- TWO
Cece
"Shit. Shit shit shit," I cursed myself as I stomped through the torrential downpour rain we'd been having all day as I made my way to the police station. I was so stupid to wait so long to get help.
Three days.
What the hell had I been thinking?
Granted, Jade was a bit flaky at times. She didn't report all her moves to me, and she often spent a night out.
But not three whole days.
At the end of the second day, I should have contacted the police.
I guess I just didn't want to look stupid if she did show back up unharmed after having some kind of spiritual retreat or something.
But, fact of the matter was, I had been living with her for the better part of four months, and she had never been gone for so long, not even when telling me she would be gone for a while.
The rain had soaked me through to my underwear, and I had to throw a dripping mass of my hair over my shoulder as I wrenched the station door open, cursing my car in new and inventive ways for choosing that particular day to crap out on me.
I was made to wait for half an hour before I was led over to a detective who took my somewhat wet picture of Jade, the only one I had.
It was actually of the two of us on my birthday, but it was the only one I had of her.
I gave a description and when I had last seen her and what she had been wearing when she'd left the apartment.
I gave the detective my contact information and was informed he would be in touch.
I left feeling worse than when I had gone in.
Because I got the distinct impression that the detective wasn't overly concerned about a woman who was flighty by nature and could show up at any time.
But I knew, I knew deep down to my soul that something was wrong. She wasn't just at a retreat or holed up with a new lover. She would have come home. She would have contacted me, so I didn't worry.
I trudged up the staircase to our building, my heart sinking with each step I got closer to our apartment, knowing I would find it colder, emptier, without Jade around to warm and fill it, to balance out my cold and dark.
I unlocked the door and stepped in, pushing it closed before I looked up.
And the entire place was trashed. Furniture was tipped over; cushions were ripped open; plants were ripped from the pots they had been in.
And then I saw him.
As in, someone who definitely did not belong in my apartment.
As in, a stranger.
As in, someone who was rifling through a pile of paperwork on the kitchen counter.
Hearing the door close and, likely, my breath gasping inward, his head turned, and I got more than just his profile.
And, well, he was ridiculously good looking for a criminal.
He was tall and a lean kind of strong with blond hair longer on top and cropped close on the sides.
His somewhat severe brows were over eyes the lightest blue I had ever seen in my life.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, startling me enough to jerk back a step.
What was I doing there? What the hell kind of burglar asked that?
"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked, taking a step to the side and reaching for the door handle.
"Look, just go. Get out and don't come back and I won't call the cops.
We obviously don't have anything to steal," I added in case that wasn't painfully obvious.
I looked away for the barest of seconds as my hand turned the knob.
But that was apparently all he needed.
One moment, he was mostly across the apartment from me. The next, he was right in front of me, his front slammed into my front, his body pressing mine hard against the wall as his strong hand grasped my wrist in a punishing grip.
My words got caught in my chest under the strangling feeling of fear for a long second. "Let me go," I demanded, my voice a little squeaky.
"Tell me what the fuck you're doing here and I will," he demanded in his cool, detached, undeniably sexy voice.
"No," I said, fear making me angry. "You tell me what the fuck you are doing here."
To that, his head tilted a little as he took his free hand, reached in his pocket, pulled out a key and waved it in my face. "I have a key," he informed me.
"Not anymore you don't," I snapped, snatching the key from him and curling my fist around it, figuring he was one of Jade's exes or something.
Hell, maybe he was that cheating guy, Doyle.
"Now get the hell out of my apartment," I demanded despite definitely not having the upper-hand in the situation.
"Last time I checked, this was Jade's apartment. So I will ask one more time- who the hell are you?"
Unsure what the right move was at that juncture, I went for the truth. "I'm Cece. I live with Jade."
"There," he said, smiling a little lazily, "was that so hard?" he asked, taking a step back and it was the first time I felt like I could breathe properly again.
I looked around a little, feeling the hopelessness overwhelm me all over again. "She wasn't here, right? You haven't seen her?"
His head tilted again, taking me in. "How long has she been gone?" he cut to the chase.
"She... I'm not telling you anything. I don't even know who you are. You destroyed our apartment."
To that, he shrugged. "I'm Jasper," he supplied. "I'm Jade's brother. And your apartment was like this when I got here. Someone else broke in and tore it apart."
The second the words were out of his mouth, I saw the resemblance.
It was in the sharp features, the light and heavy-lidded eyes, the blond hair, the tall and thin build.
Hell, Jasper was even wearing what I had learned from living with Jade to recognize as hemp pants and a tight cotton tee.
And then the realization hit that Jade was still missing, her brother was as worried as I was, and someone had been rifling through our apartment.
I looked around a little anxiously as if someone might still be hiding out behind a bookcase or something to snatch me up too, making me wonder what Jade might have gotten herself into to bring people into our apartment to rip it apart.
"How long?" he asked again when I remained dumbly silent.
"Three days," I answered automatically. "I figured she just flaked off or something. But today, I knew it wasn't that. I just filed a report with the police."
"They won't be able to find her where she went," he said, moving several feet away from me.
"You know where she is? Is she okay? Why wouldn't she say something about leaving?"
"She's in The Green," he supplied oddly.
"The Green?" I repeated. "Is that some kind of club?"
He laughed then, a short, humorless sound that still managed to make my belly do a strange quiver. "No."
"Well, whatever it is, give me the address. I'll go see if she's okay."
"You won't get in. At least not without me."
"Fine then. Let's go. We're just wasting time here," I said, moving away from the wall and reaching for the knob again.
"You can't go like that," his voice stopped me.
"Seriously?" I asked, rolling my eyes. "There's a dress code?"
"I'll grab something from Jade's room," he told me then moved off to do just that, not giving me a chance to inform him that Jade was a bit curvier than me.
Especially in the chest area. Not that it mattered.
No one cared what I looked like. I just needed the right hippie dippy clothes to get into whatever hippie dippy place she was and figure out if she was alright.
I moved into my room, peeling off my drenched sweatshirt and kicking out of my shoes.
I heard footsteps and turned to find Jasper standing there with a sage green cotton sundress I had seen Jade in a few times.
It was tight of bodice and dipped into a deep V between the breasts then loosened a bit around the waist and flowed down to knee-length.
"It's fifty degrees out," I said with a snort as I grabbed a towel and used it to squeeze some of the water out of my hair.
"So wear a jacket," he said, tossing it at me, making me drop the towel to make a grab for it. I held it up as he just kept staring at me and raised a brow that had him rolling his eyes and stepping out of my room.
I crossed over, kicked the door closed, and quickly stripped out of the rest of my wet and cold clothes, shivering slightly as I slipped into the thin, soft material of the sundress.
I swear the second I got the straps situated on my shoulders, the door flew back open, making my heart shoot up into my throat, as Jasper moved back into the room.
His eyes bored into mine for a long second before he started advancing toward me, making me take steps back until the foot of my bed prevented any further retreat.
His hand raised, slipping unexpectedly onto my shoulder.
I felt myself shiver and, judging by the small chuckle he let out, he noticed.
His fingers slipped to the side and snagged my bra strap, pulling it up slightly. "This has to come off."
I jerked backward slightly, swatting hard at his hand and almost falling onto my bed as I tried to retreat further. Who the hell was he? Who came into your room, insisted you change into a sundress, and then told you that you needed to take your bra off?
A psychopath.
Or a rapist, that's who.
I needed to get the hell away from him.
Jasper raised a brow as he watched me, taking several steps back.
"Don't worry," he said, a strangely condescending smile toying with his lips, "I have no interest in taking advantage of you.
" And the way he said it, it made it sound like I was disgusting and that it might be catching.
"You just can't get in with that bra on. "
"I'm sorry, are we going to some nineteen-sixties feminist meeting or something? Everyone wears bras everywhere."
"It's the material," he said, his voice starting to sound agitated. "It's synthetic."
Alright, I knew Jade was a little weird about synthetic material, and I had literally never seen her wear a bra, but where the hell would we be going that synthetic fibers were banned?