Page 130 of Root

Fuck.

I lean down and kiss him soft. And I cup his cheek. “Tomorrow we can spend all day fucking, Rush,” I say, lying. “But I need to make sure Jack’s okay.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, brother-sister boring conversations. I’ll set him up in that room Mia made up for him. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he says.

And holding back the stupid burn of tears, I walk out.

“Jack.”

I shake him into full wakefulness.

“We need to go.”

He doesn’t say a word, just grabs my bag and hoists it on his shoulder. We almost make it out, but someone steps in front of the door.

“Mia?”

She presses her lips together. “This is how you pay him back?”

“I’m bad for him,” I say. “And we…we need to go.”

“I see how you look at Rush. More, I see how he looks at you.”

“It’s why we have to go. I don’t want more trouble coming down from me or Jack. We need to move on. You know. And how I feel…” I take a breath. “I don’t feel the same as Rush. That’s why we’re going.”

“If you don’t, then maybe you’re right, you should go,” she says. “But there’s an alarm.”

And she goes to the box that has an unobtrusive red light and punches in a code. It turns green.

I go to say thank you, but I don’t think I can speak, and we just leave. It’s ridiculously easy, but it doesn’t feel easy. It feels like I ripped my soul out.

Jack’s silent until we’re a block away. He points across the road at two expensive and clearly weekender bikes. “You’re a fucking idiot, Jess.”

“We don’t belong there.”

“I might not, but I think you do,” he says. “And jobs and shit? They have them.”

“We need to start over away from crime.”

He shakes his head and crosses the road to hotwire the bikes. That’s when a siren pierces the night, and a cop car rounds the corner, lights flashing.

“Fuck,” Jack breathes.

I glance at him. “Calm down.”

A cop gets out, and adjusts his belt. “Hands on the hood. You’re both under arrest.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Rush

There’s a moment.

One brief black moment where I consider letting her go.

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