Chapter 34- Jade
The dust settles the way Phoenix's father promised it would.
Nicholas calls one afternoon while I'm on the back deck watching the ocean, his voice carrying the same measured certainty he uses for everything, like outcomes are simply a matter of proper management. The case is stalled. No body, no evidence, no witnesses. The detectives have moved on.
It's over.
I stand on the deck for a long time after the call ends, phone in my hand, the Pacific doing what it always does, moving and moving without caring about any of it. I wait to feel something definitive. Relief, maybe, or the lightness of a weight finally lifted.
What I feel instead is quiet. A deep bone-level quiet that I'm starting to understand is what the other side of everything looks like.
I go inside and find Phoenix at his desk.
He looks up when I appear in the doorway.
Something in my face makes him close his laptop without a word and open his arms, and I cross the room and fold myself into him, my face against his neck.
We stay like that for a long time. The ocean moves outside the window.
The afternoon light shifts slowly across the floor.
"It's done," I say finally.
"It's done," he confirms.
We stay like that for a while longer. His hand moves slowly up and down my back.
Suddenly, I get the urge to pick up the phone and call my mom. I want to tell her that I’m okay and that we made it through. But I leave the phone where it is.
She made her position clear. Some doors, once closed, stay that way.
The Crawfords close ranks in the weeks that follow, so gradually and completely that I barely notice it happening until it already has.
Nicholas stops looking at me like a variable he hasn't yet solved.
There's a dinner where he asks about my manuscript with what appears to be genuine interest. Olive starts texting me book recommendations, and she turns out to have impeccable taste, and then we're exchanging titles back and forth the way people do when they've decided they actually like each other.
Small things accumulate, an extra key pressed into my hand one evening after dinner without ceremony, Olive saying keep it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I am slowly one of them.
The BBQ is Olive's idea. Casual and unhurried, just the four of us on a Sunday afternoon in late spring when the marine layer has burned off early and left the kind of clear golden day that reminds you why people move to California and never leave.
Phoenix drives over early to help Nicholas with something in the garage.
I arrive alone, which is fine, because I let myself in with the key and I know where everything is.
The house smells like cut grass drifting through the open windows and something sweet from the garden, jasmine or honeysuckle, warm and insistent in the way of things that bloom in heat.
Afternoon light falls through the kitchen windows in long rectangles across the tile.
From the backyard comes the low murmur of conversation and Phoenix's laugh, unguarded and real, a sound I've come to love precisely because of how rarely it comes.
I unwrap the peonies I brought from the farmer's market, pale pink and just beginning to open, their petals still cool from the drive.
The vase is in the cabinet where I know it's kept.
I fill it at the sink and arrange the flowers loosely, the way Olive showed me, without fussing, letting them find their own shape.
The ice cream cake goes in the freezer with a mental note to take it out twenty minutes before we eat.
This is what belonging looks like, I've decide. Not grand gestures but the accumulation of small things. Knowing where the vases are. How long the cake needs. Which cabinet has the extra dish towels.
The doorbell rings while I'm drying my hands.
Instead of a delivery, I find a man about Nicholas’ age standing on the front step. His dark hair has gone silver at the temples. He's wearing a faded navy shirt and holding a six-pack of craft beer.
"Hi there." He smiles, and it reaches his eyes without effort.
"I'm guessing you're Jade. Nicholas mentioned Phoenix had someone.
" He lifts the beer slightly. "I'm James.
James Dupree. Nicholas invited me last minute, something about a track and field tournament this afternoon. Hope that's alright."
The name moves through me like a current.
James.
My mother said it exactly once, in a kitchen in Boston, her hands tight around a coffee mug, her voice flat and final. He didn't deserve to know about you. He didn't deserve to be your father.
I look at this man in the doorway. Dark eyes. Open face. The easy smile of someone who doesn't know that the ground has just shifted underneath both of us.
"Of course," I say. My voice comes out steady. I have no idea how. "They're all out back. I'll take you through."
He follows me into the kitchen and pauses when he notices the flowers in the vase. "Those are beautiful," he says. "My mother used to grow peonies."
In the backyard, Nicholas looks up from the grill and his face opens in a way I don't often see.
He crosses to James and they shake hands, clapping each other on the shoulder.
Phoenix looks up from where he's sitting and grins.
They embrace briefly, comfortable and familiar.
Olive appears from the garden with dirt on her knees and a handful of herbs, kisses James's cheek, asks about his drive.
I stand slightly apart and watch all of this and feel the afternoon pressing in around me, the jasmine and the charcoal smoke and the distant sound of the ocean, and underneath all of it the word James running on a loop in my head like a frequency I can't tune out.
It's a common name. I know that. I tell myself this firmly while I take the chair across from him and accept the glass of lemonade Olive pours and smile at something Phoenix says.
We settle into the afternoon. The conversation moves easily, topic to topic, the comfortable overlap of people who are used to each other.
James is funny and warm, his observations sharp without being unkind, and I understand immediately why Nicholas has kept him close.
He asks about my writing and actually listens to the answer, leaning forward slightly, asking follow-up questions.
"Where are you from originally?" He reaches for the lemonade pitcher. "You don't sound like you grew up here."
"Boston," I say. "I haven't been in LA long."
"Great city," he says easily, and pours the lemonade, and the conversation moves on.
But I'm not listening anymore. I look at this man across the table in the warm California afternoon, in the home of the people who have become my family, and I feel the ground tilt slowly underneath me.
"Jade?" Phoenix's voice, from somewhere far away. "You okay?"
I look up and find him watching me with those careful eyes that always know when something is wrong.
"Fine," I say. "I'm fine."
I reach for my lemonade and take a slow sip. I do not look at James Dupree again for the rest of the afternoon.
Despite that, I can’t stop thinking about him being my father.
Thank you for reading Tell me to Forget! Can’t wait to find out what happens next? 1-click Tell Me to Disappear (Crawford Legacy Book 3) now!
A stranger at the door. A secret my mother kept for thirty years. A truth that changes everything.
I chose Phoenix Crawford over my family. I killed a man to keep him. I thought I knew exactly who I was and what I'd sacrificed to be with him.
I was wrong about all of it.
Someone from the past has walked back into my life — and nothing Phoenix can buy, burn, or destroy will make this one go away. Because this isn't about him.
This is about me.
Who I am. Where I come from. And why the Crawford world and my own blood were never as separate as I believed.
Phoenix says he'll protect me from anything.
But how do you protect someone from the truth?
The deeper I dig:
Every answer leads to a darker question. Every person I trust is keeping something. Every foundation I've built my life on is starting to crack.
I survived the attack. I survived the stalker. I survived becoming someone I never thought I'd be.
But disappearing might be the only way out of this.
And this time, Phoenix Crawford might not be able to follow.
1-click Tell Me to Disappear (Crawford Legacy Book 3) now!
If you haven’t read the original series yet, you can binge it now! Read the complete Tell me to Stop series now!
I owe him a debt. The kind money can’t repay.
He wants something else: me, for one year.But I don’t even know who he is…
365 days and nights doing everything he wants…except that.
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” I say categorically. He laughs.
“I’m going to make you a promise,” his eyes challenge mine.
“Before our time is up, you’ll beg me for it.”