Chapter 8 #2
“I had the same chat with her, but her heart was in the right place,” I tell her, even though we both already know that.
Hollis might cuss like a sailor and find it impossible to sit still, but she would never intentionally hurt Bailey or anyone else that she loved.
“She was planning to tell you about the emails tomorrow to let you get through the party with a clear head.”
She snorts as if the whole thing is ironic. “And yet, we still ended up running out of there like the place was on fire, didn’t we?”
Bailey’s smile, coupled with her green eyes shining at me like we’re in on the same joke again, warms my whole body. It’s been a long time since I got that look out of her.
“Turns out, there was nothing clearheaded about the end of tonight, was there?” I ask, thinking back to how the night ended.
Her eyes widen.
“You were. I’ve imagined what you might be like after going through all that training, but I’ve never seen you in action like that.” She pauses to study my eyes, like she’s cementing my place in a completely different light.
I shift on the couch, avoiding her gaze. I don’t like thinking that Bailey has imagined what I might be like while doing what I’ve had to do.
My voice drops. “Don’t even think of it,” I tell her. “I’m just glad we got you out of there without anything bad happening to anyone.”
“I can’t believe I was ridiculous enough to think you were coming because you wanted to be there,” she says. The laugh that follows is dry, hardly sounding like a laugh at all.
“It’s not that I haven’t wanted to come,” I tell her. “You know that, right?”
Her eyes land on mine again, and she takes another gulp of wine as she gives me another full visual inspection before responding.
“Obviously, I can’t expect anyone to drop their life and come running to see me release a book once a year. That’d be ridiculous.”
I frown. That’s not what I meant.
“Celebrating something you’ve worked so hard on isn’t ridiculous,” I tell her.
“But it would have been ridiculous for you to travel back for it. SEALs don’t see book releases as a reason to let their people gallivant back home, and rightly so, but—”
“But I haven’t been in the SEALs for some time now,” I finish. It doesn’t exactly help to acknowledge that fact right now, but for every self-deprecating reason I have, I feel the need to mention it.
“Well, Boston is a very long way from here,” she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
I raise a brow. We both know it’s not. But between us, I’m the only one who knows why I haven’t come back sooner.
“As weird as it is, me staying away after I got back had nothing to do with you,” I tell her.
Her smile widens, like I’ve just hit the nail on the head without meaning to. “Yeah, whatever you’ve been up to has nothing to do with me. I’d agree. It’s pretty obvious at this point.” She studies a loose thread on the blanket lying across her lap.
“Trust me, Bay, there were a lot of parts of my life from before that I didn’t pick back up once I got out. You weren’t the only one.”
She drops the thread and shifts her gaze to mine. There’s more emotion pooled inside the green of her eyes, and I’m guessing in mine, too, than what either one of us is saying out loud right now. And it’s all my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, not knowing what else to say. “Procrastinating my way through the last two years was a dumb move.”
“Sometimes it felt like you never came back at all,” she says. “You were only a few hours away, but you may as well have been on Mars.”
My heart drops into my stomach. After I got back, I felt like I was on Mars — like the whole world had changed into something I hardly recognized while I was gone.
It took me a while to figure out that the world had actually stayed the same, and I was the one who’d changed.
Beyond my own recognition, too. The sudden adjustment was something I hadn’t prepared myself for because there just wasn’t time.
“I know. It’s a lot to unpack,” I tell her. “But, considering everything that happened tonight, let’s focus on that first, and my disappearing act second.”
“Fine.” She drops her eyes back down to the thread on the blanket, and I nudge her shin so she’ll look up at me.
“How are you actually doing with everything?” I ask. “You’ve hardly said a word about the emails or the creep.”
A heavy sigh blankets the room.
“Well, it’s a little different, but I once had a woman follow me around with a cat after a talk show appearance because there was a cat in the book I was releasing. People can get really weird when you find yourself in the public spotlight.” She lowers her voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but I hate it.”
“This guy is a little scarier than a lady with a cat,” I tell her.
“It was actually a very angry animal.”
I raise a brow. “Still.”
“No, really.” She smiles, remembering. “It tried to scratch me once when she got too close with it.”
“Bailey, seriously. Should we play the scale of one to ten game again? One being you’re going to sleep like a baby without a second thought about this weirdo, and ten being you’re so scared that we need to burn your building down and move to Costa Rica tomorrow so he can’t find any trace of you?”
“As long as we burn it down together . . .” She trails off.
Then her eyes flick to mine before she closes them and inhales for what I hope is a straighter answer.
Instead, her phone pings loudly on the blanket beside her knees.
“My honest answer?” she starts, reaching for her phone. “I’m nervous. And angry.”
“Scared?” I ask.
She nods.
I squeeze her shin, but this time I keep my hand there with the blanket between us.
She swallows. “You promise you’ve told me everything? I can somewhat understand the first time, but I swear, if there’s more that you’re all keeping from me at this point, I’m going to be mad.”
I shake my head. “You know everything I do now.”
“Thank you,” she says. Then she opens the text on her phone before adding, “And I am glad you’re here, even if I’m showing it horribly.” I squeeze her shin again, hoping she knows that I get it.
“I’d be shocked if you weren’t a seven-point-five level of pissed,” I tell her. “If someone was stalking me and no one thought to tell me, I’d be a seven point five, too. Maybe even an eight.”
She finally smiles at that, but it fades fast when she begins to read through the text on her phone.
“It’s Simon,” she says, lifting the screen, sitting up straighter to read it all the way through.
“He says he’ll forward the footage over when they can get the venue’s security tech to come in tomorrow morning.
” She closes her eyes and leans her head back, defeated for now. “No news until tomorrow.”
“No footage until the morning?” I repeat.
She nods. “But because the guy was wearing a hat, the police said his face likely won’t be shown in any of the camera angles. Inside or out.” She drops her phone to her lap and takes the last swig from her glass. “Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, right?”
“It might show something,” I tell her, but it probably won’t.
Her phone pings again, and she lifts it up to read a second incoming text.
“The note we left is getting checked for prints. Short of tracing his email, which already appears to be sent from an untraceable source, we’re hamstrung on our next steps.”
“Okay. No news on anything until tomorrow means,” I pause to look around the layout of Bailey’s apartment, “I guess I’m sleeping here.”
“You’re what?” Her cheeks instantly flush. “You’re sleeping here?”
“If you want me to?” I feel like I might have just overstepped, but I’m also not sure if I care. I need her to be safe, and I can’t help with that from anywhere else but here.
“Do you think he’s coming here?” she asks, two pitches higher than her normal voice.
“No, but I’d hate to be wrong about that while tucked into a hotel down the road.”
She blinks a few more times, like she’s not sure she’s hearing anything I’m saying correctly. “Do you need to cancel your hotel? It’s late.”
“I never made a reservation,” I tell her, realizing how that sounds as the words come out.
“Where did you think you were going to stay?” she asks. The splotches on her neck reappear, and I try not to smile at the sight, but she must catch my eyes dipping down to her neck because she raises a hand to try rubbing them away.
“I was going to see how things played out tonight. I didn’t even bring a bag.
I wanted to stay mobile and figured I’d just grab a toothbrush from whatever hotel lobby I ended up at, then fly back out tomorrow.
But if anything happened, I knew I’d probably end up staying wherever you were.
However, if you’re not comfortable with it, I can sleep out in the hall . . .” I’m only half-kidding.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She rubs her neck and chest harder as more spots appear.
I look around. Besides the war room, there are only two other doors down a hallway. One must be a bedroom, while I’m guessing the other is a bathroom.
“You can take my room,” she says, watching me work out the floor plan in my head. “There’s only one bed. I’m totally happy on the couch.”
“Right,” I tell her, scoffing. Then I grab a throw pillow off the floor while eyeing the blanket on her lap. “It looks like you’re sitting in my bed though, so we’re going to need to change that.”
Bailey’s grip tightens around the edge of the blanket.
“You’re doing me the favor by staying. I’ll take the couch.”
I nod toward the foyer. “Truthfully, I like the couch’s proximity to the front door.
” Then I nod toward the door behind her after that.
“And the balcony. Besides, you’ll be doing us both a favor by getting a good night’s sleep.
If my memory serves, you go straight beast mode following anything under eight hours. ”
Her jaw hinges open like she’s insulted, but her eyes dance back at me. “Your memory serves lies,” she says, menacingly.
“It better not. Memories are all I have for a lot of things,” I shoot back.
“Like that picture of the four of us in your war room that I saw before you closed me out. I plan to sneak back in after you fall asleep to see if there’s more of those in there.
So, I like the proximity from the couch to your war room, too. ”
Her eyes narrow. “You will do no such thing.”
I shrug, like it’s already decided and out of her control. “Looks pretty damn cozy in there. I’ve already added it to my bucket list.”
“You’ve added my war room to your bucket list?”
I nod, trying not to smile.
“What, you’re going to hop on the treadmill while you run down memory lane in there? Just as soon as I fall asleep? Maybe you should grab a hotel room tonight.” Her lips curl up at the sides.
I laugh. “And miss the opportunity to potentially manhandle that creep if he tries getting in here tonight? Not a fucking chance. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”
She eyes me. “I won’t argue with that. Just stay out of there, okay?”
“Promise.” I grab her bare toes beneath the blanket to give them a reassuring squeeze, but when my finger brushes the second toe, I feel a thin metal band wrapped around it. I push the blanket back to see.
“You still wear this thing?” I point to the ring on her second toe.
There’s no way it’s the same one.
Axel and I used to make fun of the fact that this toe was longer than the first. So, one day, just to drive my point home, I bought a gold toe ring in town and came back proclaiming her toe the queen of all toes. I even crowned it with the ring.
She grins. “Once a queen, always a queen,” she says, flexing her foot. “And I’m taking my laptop to bed with me. So don’t even bother going in there. Bucket list, my ass.”
She gets up to retrieve it from the war room, then holds the laptop to her chest with a mock glare as she heads back down the hall.
“Can I get you anything to sleep?” she asks, pausing near the kitchen. “A tee shirt? I might have one that’s big enough.” She eyes my upper half before adding, “But probably not. You’d have to cut the sleeves off to get your arms in.”
I roll my eyes. “I’ll just sleep in my boxers.”
She presses her lips together with the force of a two-ton bear trap.
“Right,” she says, sounding a bit squeaky. A few new splotches appear on her neck, and she reaches up to rub them away. “Goodnight, Rhett. You’ll be here in the morning?”
“Goodnight, Bay.” I grin. “Wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else.”
She steps toward her bedroom before turning around.
“Are you a heavy sleeper?” she asks, suddenly. Her eyes shift toward the door.
“Not even a little,” I tell her. “I won’t be sleeping much, anyway. Promise you have nothing to worry about.”
“Okay,” she says, smiling like she’s embarrassed for asking.
She turns to take a few steps toward her room before spinning around one more time, like she forgot to add something else.
Her eyes soften when they find mine. “There’s toothpaste in the bathroom, and um .
. .” She swallows. “Even if Hollis made you come, or whatever, it’s still good to see you. I’m glad you came.”
My smile widens. I don’t answer for an extra beat, just to get one more second of her looking at me like that. “It’s really good to see you, too,” I answer, hearing just how much I mean it in my own voice. “And Bay . . . Hollis didn’t make me do anything.”