Chapter Fifteen
Liv
“It’s outside of your contracted hours to be here so early,” I speak into thin air when I step onto my back porch at six am.
The tingle on the back of my neck recognizes the aura emanating from my patio furniture.
“Seeing that you’re not paying me, I’d consider a contract pretty irrelevant. Besides, I’m not here early if I never left.”
“Did you sleep back here?” It must’ve gotten down to 40 degrees last night.
“No, I slept in my car. Just came back here to take a leak in the woods.”
I roll my eyes. “Nice,” I chuff sarcastically.
“Well, go inside and make yourself decent for work. We’re still leaving on time.”
“Yes, boss,” he smirks, rising from his seat slowly. Except he stops before he gets to the back door, watching me with his hands in his pockets.
“What?”
He shrugs, but has a glint in his eye.
“Are you waiting for me to disrobe?”
“Can you blame me?” He smiles, and I hear the challenge in his tone.
Never one to back down easily, I don’t blink as I let my robe fall, revealing one of the little cheap bikinis I keep on rotation for my cold plunge.
His jaw unhinges, and he doesn’t move until I’m submerged to my shoulders in the ice water.
“What?” I breathe through the cold.
“You have your nipples pierced?”
He has seen me in a bikini before, but this one doesn’t have the padding in the top like the last one. “One of many reckless decisions made in college.”
He still doesn’t move, and his eyes look almost completely out of focus.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he clears his throat. “Just a lifetime worth of fantasies in my head I need to rewrite.”
I almost laugh, but my breath gets caught in my throat. He looks distraught as he turns to go inside. He’s completely serious…
Excitement tingles in my core, and I force my head underwater, punishing myself for where my thoughts were going.
I have a fiancé.
I’m getting married.
I’m gasping for breath by the time my head resurfaces. I need him to fuck me ruthlessly to erase Hayes from my mind altogether.
That’s all it is.
I’m lonely living away from Elliot.
That’s all.
I’ll visit him this weekend, get thoroughly fucked, and get myself back into the excitement of walking down the aisle.
When I pass through the living room, Hayes is sitting on the couch, pulling his shoes back on. He hasn’t put his dress shirt on yet, and the tattoo on his tricep bulges from the edge of his t-shirt.
Each tattoo down his arm draws my focus until I’m once again staring at the code atop his hand.
50.1.5
Are they coordinates? It can’t be a date.
“Everything okay?” He glances over his shoulder, noticing my attention.
“What are those numbers for?”
He rubs his wrist. “Just something important to me.”
“Hmm, cryptic,” I harrumph. “You know I have nipple piercings, but I don’t get to know about your tattoos.”
“To be fair, you only asked about one. Ask me about another.”
“I don’t want to know about the others.” That’s not true, but for the sake of argument, I’m standing strong.
“And I don’t want to think about all the guys who have gotten to see your tits.”
“Sucks, huh?” The venom that lies dormant in my soul, that’s usually reserved for big cases, can’t seem to stay tamped down near Hayes. “And whose fault is that?”
I don’t wait for him to respond because nothing he says will ever be good enough. It’ll never erase the past. Or rewrite it.
I don’t emerge from my room until I’m sculpted to perfection. Suit, blowout, makeup. Because I’m Liv Greenwood. Not, little Olive, consumed by boy problems or distracted by Jensen Hayes.
As he does every morning, he’s waiting by the door, holding it open for me as I breeze past him, and somehow making it to the car door before I can, opening it before I’m able to reach for the handle.
It’s overwhelmingly annoying and downright chivalrous.
We don’t speak on the commute or the walk up to my office.
It isn’t until his arm beams out in front of my chest that I realize how unbothered I’ve been about checking my surroundings. I was in lala land thinking about my case, disregarding that I have a stalker on the loose.
“Your office door is open.”
“Maybe the cleaning staff is in there.”
He glances at me, unconvinced. “Stay right here,” he demands, and I roll my eyes. “Please,” he adds softly.
He slinks through the door, disappearing for a few seconds before he pops back into view, rubbing his hand over his chin.
“What?” It’s bad news, I can tell.
“You were ransacked.”
“No!” I run past him and nearly fall to my knees. Every paper from every file is strewn across the room.
My blinds are broken, the trinkets on my desk are in a heap in the corner, and the whiteboard outlining the Porter Brothers’ criminal timeline is erased. In its place are five words in black marker.
I thought you were different.
“What does that mean?” I screech, too pissed off to keep my composure.
“I don’t know, but we’ll fix this. We’ll get it back in order.”
“I needed to have everything ready to move forward with the pre-trial.”
“We’ll start over.”
“No, it’ll take too long.”
“Liv,” he starts, but I stumble back into the hallway.
“No.” I try to catch my breath, but it becomes too hard to inhale. “They’re counting on me. Everyone in this damn county is counting on me to get these guys.”
“We’ll figure it out. Just sit down,” he begs, but I swat him away.
“Fuck! Not now,” I cry as the world starts spinning. I hear Hayes, but I can’t focus long enough to speak as I slump unseeing against the wall.
“She’s blacking out. What do I do? How do I help her? No, I don’t. Does she keep some on her? Thank you, Thea. I’ll let you know.
“Come on, dove.”
My body is hoisted into the air, and my head falls back until flashes of the ugly ceiling tiles pass over me.
Cold water touches my temple, and I follow the sensation as it trickles down my neck. More water, until it’s soaking the collar of my shirt.
“Right here, Liv. Look at me.” His voice coaxes me, but I’m still in a dreamlike state.
Something spicy hits my tongue, and my cheeks pucker instinctively against the cinnamon.
“That’s it, feel it.” His breath caresses my skin, and I blink against it. “Look at me, pretty girl. Come back to me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting against something completely different now.
“Don’t shake your head at me,” he scolds, but I hadn’t realized I was.
His fingers swipe at the wetness on my skin, but it isn’t until his thumb caresses the pulse in my neck that I open my eyes to the bright bathroom lights.
“There she is,” he smiles, but it takes another moment for the concern to turn to relief.
“Why the fuck does this keep happening to me?” My head falls back against the mirror with a thump.
“Hey, you okay?” Jackson’s voice comes from the doorway. “Someone down the hall said something was going on…” His voice trails off as he sees our predicament.
I’m atop the counter between the sinks, and Jensen’s body is shoved between my thighs. We’re both wet and flustered.
I think this is worse than passing out.
“I’m fine.” I shove him back, hopping down from the counter too fast, and my knees buckle before I can control it.
He catches me without a word, even though he has every reason to let me fall on my ass. “She’s not fine,” he grumbles. “Tell him, or I will.”
“Fine,” I grit through my teeth. “But can we please get out of the bathroom?”
Jackson follows us to my office, taking his time to catalog the damage, snap photos, and look for any evidence. As he’s leaving, I think I’m in the clear, but he stops in the doorway to lean against it.
“So, what’s going on with you?”
I glance at Hayes, and he’s staring at me seriously, making me roll my eyes.
“Since moving here, I have been having fainting spells. It used to be less frequent, but now it seems like it’s happening every few days.”
“It happens every time this punk messes with you,” Hayes adds, and I cut him a glare.
“Doctors think it is stress-induced,” I clarify.
“Liv, if this case is going to affect your health, we can pull you from it. Judge Fulton can call in some favors, get someone else to prosecute.”
“No! This is my case.”
He holds his hands up. “Fine. You’re my colleague, and you’re also my friend, but if this gets out of hand, I’ll go over your head.”
“It won’t. I have it handled.”
He nods and leaves the room and the mess to us.
“Do you have it handled?” Jensen looks at me as if he’s still expecting me to keel over any second.
“We handled it a moment ago, didn’t we?”
He scoffs. “Liv, you scared the shit out of me. That was not ideal.”
“Now you know for the future.”
“Right, I know that cold water and cinnamon candy help to wake you up. But what if it’s worse?”
“Lying down with my feet up also helps.”
“Dammit, Liv! This is serious.”
“I know! But no one gets to take this case from me. I need it.”
“Why?”
I turn my back and ignore his question because I am too prideful to admit the truth.
I need this case to prove that I didn’t make a mistake by coming here. I need to prove that I can handle this career without the cushion of a bougie law firm.
I need to prove that I am accomplishing all my dreams before I walk down the aisle and lose myself.
Because the truth is, I’ve already started to.