Page 44 of Jett in Jeopardy

Almost right away, ellipses lit up my phone’s screen as he was replying. My heart rate kicked up, and my mouth turned dry.

I didn’t think I’d hear from you.

My thumbs flew over my screen while I tried to steer the conversation so he would tell me where he was or if he was even still in Saltwater Cove.

I wanted to see you before the holidays. Are you around?

I waited for him to reply, watching the minutes tick by. Maybe I’d pushed for too much too fast.

I’m close.

Well, that was disconcerting, knowing everything I did about him.

Let’s meet, he added before I could respond.

I needed somewhere public, for obvious reasons, somewhere neutral where he wouldn’t feel threatened.

School caff?I asked, then added a time.

See you then.

I laid my phone on the coffee table, staring down at the text exchange. It was done. I’d meet him at the university, and before this time tomorrow, whatever this asshole thought he was going to do to me next would be stopped in its tracks.

Finally, I would be able to get on with my life. And so could Brody.

Chapter Nineteen

Brody

I’dfuckedup,andI knew it. From the moment I’d practically run from my own apartment, sputtering excuses that Jett and I both knew weren’t true, I knew I should have turned around and gone back inside and tried to explain. I could barely wrap my head around what I was feeling. I had no idea how to articulate it to someone else. Still, Jett’s expression, a mix of hurt and resignation, haunted me like a ghost.

At the bottom of the stairs, I crossed the lot behind The Dunes. Instead of going back inside the bar, I followed the drive out to The Square. It was completely dark now. I tucked my chin to my chest against the frigid wind sweeping up the strip from the ocean and jammed my hands in my jacket pockets.

I thought about walking down to the beach, where Ryan and I had gone on our first date, where I felt closest to him, but the guilt twisting my insides made me decide against it. Going back there feeling like I did then, keyed up and agitated, guilty and defensive, I didn’t want to risk tainting those memories of Ryan.

I hadn’t meant to snap at Jett the way I had when I found him looking at pictures of Ryan. Shame turned my face hot when I remembered the accusation heavy in my voice and the way Jett had looked at me like he’d done something wrong.

It hadn’t been fair to him. He hadn’t done anything wrong, after all. Those waves of guilt and shame nearly taking my feet out from under me were all on me. When I saw Jett looking at those photos and Ryan’s beautiful smile, I’d felt like I was betraying both men somehow.

It wasn’t just sex. I had been with other men since Ryan, but none who I had invited into the home we’d shared, into our bed. None who I had found looking at Ryan’s photos.

Anyone I’d been with before Jett was just about getting off, each of us scratching a mutual itch. I liked Jett, liked having him take up space in my life, and it just didn’t seem right to enjoy any of that when Ryan was dead.

Instead of continuing to the boardwalk and the beach beyond, I turned and climbed the short set of concrete steps to the hotel and went inside.

“Is he in his office?” I asked the woman manning the front desk.

She shook her head. “217.”

I nodded and climbed the stairs to the second floor, then pushed past the door onto the narrow outdoor walkway that ran past the doors to the room. So close to the ocean, the roar of the surf was almost deafening.

In the off season, Daniel lived in one of the hotel’s two suites, one on the first floor and one on the second. The rooms each had a small kitchenette complete with a mini-fridge, microwave, a miniature drip coffee maker and a small sitting room separate from an equally small bedroom with a queen bed. The bathroom was so tight, you could touch all the walls at once if you stood in the center and stretched out your arms in any direction.

In the summer months, when he managed to fill all the rooms, Daniel moved his things out and slept on a cot in his office. He denied it, of course, or avoided the question even when I asked him point-blank.

More than once, I’d told him to find a place away from the hotel. Hell, if I had another room, I would have had him come live with me. But he’d complained about the cost of rent when he could be putting the money back into the hotel.

If anyone needed space from their business, it was Daniel. He ate, slept and breathed this place. Between never taking time away from the hotel and always seeming to be balanced precariously on the edge of financial disaster, I didn’t know how he hadn’t had a breakdown or an ulcer by now.

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