Page 59 of All Jacked Up

“Then let that shit go.”

I shook my head and stepped around him, needing space before I grabbed his collar and pulled him closer to me like a crazy person.

“Fine. Thank you,” I said, walking into the living area and toward the narrow hallway that led to the room that had been my escape. The one place that was mine.

“I didn’t have your room emptied,” he said behind me. “Just cleaned. If there was something you wanted, I didn’t want it sitting outside, where it could be taken or damaged.”

I hadn’t expected my things to still be in there. I’d have thought she’d have turned it into a storage room for her hoarding.

“She left it my room?” I asked, not sure how to feel.

He blew out a breath, and I glanced back at him. There was … sorrow in his eyes. Then he shook his head.

“It was full of shit. I think a cat lived in there, too, but we never found one. Just a litter box among the clutter of boxes. It wasn’t until the team I had hired to move it all out got to the bottom that they realized it had once been a girl’s bedroom.”

That made more sense.

I said nothing as I made my way back to the door that I’d once wanted to paint pink so badly that I was brave enough to ask. I was slapped across the face and told to stop being a dumbass brat. But then, I’d only been seven and not realized all the things that set her off yet.

When I reached the dark wooden door, I didn’t hesitate before opening it and going inside. I’d never once been scared to enter this room. The fresh smell of lavender filled the space. I froze, my eyes going wide, and I gasped as the place I stared at looked nothing like the one I’d had.

Sure, those were my things, but they had been rearranged. There was a vase of fresh flowers on the side table. The fluffy pink quilt on the bed was new. That was not my worn blanket that had been patched with frayed edges from age and wear.

“My room never looked like this,” I whispered.

“Well, it does now,” he replied.

My eyes burned, and a lump formed in my throat as emotions I hadn’t expected began to break free inside me. I didn’t look back at him as I fought back the tears. I wanted to thank him. Seeing it like this, like it could have been, was something I hadn’t known I needed.

His hand touched my arm. “I’m sorry if this upsets you. I just …” There were a few beats of silence. “I didn’t like the idea of you seeing it so sparse.”

A broken laugh that sounded somewhere between a laugh and a cry bubbled out of me.

Why had he cared? It was my past. But he had. He’d cared.

I had no control over the explosion in my chest. The truth had always been there, and I knew it, although I had wanted to deny it.

I was in love with Ransom Carver. The kind of love that consumed me. Controlled my moods. The love that had begun when I was a sixteen-year-old girl and he made me laugh for the first time. He made me feel like a person. Someone who was seen. Someone he took the time to text. And over the years, it had been fed, it had grown, and now, in this moment, it was in a full flourish.

Arden would have never worked. He wasn’t Ransom.

No one would ever be Ransom.

How tragic was my story? To give my heart to a man who would only ever be my friend. No, I hadn’t given it. That wasn’t fair. He’d taken it while I’d handed it over a little at a time. Until now. I released it all and tossed in my soul with it.

“Say something.” His voice was low and husky.

What did he want me to say? What I was thinking was not something he wanted to hear.

“I … I think this is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me,” I finally said, and my voice cracked.

“It’s what friends do.”

His words had been expected, but it was his tone that had me turning my head to look at him. It had been tight, almost as if it had been a struggle to say it. His eyes locked on me, and we stood there silently. There was a darkness in his that caused me to shiver. The moment his eyes dropped to my mouth, my breathing, my heart, and my world stopped. Froze.

I didn’t move. Hope, desire, longing, desperation, all swirled together, making me lightheaded.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said in a tortured whisper.

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