Page 103 of Brazen Mistakes

I lean against him, needing contact with as many points as I can make. “I’ll probably be up for a while now, too.”

“Eat up, then we can go on a little adventure.”

“An adventure? I don’t know if I’m up for, like, stealing a car tonight.”

“Noted. I’ll go get our coats and stuff.” He’s off before I can say anything else, the door clicking quietly behind him, leaving me with nothing to distract me from the food.

I can tell this is a great sandwich, even cold and slightly stale. I only wish I could be excited about eating it.

My dreams, they’ve been getting worse, weaving in memories I’d forced myself to forget, moments thatmake my breath come in panicked pants when I think about them. Which is why I never let myself think about them.

But Chicago apparently sprang loose the door that I’d locked them behind, and now that they’re out, I’m sick to my stomach over my “choices”. How naïve I’d been, how trusting, how easily beaten down. How broken.

The half a sandwich sits like a rock in my gut, and I stare at RJ as his chest rises and falls in the faint light from his monitors, matching my breath to his.

Needing contact, even for this small moment, I crawl back into the middle of the bed, making sure I’m touching both of them, closing my eyes as I force myself to finish the other half of the sandwich.

Jansen steps back into the room, a pile of coats and boots in his arms. I bend down, pressing a kiss first to Walker, then RJ, all of me jittery and anxious.

But sitting and stewing in it won’t help.

When I go to get out of bed, Jansen’s there again, lifting me over RJ and onto the rug. “How’d eating go?”

“I managed it,” I say, wishing I’d sugarcoated it.

Luckily, Jansen doesn’t seem to mind my honesty. “Great! As much as I like the look of you all mussed up, why don’t you go wash up? Then we’ll head out. Send a text to the group chat so they don’t think you’ve been abducted.”

I do that, then get into my proffered coat and boots. “Where are we going?”

“Top secret.”

“Yeah?”

He grins, yanking my hat on so it covers my eyes, then shoving my hands into my mittens before I can fix it. “So secret it requires a blindfold.”

I shove my hat up, chuckling as I follow him out of the room and down the darkened stairs, neither of us turning on lights as we head to the back of the house. The light glowing on the main floor is an eerie green with the addition of Jansen’s sheets to the windows, the rooms bright from the streetlights bouncing off the pristine snow covering the ground.

When Jansen hands me the keys and opens the driver’s door for me, I pause. “I’m driving?”

“How else will I know if you can be the one behind the wheel the next time we go out if I don’t test you?”

I chuckle as he shuts me in, adjusting the seat and mirrors as he gets comfortable in the passenger seat. “This feels weird.”

“Why?”

I think about my answer as I flick on the lights and engine, a glimpse of something leaving me peering into the dark, my ears straining for the ping of a Bryce alert. “I guess, I haven’t driven with a guy shotgun since high school.”

That answer seems to stall his brain, and as I don’t see whatever weird shadow my brain latched onto and my phone stays silent, I back out and head for the main road.

Jansen sends me toward the interstate with a hand wave, still not answering.

After a few miles of aimless driving, he sighs. “That’s messed up, beautiful.”

“I don’t have my own car.”

“Do you like to drive?”

“I love it.”

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