Page 18 of Obscurity
And that wasn’t fair to Chloe or her family. They deserved her full attention.
“I just have a lot on my mind,” she finally told him. “It’s not personal.”
He stared at her another moment before slowly nodding. “Okay then. Maybe we can talk things through when you’re ready. Because, Olive, . . . I know exactly what I want.”
“And what’s that?” As soon as she asked the question, she realized her mistake.
“You.” The word sounded low, quiet—and intimate.
Her cheeks warmed.
At once, she remembered their last kiss. She’d love more than anything to recreate it.
But Jason didn’t know the things she knew—at least, to her knowledge he didn’t know.
She needed to figure out how to navigate this situation. Too much was on the line not to.
CHAPTER 11
“I’ll take the floor,” Jason finally said after seeming to realize Olive wasn’t going to respond to his statement about only wanting her.
“Are you sure? I can?—”
But Jason had already risen. He began to pull extra blankets from the closet, his movements efficient but tense. The sight of him preparing to sleep on hardwood floors sent an unexpected pang through her chest.
It wouldn’t be comfortable, and she was just as capable of sleeping on the floor.
“Jason, you don’t have to?—”
“It’s fine.” He didn’t look at her as he arranged the blankets into a makeshift bed near the window. “I’ve slept in worse places.”
Silence stretched between them, filled with all the words they weren’t saying.
Words about the kiss they’d shared that had awakened feelings Olive thought were safely buried. About the investigation into his father’s business dealings that had revealed troubling connections to her family. About the wayher pulse still quickened when Jason was close, despite all the rational reasons she had to keep her distance.
Their eyes met across the room, and for a moment the careful professional masks they wore slipped away.
Olive saw in his gaze the same confusion she felt—the push and pull of attraction and suspicion, trust and fear, the past and an uncertain future.
She wanted to cross the room, to close the distance between them and deal with the consequences later. But she also wanted to demand answers about his father, about the house, about whether the man she was falling for could somehow be connected to the worst tragedy of her life.
“Tomorrow we start looking for answers about Chloe. And maybe . . .” She hesitated, then decided to voice the thought that had been haunting her since she’d seen the photograph. “Maybe if I have any free time, I’ll figure out what my father was doing here more than twenty years ago.”
“Olive.” Jason’s voice was soft, careful. “Whatever we discover about the past, whatever connections we uncover—it doesn’t change who you are now.”
Her throat tightened with emotion.
She wanted to believe him. But she wasn’t sure she did.
Her father’s blood ran through her. Sometimes she caught herself acting like him even.
That was the last thing she wanted.
Outside their window, the mountain forest stretched endlessly into darkness, hiding secrets.
But the main question in her mind was whether the man about to sleep three feet away from her was someone she could trust with her heart . . . or if he was just another beautiful lie in a life that had been built on too many of them already.
“We should get some sleep,” Olive finally said, ready to turn off her emotions.
