Page 62 of Sunflower

“Then take me home.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Joey

Leavingmycarinthe only spot I could find considering that we were still in the middle of Black Friday sale madness, I approached the bastard sitting so damn casually on the park bench just down from where I’d met him yesterday and narrowed my eyes at his complete and utter nonchalance.

It felt surreal that only a mere twenty-four hours had passed since I’d first met the fucker. So much had happened, and there had been so much I’d had to learn that I felt jittery. Like I’d been injected with pure adrenaline, with none of the comforting tastes of caffeine to go along with it.

I wondered if this was how my life was going to go from now on. The thought didn’t completely terrify me if I thought about it in terms of a new job. It was more the fact that this complete asswipe insisted on threatening the people I loved to make me do what he wanted that set my teeth on edge.

And for what?

Getting thrown headfirst into a spy situation with basically no training didn’t really help matters either. Thank fuck I’d watched so many movies growing up so I could draw on those memories to try to keep my wits about me.

I might have been somewhat collected the night prior when I’d spoken to George, but now I was cursing his name, and myself for believing in him.

All that being said, the thing that kept me the most grounded was the vision of my and Callum’s future. Those two sweet little children and my future husband. Judging by how much older Callum and I looked in the phone screen that had reflected our faces back at us, it was highly unlikely that, here in the present, the kids had even been born yet, but I just knew,knew, that they were going to need us. I trusted Callum’s vision enough to get us both to the point in our lives to either adopt or foster them.

I trusted his vision enough to keep me alive.

I’m stronger than I know.

My hands were planted firmly in my jacket pockets. It was chilly out, and I’d added a black woolen scarf, beanie and gloves to my outfit to complement Callum’s old leather jacket that I refused to go anywhere without. Wearing it had become a habit by now and soothed me like nothing else, and I was damned if I was going to go into this godforsaken meeting being uncomfortable.

Plus, my gloves were hiding a little surprise that I was hoping I’d be able to use before the meeting was done.

“You took your time,” the fucker said as I got within speaking distance. He was the epitome of relaxation; one knee crossed over the other and one arm stretched out on the back of the park bench. Instead of the soft gray suit he’d been wearing yesterday, this time he was wearing a dark blue suit with a paler blue, patterned tie that matched his suit’s buttons.

As much as I despised this man, I had to grudgingly admit that he knew how to dress himself.

Fucker.

“Yeah, well, not everyone can just magically appear out of thin air. Some of us need to find a place to park our cars the day after Black Friday while the sales are still roaring along.” I sat down next to him, keeping a good couple of feet between us, and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees so I wouldn’t have to lean back into his outstretched arm and my fingers laced so I wouldn’t fidget too much. “Let’s get this over with. What do you want?”

“Come now, Joey,” he drawled. “We have so much to talk about. Must you be so abrupt?”

Moving no other part of my body, I turned my head and glared at him. “Yes.”

The bastard chuckled before reaching into his inside breast pocket and drew out the jamming instrument he’d used yesterday, flicking a tiny switch on the side and placing it on the bench between us. Once he was happy with it sitting where it was, he rested his hands in his lap. “Tell me about last night. What did you and your stepbrother get up to?”

Rolling my eyes, I sighed, then said in the most monotonous voice I could muster, “We went to the cinemas where we watched a movie. I would say that we enjoyed that movie, however we sucked each other’s tonsils enough that I wouldn’t be able to give you a rundown of the movie’s plot.”

His eyes narrowed, and his lips pressed together so tightly they turned white.

Oh, was he annoyed with me?Wonderful.

I picked up the jammer and toyed with it as I kept talking.

“Not wanting the night to end, we drove out to an abandoned quarry so we could stargaze and make out a bit more,” I said, alittle more life in my voice when he sucked his teeth, leaving a sour look on his face before he turned away from me.

As I was playing with the jammer with my shaking, nervous hands, I released the tiny tracker that I’d hidden on the inside of my cuff and pressed it into a discreet corner of the machine, hopefully out of the way enough that it wouldn’t be spotted easily, all while my mind whirred with possibilities.

Was it the stepbrother thing that was making him uncomfortable? Or the gay thing? Either way, I was rather enjoying making him uncomfortable. Let’s double down and see how much I could truly torment him. “Then we went back to his place where we fucked like horny teenagers until we passed out from exhaustion,” I said, still playing with the jammer, even though the tracker was now in place. “Which took a while, because I’m literally a horny teenager, so I’m really only doing what my body is demanding of me. You know, Callum does this thing where his cock thrusts deep inside me and swivels just that tiny little bit so his cockhead can rub against my prostate and—”

“Fucking disgusting,” he spat, interrupting my delicious memory of last night. It was a shame, actually, as I was thoroughly enjoying reliving the moment. He snatched the jammer from me and slammed it down on the bench between us again.

I watched it bounce a little with raised eyebrows. “You sure you want to treat it like that? Isn’t it like some sort of fragile piece of technology or something?”

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