns out, I’m only human. I’m learning to live with these flaws.”