Page 67 of Jett in Jeopardy

He nodded. “If you can’t get past how I treated you—”

“It’s not that.” Or notjustthat. “You didn’t make any promises.”

“I was a dick.”

“Yeah, but I can forgive you. I just… I know how much you loved Ryan, and I don’t think I could ever live up to what you had with him.”

“No, Jett.” He shifted closer to me and touched my cheek with his hand. “It’s not like that. What we have together isours, just ours, created by both of us and completely separate from my life with Ryan. I love you foryou. Do you think you could feel the same about me?”

Warmth expanded in my chest. He loved me. I could still barely wrap my head around it. “Of course, I love you. I have for weeks now. I’m just surprised you felt you couldn’t tell me.”

He leaned closer, and his mouth caught mine, kissing me hard, drawing on my lips hungrily. When he finally lifted his head and let us both up for air, I grinned at him. “So, does this mean we’reofficiallytogether now?”

“I think so.” He brushed his lips against mine, softly this time. “Do you want to stay tonight, or do you want me to take you home?”

“I want to stay.”

“Good, because I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Together, we went through our normal bedtime routines, then slipped under the blankets. I curled into his side like I belonged there, with my head propped on his chest. After everything, we were both too tired to do more than sleep. Despite how good it felt, how right it was to be back in Brody’s bed, wrapped in his arms, I still couldn’t sleep. “I’ve been thinking seriously about what I’m going to do when school finishes.”

“Oh?” Brody tensed under me. “Have you come to any decisions?”

“I want to stay here in The Square, and after everything that happened with Simon, figuring out who he was and tracking him down, I was thinking about looking into what I would have to do to become a Private Investigator. I think I would be good at it.”

His arms tightened around me. “There is no doubt in my mind that you would be amazing at anything you wanted to do.”

Chapter Thirty

Jett

Iwokeslowly,cocoonedin warmth with Brody’s clean spice scent clinging to the sheets. A sense of contentment wrapped around me as soft and warm as Brody's covers. I felt good, really good, the best I’d felt in probably weeks, maybe even months.

Then memories of everything that had happened yesterday crashed over me like a wave. Images of Simon, his empty staring eyes unseeing from the cold warehouse floor cluttered inside my head, cooling that sense of warmth and peace inside me.

I squeezed my eyes closed, wishing I could wipe those images away for good. Why the hell did I feel bad for a guy who had taken pleasure from tormenting me and anyone close to me for the past five months? Because he was a victim of his father too, in his own way? Besides, I’d begged him to stop, warned him that there would be no coming back if he crossed that line and killed me or Brody.

He didn’t care, though. His hatred for me was too big to be overruled by common sense. I hated how things turned out, but the sense of peace that came from knowing I didn’t have to keep looking over my shoulder was a relief after everything that had happened.

I rolled over and reached out for Brody, hoping to distract myself with the feel of his body against mine, and who knew, maybe we could distract each other with something more. Instead, my grasping fingers felt only an empty space where Brody had once slept.

Frowning, I sat up quickly. Where was he? Straining my ears, I listened for any sound of him in the apartment, but there was nothing. The smell of fresh coffee drifted from the kitchen, so I knew he’d been up and made a pot of coffee before I woke up, but no sounds that he was in the kitchen or anywhere else in the apartment.

Unease prickled up the back of neck. I wanted to believe him when he said we were together for real this time. But a part of me feared the reason he wasn’t still curled around me in bed was because he was silently freaking out somewhere.

My insides knotted, and I sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case. With a sigh, I pushed back the blankets and got out of bed. After pulling on a pair of pajama bottoms over my underwear, I padded out to the kitchen.

Through the wide stretch of windows across the front of the apartment, the hard winter sun spilled into the living room from a cloudless blue sky. I pressed my palm to the frigid glass. The temperature must have dropped considerably since yesterday.

There was no sign of him anywhere inside, and while there were any number of things he could have been doing, especially in the bar downstairs, unease crawled along my back.

What if he’d changed his mind about the things he’d promised last night? Maybe he’d just been wrapped up in the emotion after surviving Simon, and now, in the cold light of day, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Shit,” I whispered. I needed to pull myself together. If this was really going to happen between me and Brody, I needed to keep myself from spiraling every time he left my side.

I helped myself to a mug from his cupboard, then poured myself a cup of coffee. That’s when I spotted a note propped up against the backsplash behind the coffee maker written in Brody’s neat print.

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