Chapter 32
thirty-two
EZRA
Drunk Jo is a talker. I think she’s said more words in the last two hours than she has the entire month we’ve been here.
Considering we chat about her murder stuff while she makes dinner every night, that’s saying a lot.
I’m not sure I’ve followed half of her thoughts. They’re going too fast, and I’m tired.
“And another thing!” she yells, finger pointed in the air. I rack my brain trying to remember what the topic is, but I’ve polished off a bottle of wine and my thoughts are fuzzy.
“What was the first thing?” I ask before I can tell my mouth to shut up.
Jo turns to me with a terrifying glare. I watch as she opens her mouth and closes it like she was about to speak but lost the thought. Or maybe the first thing was fish, and she’s miming it to me?
Blub blub, I think to myself and chuckle.
“Why are you giggling?” Jo asks, scowling.
“I do not giggle! Men don’t giggle!” I cross my arms and return her scowl. But then the scariest thing happens. Jo smiles, and it’s not her cute smile that makes my tummy flutter.
Wait. What?
No tummy flutters. Tummy flutters mean gas and that’s it.
I can only handle Jo’s scary smiles that mean bad things for me.
“Definitely bad things for you,” Jo says, then she pokes me in my ribs several times while I let out a very manly laugh and question how much I said out loud.
“See?” I ask with a confidence only alcohol could muster.
Jo laughs so hard she has to bend over to catch her breath. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, baby girl,” she says when she finally stops laughing enough to speak.
I ignore the nickname, having maintained enough sense to know it will stick if I comment on it.
“What were we talking about?” Jo asks. She’s smiling that not-tummy-fluttering smile that isn’t at all confusing to me and hasn’t been making me question myself for at least the last week.
I definitely don’t like how pink her cheeks are from the alcohol or the unguarded way she’s been looking at me.
There’s no way I like the thoughts that cross my mind in the middle of the night when the house is at its darkest and I’m riding the line between dreams and consciousness.
Those thoughts have to stay in the dark.
“Fish?”
Jo stares at me without blinking before bursting out into laughter again. “Hey, do you think fish know they’re fish?” she asks after composing herself.
“What else would they think they are?”
Jo shrugs. “You know what I think?”
“Not usually,” I slur.
Jo continues like I haven’t spoken. Maybe I didn’t. “I think we should learn a craft so we have something to do. It’s very boring here.”
“A craft? Like witchcraft?” She’s going to turn me into a toad. I knew it! I bet she kept the knife she stabbed me with because she needed my blood for her toad spell.
Jo laughs again, and I could easily become addicted to the sound. “No! Like pottery or diamond painting. Oh! Or maybe smutty wood carvings!”
“No?” I didn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but I think I only know what half those words mean.
“Oh!” she shouts again, an excited smile on her face as she grips my thigh. I think she says something after that, but all I can feel is her hot skin against mine, and it’s making my balls tingle.
Huh. That’s new. I wonder if I should call Darren and ask him if tingly ball disease comes from wine. I never drink it and now my balls are tingling and my dick is chubbing.
“What do you think?” Jo asks, pulling me from spiraling over my maybe ball disease.
“Uh. Sure,” I say, a little scared to tell her I wasn’t listening. I grab my glass to drain it, but only a single drop hits my tongue. “Did you drink my wine?”
Jo snorts. “That was all you.”
“No. I’d remember.”
“Really? What did you just agree to if you remember things so well?”
She’s looking at me with a smug expression on her cute face, and I want to kiss it off her.
“I think wine makes me straight!” I yell with a gasp at the realization. That has to be what’s wrong with my balls right now. “They need to put that on the warning label!”
Jo blinks at me slowly. “Is that why I’m stuck only liking men?” she screeches. “What will make me like women? Hard cider?” Jo stands up too quickly and almost topples over the coffee table.
“We don’t have hard cider,” I say, throwing my arms out to stop her from falling, but all that manages to do is knock me on my side. Jo turns to look at me, but trips and lands right on my chest.
“Hard cider store tomorrow,” she mumbles.
“Okay,” I agree easily. My eyes are starting to close against my will, and the warmth of her body is making me sleepy. Jo mumbles something else, but I’m already too far gone to hear it.
I’m hot and sweaty. My mouth is dry and feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton.
The weight on my chest is snoring. I crack open a heavy eyelid to see that Jo and I passed out on the couch last night.
All three bottles of wine sit empty on the coffee table in front of me.
It seems like she’s been using me as both a pillow and a drool rag.
My arms are wrapped tightly around her for reasons I’m no longer drunk enough to think about.
A phone vibrates somewhere. I can feel it through the cushions, but I have no idea whose it is or where it is. Jo groans and starts digging around without moving her head or opening her eyes. The light brush of her hand against my side as she searches for the phone tickles, and I hold in the laugh.
“Got it,” Jo mumbles, whipping out a silver phone and squinting at the screen.
Fuck. That one is mine. Jo flies out of my lap and is standing in front of me at a speed that should be impossible for someone who drank as much as she did last night.
Her face is flushed, but not from laughter or alcohol this time. No, Jo is angry. Very, very angry.
“Jo,” I start, sitting up slowly and lifting my hands like she’s a dangerous animal waiting to pounce. Considering I know what she can do from sparring with her, I’m not far off. I also have no idea what she saw on my phone and can’t prepare myself for whatever is about to happen.
“Kai,” Jo says, teeth clenched and voice shaking. “You have a fucking missed call from Kai!”
I didn’t tell her my brother had contacted me. It was brief, and he only told me everyone was okay and that he had a burner if I needed to contact him. Otherwise, we agreed that everything was safer going through our dad.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, is it not?” she says, voice laced with venom. “You haven’t had a way to contact Maverick this entire time?”
“No!” I shout, getting to my feet. “Kai called me last week—”
“Last week?” she screeches. “So for at least the past week you’ve had a direct number to Maverick, and you’re trying to convince me you didn’t use it?”
“I didn’t!”
Jo’s glare remains steady, studying my face. “Fuck you, Ezra.” She says it so calmly that I’m more frightened. I watch her stomp over to the sliding glass door.
“What are you doing?” I ask, following her, but it’s too late. She runs to the edge of the cliff and throws my phone. I watch it disappear out of sight. “Are you fucking kidding me? We needed that! The surveillance app isn’t on your phone!”
Jo doesn’t speak. She doesn’t even look at me as she shoves her way past me and back into the house. I’m still staring out over the cliff like I can will my lost phone back into my hands when she comes back. She’s dressed in leggings and the winter coat we picked up the other day.
“Jo,” I start, not knowing if what’s going to come out of my mouth is an apology or anger.
I knew she’d be mad that I had Kai’s number, but it never occurred to me she’d think I was talking to Maverick behind her back.
It should have. This whole time I was treating her as my competition, but at some point, I got complacent and started to see her differently.
I thought her idea of me had changed too, but I can see I was wrong.
Jo doesn’t acknowledge that I spoke and just makes her way down the cliff stairs to the beach.
“There’s a storm coming in!” I yell, warning her even though I shouldn’t. I sigh. Even if she’s pissing me off, I don’t actually want anything to happen to her. And not just because Maverick would never forgive me for it. At least not anymore.
“Fuck you,” she yells back, but it’s barely audible over the wind.
I groan and head back into the house. How did I keep getting myself into these fucking situations?