Page 60 of Reclaiming Adelaide

“Believe me when I tell you, I’m just as shocked as you were.”

“I don’t.”

“What do I have to do to convince you I had no plans against you?”

“Fool me once…”

“Will you quit that? Stop with the clipped retorts and bad attitude. You’re starting to sound like—”

“You?” He looked out the window, his finger pushing the shade up more. “I’ve heard that before, too.”

I watched him drown his thoughts in the disappearing clouds. “The night we met was the night we met. I didn’t know you. I’d never seen you before, and I didn’t know your name until the bouncer told me.”

My stomach grumbled and clenched, so I wrapped my arms around my belly. “The night of your awards ceremony was the night I connected the dots.”

He scowled but still refused to meet my eye, his knee bobbing up and down with pent up… emotion? Energy? Rage?

“I was there to cater. That much was true. Except, when Monica pulled up to your company, the company I didn’t know you owned… I feel like this needs constant reiteration… I didn’t know. I saw my opportunity to remove my code from the server you took offline.”

He turned towards me and took a slow deep breath, his hand squeezed into a fist. The muscles along his sharp jawline bulged as he clenched his teeth.

The pilot made a clipped announcement I couldn’t catch, but the flight attendant moved to the front of the plane and took a seat.

“Then your friend caught me. That was the night I learned about you and that your company was our…theirtarget. That’s when I decided it was better for me to end the relationship and quit the team.”

He snapped the window shut with a loud clatter—causing me to jump—and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his head tipped towards the floor. “I remember. You blamed it on me—”

“I wanted to tell you, but they threatened me with the police, and I didn’t want my parents to find out…” I rambled, my chin trembling. The heartache was still there, eating away at me like a vulture. “It was the hardest choice I had to make. I’d already developed feelings for you, but it was the right decision.”

“No, the right decision would be to come clean.”

“Right, so you could try to kill me in front of your friends and sister?” I tossed my hands in the air, forgetting about my upset stomach. Anger boiled just beneath the skin, heating me up from the inside out.

“I didn’ttryto kill you. I’ve told you this.” He glanced up from the floor; his icy blue eyes stung with venom. “But if you want me to show you what that looks like, I’d be happy to.”

I closed my eyes and pinched my lips together, my hand tucking under my thighs as I rested my head against the back of the seat.

The more hatred he spewed toward me, the more my heart crumbled. He wanted to hurt me, and with every vile thing he said, every action he took against me, he did just that.

I wanted to believe he still had feelings for me, and those feelings fought with his hatred. But it didn’t matter because we were over. And all I’d have as a reminder of us were our tattoos.

“Now you know. I’ve given you the wholehearted truth. You can either choose to believe it or not. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The outcome is the same. I’ll be dead by the year’s end.”

A shitty reminder of the devil who lurked on the earth, but it was yet another truth I spat forth today. Black Dog would catch up with me, and when they did, I’d make sure I wasn’t anywhere near Jake.

I couldn’t let my poor choices affect those I cared about, not anymore.

“When we land, you’ll stick close to me.” He leaned over me, his scent filling my nostrils. “You won’t say a word to anyone. If I catch one iota of an idea forming in that thick skull of yours,” He grabbed the two ends of my seatbelt and tightened it across my lap. “I’ll chain you up in the trunk for the duration of our visit. Understood?”

My brows pulled together as I winced from the tightness across my hip bone.

“Understood?” he repeated as the wheels touched down on the tarmac with a jarring bounce.

I cried out as everything seemed to creak and moan. The engines screamed, and an overbearing roaring resonated in my ears.

My fingernails dug into the backs of my thighs until we came to a stop.

“If you’re going to puke again, do it before we leave the plane. We have a thirty-minute drive, and I’m not stopping.”

---