31. Jessica
JESSICA
“You still haven’t answered my question. What exactly are you doing here across from your ex’s office?”
“Who says? There are lots of buildings on this block. Maybe I just like the coffee here…hey, wait a minute, how do you know where Dale works?”
This whole thing feels strange. The kind of strange that makes my heart race with panic and my head split trying to figure it out. “You want the truth, or you want something that’s going to make you sleep easy at night?”
“What the hell kinda question is that?”
Why is this ice block trying to make himself sound so mysterious? “Fine, I know everything about you, everything you’ve done, everyone you’ve seen, every place you’ve been since… since that night.” I think the blood drained not just from my head but from my whole body.
I could do nothing, say nothing, but sit there and gape at him as if he’d grown an extra head.
I shook my own to clear it a little, then looked at him again.
He wasn’t lying; he was serious. I swallowed hard, but my throat was dry and empty.
I tried to speak, but somehow I seem to have lost the ability to form meaningful words.
“You…”
“Don’t cry!” I didn’t know that I was until his big hand wiped the wetness off my cheeks and stayed there. Then even more fell onto his hand, and he pulled me up from the stool I sat on and onto his lap.
It was embarrassing, but at least the place wasn’t crowded, since most of their customers were already at work at the many businesses in the area. He pulled my head down onto his chest and held it there. It was the steady thump-thump beating of his heart that soothed and calmed me.
I got caught up listening to it and lost myself there for a while until his voice jarred me back to the moment. “Are you okay now, sweetheart?” I almost broke my neck pulling away from him, and he didn’t stop me when I slid back onto my stool.
“I’m fine!” My voice sounded like a three-pack-a-day smoker, so I had to clear it again and again to get it right. I kept my head down so he wouldn’t see the look of confusion, hurt and hope in my eyes. “Why do you…?”
“Why do you think, Jessica?” I shook my head again, still not grasping the implication of his words but wanting them to mean something, anything, that would make up for the hurt I’ve felt all these years.
Does he even understand how important it is for me to find some kind of solace, some way to forgive him for what he did that night?
I’ve realized that I still love him, sure, and maybe I always will. But I’ve gone these past few years without him and could pull it off for the rest of my life. Loving him is not a past for him to hurt me. Hell if I’m going to subject myself to that kind of pain again.
“I’ll never be able to make it up to you for what I said that night.
That was your first time, not only that, I knew how you felt because you were brave enough to tell me, braver than me.
I let my own fear control me and took it out on you.
I’ve not been able to forgive myself for the way I treated you that night.
It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life. ”
Better, no excuses, just plain truth. But was it enough? He wasn’t done, it seemed, so I kept my mouth shut as my hands gripped my thighs almost painfully as I waited for the words to fall from his lips.
“I knew even then that you were mine, that I could never let you go, not forever, so I kept tabs on you.”
“You were spying on me.”
“Not spying really, just making sure my woman was safe.” The audacity.
“Your woman? Hah!”
“Yes, mine!” My head went even lower to hide the secret smile that had formed on my face. And then a thought hit me. “What if I had really fallen in love with someone else? What if Dale and I had gotten married?”
“I’d never let that happen.” The sharpness in his voice made me look up quickly, and when I swallowed, this time my throat was no longer as dry.
“I know what I owe you, and if you’d let me, I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to you.
Everything I said to you before about the family legacy is all true, but it’s no excuse for the way I handled things back then.
I’ve known that for a long time, had even thought of coming to you time and again, but by then you’d started hiding from me. ”
He had the nerve to give me an accusing look. I rolled my eyes at him and went back to sipping my lukewarm coffee. Ayo, bastard spawn, you just gave me the keys to the kingdom and want to snatch them back this quickly?
As if! I’m going to use this shit for the rest of your miserable life to keep you in check. Our children will know about this too when they’re old enough, especially our daughters. Maybe not so much our sons if they’re going to turn out like you. My shoulders shook with my silent snickers.
“What’re you plotting now?” I almost jumped out of my skin. I think I forgot he was here.
“Uh, potting? Who? Me? Nothing.” How dare he? He’s the one in the hot seat; now he’s accusing me?
“Is my answer satisfactory enough for you?”
“For now, yes, but I’m still mad at you, and I’m still hurt. You still need to give me some space.”
“I’ll give you a week.”
“A week…?” His look said there was no room for debate. Does he think I’m some kind of punk? Who the hell does he think he is? I started to argue with him, but then I remembered that he didn’t know where I was staying.
He probably thought I went back home, where it would be easy for him to find me.
At the reminder, I pinned my lips shut to hold back the laughter and just nodded along like the obedient simp he thought I was.
“A week it is then.” I smiled ever so sweetly at him as I planned how to make his life a living hell for the next month or so.
A whole week has passed, and I’m still no closer to heading back.
This place was just what I needed after the hell of the last few weeks.
I’ve even been sleeping better, though I pass out as if I’m in a coma even without pills; I wake up feeling rested and alive.
I guess I’ve been sleeping rough, though, because there is always an indentation on the pillow next to me.
I think it might be time to go back now, though, because last night I was so out of it I imagined that Julius was holding me while I slept. It was so intense I could even smell him. I think I memorized the pattern of his heartbeat because that, too, followed me into my dreams.
Those people over there at Dale’s job work fast as hell.
It has only been a week, and they’d already dug up all the information needed to send people to jail for two lifetimes.
Of course, I’ve been feeding them everything nibble by nibble and leading them in the right direction each step of the way.
Dale was already sweating bullets, and I think he may have seen my hand in it because he’s tried calling me every day since this whole thing began. I’ve been avoiding him, of course; it wasn’t time yet to reveal my part in it, but soon.
I hadn’t been back to the coffee shop since that day Julius hunted me down, but today I absolutely must. It should be Dale’s time at the gallows after all the information I’d sent last night. My plan had worked out better even than I expected.
The executives at that company didn’t play, it seemed, which worked wonders in my favor. They’d started the ball rolling from day one and hadn’t stopped, which led me to believe that maybe they’d had suspicions all along and just didn’t know where to look.
Whatever! After today, Dale will be out of his cushy job.
Even though he wasn’t part of Charlotte’s criminal circle, it was obvious that she’d used her closeness to him to get the information she’d used.
Add that to the fact that there’s a very strict no-fraternization law on the books, and he’s as good as cooked.
There’s no way for him to swindle his way out of it this time. He might avoid jail time, but it would be very hard for him to find a job in his field going forward once word got out. “Hehe!” I closed my computer and got ready to go for the last time.
JULIUS
Damn, how did I cross this vindictive nut and come away relatively unscathed?
I reread the report on my desk and shook my head while my nuts tried crawling into my guts in fear.
This girl… It had taken me this long to find out what she was up to.
It still hadn’t sat well with me that she was staking out the building where her ex worked, and though I didn’t see her as the cheating kind, it still bothered me.
It took my men this long to get the goods because she’s a hacker freak who knows well how to cover her tracks, but once they turned their focus on Dale, everything started to unravel.
They hadn’t found the link between the two, but I did.
Even without seeing the evidence, I knew her well enough to put two and two together.
As menacing as she was behind a computer, she’s as green as a lamb in real life. I’ve slept beside her every night this week, and she still doesn’t know. I’ve tested her over the phone in our now-regular morning chats and found that she refuses to lie to me, which is a very good thing.
Each time I ask a question that makes it seem like she’s at her parents’ house, she changes the subject and refuses to answer. So, she won’t lie about being there, but she won’t tell me where she is either.
I used to smirk each time she did that, but now, looking at this report in my hand, I’m not so sure that I should be playing around with her. On top of that, my idiot brother just loves reminding me how easy his woman was to handle compared to mine.
I’m too busy to remind him of how he’d lost his mind back then, so he just laughs and rubs it in that my woman had run away, and I didn’t know where to find her.
Mom, who had settled down once, gave her an acceptable explanation and just smiled secretly because she knew my fish hadn’t jumped off the hook.
Dad, well, he’s just a lost cause. He buys into Roman’s bullshit because they’re both cut from the same cloth and has taken to calling me a disgrace to the family name. According to him, I shot myself in the foot and will spend the rest of my life alone because I let my one and only get away.
That apparently isn’t his biggest worry. The fact that I had crossed the Thorntons and those three old men seemed to worry him more than anything else. “We’re gonna have to move.” He’d yelled that at the dinner table last night after tearing into me again.
That was his new kick, playing the doddering old fool. I’d have believed that if Uncle Marcus hadn’t been in existence. As crazy as her family is, mine has them beat. But she’s on a whole other level. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”