Chapter 6
The hard wooden seat under her gave her an oddly anchored feeling that only served to emphasize the surreal floating sensation she was still experiencing. Why did her stupid brain and body have to react this way to shock? Abigail berated herself silently as the same marshal who had patted her down conducted a series of basic tests.
“Should we….?” the woman asked, eyes darting to John and Byron.
“Should we what?” Abigail asked. “I might collapse against my will but I can actually still hear you when I’m doing it.”
Jacob laughed and Abigail looked up and over to him for the first time since she had gotten wobbly. Liam had been the first one to start calling her faints ‘getting wobbly,’ and though she had resisted it at first because it sounded like he was making fun of her, she had soon come to understand that he did it to make it feel like less of a big scary medical thing, which she liked. Liam, she thought, how panicked and freaked out he would be right now if he knew… would she ever be able to tell him what happened during this supposedly boring trip to her hometown?
“Abigail?”
She jolted to attention. John was saying her name.
“Sorry, I did actually faze out there for a second,” she said, embarrassed at her own poor timing, “what?”
Byron’s brother had sat down across from her and taken over from the woman. Abigail resented feeling like she needed to be watched.
“Do you want us to call in Doctor Lavender?”
She felt herself flinch. “What? How do you know who my doctor is?”
John raised an eyebrow. “The same way we know everything—we do our homework.”
“What, and you’d just summon him?” she asked, “and he’d just show up, at your word?”
“I think he would be amenable to coming out and seeing you.”
Abigail narrowed her eyes at him, “You sound very, very sure about that.”
She watched him as he shifted slightly awkwardly in his seat.
“You’ve already asked him, haven’t you?”
His expression shifted to genuine embarrassment and Abigail realized she didn’t need him to answer.
“Oh, come on! Really? You guys can’t even ask a girl if she wants a doctor, you just ring him? What if I didn’t have insurance? What if this bankrupted me—are you guys covering his call out fees across state lines!?”
John held his hand up, “You don’t have to worry about the fees. His expenses are covered by the government as he is on official business.”
“That sounds… suspicious,” she said, eyeing him.
“Everything I do seems to sound suspicious to you,” John replied.
She had to laugh at that. She had basically been accusing him of things since the moment she’d met him.
“That’s probably true,” she said, “but can you blame me?”
“No, not really,” John said, surprising her. “I don’t think I’d expect anything less from someone Byron cared about enough to get involved with.”
Heat flushed her face and Abigail had to look away from John so she could speak.
“Oh, no,” she said, trying to sound casual as she felt her face turn red, “no, we aren’t… involved. I—”
From the corner of her eye, she saw John give a condescending eye-roll and look away.
“What!?” she exclaimed as she turned to face him, the embarrassment she had felt melting into annoyance at his continued arrogance.
Byron’s brother held up both his hands in a creepy mirror image to the way Byron often did when negotiating or defending a point he’d made.
“Chill out, I just—he frustrates me,” John said, “all right? And so do you. You two are clearly an item, so very clearly, it would take someone being exceptionally dim to miss it, yet you both flutter your eyelashes and deny being more than friends.”
It felt like a thousand thoughts poured into her brain at that moment. As she tried to detangle the actual meaning of what he had said, Abigail glared at John.
“So… he told you we’re just friends? When?”
With a shake of his head, John started to roll his eyes again but caught himself.
“A totally normal thing for someone who is just friends with another person to latch onto,” he said, “and definitely not something that someone with feelings for that other person would jump on and immediately question me about…”
“Oh shut up,” Abigail said, flustered. “It’s not like… we aren’t—we are friends! It’s just… oh, for heaven’s sake.”
Swirling colors filled her vision as she pressed her hands over her eyes and tried to get a hold of herself.
“This is hardly the time,” she said, slowly and calmly, “I’m being ridiculous, and emotional, and—”
“He did try to convince me that the two of you are just friends,” John said, cutting her off, “but I’m not as dumb as I look.”
Dropping her hands from her face, Abigail glared at John for what felt like the thousandth time since she met him.
“If that’s all you’re going to tell me then give up and go,” she said, “because that is mostly stress creating, not stress relieving.”
He chuckled and she wanted to shove him, or at least poke his shoulder hard, but that was hardly appropriate…
“Look, it’s a conversation the two of you need to have,” he said. “It’s not my place to speak on my brother’s behalf, but let me tell you—he cares about you—more than just as a friend. I’ve seen him in every scenario you can think of—protecting people, actively dangerous situations, and he puts you first.”
“What do you mean he puts me first?” Abigail managed to ask through her racing thoughts.
The way John looked at her wasn’t helping. It made her feel stupid, but just this once, she didn’t want to interrupt to scold him or score a point. She wanted the answer.
John returned to the seat across from her and leaned back heavily. It was the only time Abigail had seen him look disheveled… or, maybe, he wasn’t disheveled. Was this him relaxed? The thought occurred to her as he rubbed his face with his palms.
“Ah man, he’s gonna kill me,” John said before making eye contact with her, “when I say he puts you first, I mean he literally defers to you—for everything!”
“Tosh, he does not,” Abigail snorted, thinking of all the times they’d argued over details or decisions.
“Not to mindlessly agree with you,” John clarified, “to see if you’re all right, to make sure you’ve heard or have been considered in what’s going on. I think he knows you get lost in your thoughts and risk missing things that are being said around you. He basically gives you the right of first refusal. And that’s before I’ve even started on how whenever you go anywhere together, he maneuvers it so you’re behind me and in front of him. He checks the exits, puts himself between you and doors, and puts you in a cover position when we approached the safe house. Not to mention argued until he was blue in the face about me letting you go into see your grumpy old woman on your own.”
Everything John was saying sounded completely insane to Abigail, but as she thought about it, she realized that she could count on one hand the number of times she had been out on her own without one of the brothers within arm’s reach.
“He… wants me to walk with you?” she asked, knowing it was a lame question but desperately needing to fill the air as she processed the other things he’d said.
John leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, watching her as she puzzled it out.
“Look, we have our issues—my brother and I,” he said, “but he knows I’d take a bullet for him, and I reckon he’d at least get in an uncomfortable conversation for me. He knows he can trust me to look out for you, and he’s got the spotters position from behind—he’s literally looking out for you whenever we go anywhere. I’ll admit, I don’t know if it’s not a little bit of a habit from being on the job or if it’s because of the mugging and everything that’s gone on recently, but let me tell you now—he looks out for you in a way I haven’t seen him do since…”
John suddenly looked panicked, his eyes darting to the door.
“I know about his ex-wife and the kids,” Abigail said, tossing up between wanting to reassure him and finding his sheer panic ridiculous.
“Oh good,” he replied, letting out a long breath, “I’m assuming he told you how well they worked everything out?”
Abigail nodded, though his tone made her concerned that he was about to imply Byron had left out some significant details…
“He probably neglected to mention how utterly broken he was by her,” John said.
The way he spoke made her nose crinkle. Was he about to spout some gross ‘women be crazy’ monologue at her!?
“Hm?” She prompted.
“He fell head over heels. He was so happy,” John continued, “when she left, when they fell apart, he was genuinely heartbroken. Not just about being so far from his kids so much of the time, but he really believed he would never be happy in a relationship again. It’s why he’s been single for so long—”
She held up her hand to stop him. “I was literally warned off your brother by a woman the first week I was in town because he’s a heartbreaker!”
“My brother? Byron? A heartbreaker!?” John exclaimed, laughing. “No, not a chance. Maybe she meant that women fall in love with him and he’s not interested. That’s the only explanation I can come up with!”
Abigail swallowed hard. If he wasn’t a player and then that kiss might really have meant something. The kiss, the glances since then, holding her hand on the flight… it certainly was adding up to—
“So,” John said, suddenly professional again, “are you ready to go and talk to Jacob? He goes by James, now, by the way.”
“Okay,” Abigail said quietly, watching him as he rose and crossed to the door where the female marshal who had patted her down was waiting expectantly.
She wasn’t ready, but what choice did she really have?