Page 79 of Jersey

I shake my head. "Here at my house. We've... had sex. Several times in fact."

She sits up a little straighter. "You were able to tolerate it?"

Tolerate.

What a strange word to use when speaking of getting intimate with someone else, but I fully understand where she's coming from. Before Roman, tolerating was all I was able to do with past lovers, and even then just barely.

"That's not the problem," I say, pressing my fingers between my eyes, trying my best to ward off a headache that's forming behind my eyes. "I have a stalker."

I open my eyes to find her staring at me.

"A guy followed me out to my car the last time I was at the club. He grabbed me, and Roman hit him before driving me home."

I pull in a deep breath, feeling like I'm spilling my guts and going too fast for her to keep up, but I find her nodding. "Go on."

"While Roman was here, the man drove by. Roman thinks that he had followed me home before that night because he wasn't behind us during the drive back here."

"That's... alarming, Caitlyn. I feel terrible for insisting you go to the club. I never considered the possibility that you could be victimized because of it."

"After that, on a different night, I saw someone lurking around my backyard," I explain. "The guys made me go to their cabin."

"Where your client lives?"

I dipmy head, afraid of the conversation we'll eventually have about crossing professional boundaries. Having a sexual relationship with someone connected to Eli is much different from spending the night in the same house where my client lives.

"It wasn't the same guy," I confess, having gotten that information from Zeus yesterday. "That's why I have the new security cameras around the house. Zeus was here showing me how it works."

"And Zeus is not Roman? They're two different people?"

I nod, noting the look of relief on her face. It makes me want to laugh despite the seriousness of the conversation we're having. If she ever got the chance to see all the guys in that cabin lined up together, she'd no doubt wonder where the cameras were hidden because they all looked like Hollywood movie stars.

We continue our conversation, and Rhonda doesn't leave until I assure her that I'll be okay. She's not exactly happy about the gun, but she didn't argue about it either after I assured her I had training on how to use it.

I lock the door the second she's out on the porch, watching in the peephole as she makes her way to her car. She wanted me to leave with her, but I just needed some time to myself right now.

I shower with the bathroom door locked and the gun on the counter. I get dressed with my ears peeled and my eyes on the weapon.

I place it on the bedside table when I go to bed, and all the while I feel like leaving the cabin was the biggest mistake of my life.

Chapter 32

Jersey

I think it's just par for the course at this point.

Why would the bad guys still be at the hotel in Dayton when I arrive? Why would I have something to do that keeps me away from Gatlinburg for an extended period of time?

Maybe because that's what I need right now, and life always has a way of refusing me.

I took my bike from the cabin, a decision I regretted fifteen minutes into the drive north, but I didn't turn back around. If I was focusing on preventing frostbite on my face and hands then maybe my mind wouldn't wander to her.

Fat fucking chance.

She's all that I can seem to think of. No matter how many times I've forced myself to think of anything else, my mind always circles back.

"When did they leave?" I ask, leaning in toward the front desk clerk.

The guy looks high as a kite, but I wouldn't expect much more in a place like this.

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