Page 59 of Only for the Moment
“He’s watching you,” Cristina teased. Jess ducked her head, but the hot tide spreading across her cheeks was impossible to hide.
It wasn’t mere embarrassment. She was mortified. If she could’ve started her first day back at work anywhere else, she would have, but Cris had insisted. Since Jess began her jobright around the corner at Ex Libris Media straight out of college, she and Cris had met here for coffee on Monday mornings. It was their girl time, and Cris would be damned if she’d let what had happened to Jess take that away from them.
Jess, on the other hand, thought sometimes change was good.
That wasn’t her lying down and giving up. Yes, she’d been attacked by her boyfriend two monthsago, but she’d survived. There were things she was determined to make happen—like standing on her own two slightly wobbly feet. It was just…seeing the man she’d fantasized about for months wasn’t one of them. Not now, while she still felt the imprint of every bruise, every cracked bone, every foolish dream across her healed skin. She felt ugly because what had happened was ugly, and no matter howhard she scrubbed, all these weeks later, she couldn’t get the ugly gone.
“I love watching bikers,” Cris mused, seeming oblivious to Jess’s discomfort. “If only I could get Steven to wear leather, I’d be a very happy wife.”
Sneaky woman. Who could resist laughing at the image of Steven, all five-feet-eleven lanky inches of him, being swallowed whole by a leather jacket and pants? Not that hewasn’t cute; he was just more Mr. Rogers than Mr. Hell’s Angels. “Sounds like a good setup for chaffing.”
Cris choked on a sip of tea. Spluttering, laughing, she finally managed, “Why do you think it has the cutout right there in the middle, huh?”
“For convenience.”
“Pffttt.” A flick of Cris’s hand brushed the idea aside.
“Display purposes?”
Cris tilted her head, considering. “Okay, thattoo, but…”
Jess shook a finger at her friend. “Uh—”
“But—”
“Uh-uh.”
“Je—”
Only one thing had ever stopped Cris when she got on a roll: The Look. Jess used it now.
“Party pooper.” Cris’s bottom lip poked out.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
They both laughed. To Jess’s horror, she felt mirth give way to the burn of tears at the backs of her eyes.
“Oh, Jess…”
Shit shit shit.
“That’s it. I’m callingSaul.”
Jess jerked her head up. “You’re not calling my boss. I’m fine. I was cleared to work, and I’m going to work.”
“You’re not ready.”
Closing her eyes, Jess counted impatiently to ten. Cris meant well, but Jess had won this fight repeatedly in the past week—both with Cris and herself. She didn’t want to have to do it again.
She opened her eyes and stared straight into Cris’s. Love andconcern radiated from her friend. So did fear. Jess was intimately familiar with the feeling. And with her decision. No way in hell would Brit take over her life. Saying no to him could very well have led to her death. If she could say it then, she could say it now, when only his memory was here to stop her.
She didn’t speak; she didn’t have to. Instead she gathered her purse and her coffee andstood. Cris tightened her lips but didn’t argue as she got to her feet. Together they made their way to the door, dumping their trash along the way.
Ignoring the slap of summer heat as she stepped outside, Jess scanned the parking lot. Cris would be doing the same, she knew. The fact that both of them worried, wherever they went, about Brit showing up pissed her off. After producing a convenientalibi for the night of her attack, Brit had walked out of the Atlanta Police Department and onto an airplane. Work, or so Detective King had informed Jess. Brit’s position as vice president of his father’s tech company—and his family’s prominent position in city politics—lent legitimacy to the story, for everyone but Jess. Cat and mouse was Brit’s favorite game, and what better way to keep themouse on edge than for the cat to disappear? Two months after she’d last seen him, she couldn’t stop searching the streets for his face.
The not knowing had been Cris’s primary argument against Jess’s return to work. Jess had acquiesced far longer than she should’ve, far past the time it took for her injuries to heal. But she had a life to live. She couldn’t sit on her rear in a locked apartment,waiting. Wondering. Driving herself closer and closer to insane.
