Page 36 of Love Me Dangerous

Jesse squats down and scratches Fergie’s head. “It’s not like I won’t come back.”

Using the tips of my toes, I rock the swing back and forth, the rope scratchy on my sore palms. I should ice my left wrist. “Sounds like you’ve already decided.”

“Neve thinks I should go.”

Oh.

“She believes in me, Sofie.”

The implication is clear as day—he thinks I don’t.

“What about Dad?”

He lobs the ball again and Fergie takes off, relentless. “I thought maybe… you could tell him.”

The surrounding green and yellows swirl in my vision. Zach’sIs that what it’s like for you?rings through my mind.

“He’ll just tell me not to,” Jesse adds.

“Because he cares about you. Where would you live in L.A.? With Mom?”

He grimaces.

Not that I’d want that, but at least I wouldn’t worry about him ending up on the streets.

“She said she’d help. I’d still have to get a job. Hopefully as an assistant or something.”

“Or something?”

He shrugs.

I gaze up at the interlacing aspen branches and rock the swing with my heels. Fergie returns with the ball.

“The crash made me rethink a lot of things,” Jesse says. “If I don’t do this, it feels like giving up.”

This sounds like Mom talking. Did she give herself a similar pep talk before she bailed on us? “You are so far from giving up. This isn’t the only way. You know that, right?”

“I know.” His tone is turning defensive. He tosses the ball, and Fergie lopes off.

“What aboutWinter Games?” Baiting him with his Winter Range film is weak—Jesse hasn’t been in the field with us since the accident—but I’m not above trying.

“I don’t have my drone anymore.”

Alarm bells clang in the back of my mind. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Like someone stole it? Or you lost it, or…?”

“I didn’t sell it,” he interrupts, his eyes sharp.

“Okay,” I say in a steady tone while stuffing my worries down. Because that’s exactly where my mind went—that he’d sold the drone for drug money.

“Maybe someone stole it, I don’t know. I thought I had it at Neve’s but it’s not there.”

Jesse misplaces things sometimes, so it might turn up. At least it wasn’t in the back of the CJ-7. “How much filming do you have left?”

He lowers to the grass with a sigh and leans back on his hands. “Not a lot. But… I don’t know if it’s what I want to be doing. What if I get pegged as some woo-woo nature cinematographer or something? That’s not me.”

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