Page 35 of Eternally Devoted

“Please,” I beg, unable to keep the fear from streaking down my cheeks. “I didn’t want to be a bad girl.”

“No,” Sterling breathes, his brows tightening, forehead ridged with concern. “You’re not a bad girl. You’re not.”

“You’re so sweet, Juniper Sky. You know you’re the sweetest girl in all of Bluebell, don’t you?” Dash rasps, their words filling in the tiny bits of space between our three bodies. Dash tightens his arms around me, and Sterling does, too, leaving me squished happily between them. The weight of their bodies slows my frantic heart, steadying my pulse as I blink through, fighting the remaining tears as I nod.

Dash and Sterling step apart, leading me to my living room. Dash sits on the couch while Sterling takes an armchair near the hearth. “You know we love you, and we know where your heart is. And I may have a reaction to what you’re saying, but that’snot because I’m thinking bad things about you. It’s because I’m processing, that’s all,” Dash says, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

That’s exactly what I needed to hear, and I somehow think he knew just that.

“Maybe you finish telling us about Jeffrey Morgan over here, hmm?” Sterl suggests, getting to his feet only to crouch by the hearth. He moves logs around and starts a fire, while Dash drapes a blanket over my curled legs where I’m tucked at the opposite side of the couch as he is.

Once we’re settled back in, the proverbial spotlight is on me, along with a gentle reminder. “We gotta do some digging before the sun comes up, sweetheart, so the sooner we get it all out there, the quicker the three of us can figure out what our next play is.”

My mouth goes dry, and my eyes fall to the broken stitching on the old couch. I pulled the thread with my pinkie nail when I was eight and my dad was laying into me about using nail polish at the dinner table. Something about taking off the varnish, I don’t know. But I stare at that piece of thread, loose around the piping on the couch cushion, and focus on those last five words.

Whatournext play is.

Our.

As in, now that Sterling and Dash are aware, they’re as much part of this as I am. And while I know that no one is to blame but me, my heart swells from the declaration that my life means as much as theirs. Because that’s what it means, right? If they’re willing to go all in, they’re willing to go down in flames, too. And that must mean that they value me as much as themselves.

“Our?” I breathe, the word thin and wobbly, so small in such a big space.

“We’re with you,” Sterl confirms. My eyes veer to Dash, and he nods, a tiny wink lifting his cheek.

The fire crackles, and I stare into the dancing flames as I pick up where I left off, knowing now with all certainty that they aren’t going to run. They aren’t gonna bail. They’re not going to turn me in.

“Back to Jeffrey Morgan. Actually, back three years, nine months, two weeks.”

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

THE WORLD NEEDS LESS ASSHOLES.

Juniper

“So let me get this straight, you told the guy no several times, warned him you’d mace him—” Sterl sits on the edge of the armchair, eyes wide as he recounts Jeffrey Morgan’s stupidity on each of his fingers.

“Mace? What happened to the little Taser I got you for your purse?” Dash questions, sitting upright against the couch. I’ve figured out that the more gruesome details are best skirted around, because Dash, despite his job as a Bluebell officer, gets a little queasy with some of the details.

“This was before you got it for me but… I don’t carry it on me anyway,” I admit, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “I accidentally tasered Trace,” I admit, remembering the day that Trace came back to the house to grab Ivy’s pencil stash. I thought it was an intruder because he came in the back door and didn’t call out that he was there. So I tasered him.

I felt bad after the fact, but Ivy agreed—if you don’t announce yourself, you get tasered.

“Wait, so—” Dash strokes a hand down his face, his eyes contemplatively set on me. “If you had Mace the whole time…”

I shake my head. “That was a little white lie.” I shrug. “I didn’t expect to be called on it. Most times you tell a man you have Mace, they back off.”

“I get the feeling that Jeffrey Morgan called your bluff?” Sterling’s lips quirk to the side, and my eyes trace the subtle lift, falling down to the landscape of exposed throat and chest, put on display from the way he’s tugged at his hoodie. I can’t wait to be past all this stupid dead guy stuff and have my lips pressed right there, right where his pulse hammers in his throat.

I nod, ignoring the pulsing between my legs that has been occurring off and on all night. Between gory and tiresome details, I get lost in them. I realize that coming clean about years of murder is not the best time to get turned on, and that if I read this in a book, I’d probably think I was crazy.

But I’m not.

I am passionate about the world not being full of assholes.

And jam.

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