Page 14 of Amethyst Flame
Jacob squeezed my hands. “Trust me.” His fervent tone sapped some of my anger—right as he ditched me to go play secret agent with Dane.
They were the same height, I realized. Dane looked only a little older than Jacob, but he had the stiff stance of someone bearing too much responsibility, too many secrets, and a weapon he’d aimed to kill, while Jacob had that slight lope in his step of a guy who mouthed off online and had never once paid any price for it.
For a moment, I despised them both equally.
Dane stepped out of the room after a quick check both ways—like there might be a freight train coming. Jacob glanced back at me. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Before the door closed, Dane too flicked a look my way.
Narrator voice: Everything was not going to be fine.
CHAPTERFOUR
The flight home.Me, wedged into the window seat. Dane took the middle because he refused to leave my side. Like, literally. Which meant Jacob was on the aisle.
That’s right. They were coming home with me to Arbolito. Dane was playing federal marshal and escorting me back to the prison of my life. But he also wanted to work with Jacob some more on the whole Who Has the Best Bugs? question. And Jacob, who I’d recently learned was not one to miss an opportunity, agreed to come along to sunny Arizona too.
This was not in my plan. Not my original flight home, either. But the “clean-up” after the EDM concert had been more intense and wide-ranging than anticipated—either that or Jacob was showing off how thorough he was—so we’d ended up on a late-afternoon flight.
Dane took the whole armrest as he tippy-tapped on his laptop. I would’ve jabbed him with my elbow for two inches of my own, but I didn’t want to touch him.
Every once in a while, he showed Jacob something. Not me. Didn’t care about me, you know, the one humming with MoTH tech, but…why not have the MVP of the team play third wheel?
We were beginning our descent, the evening sun setting in the desert, when Dane finally turned to me. “I have a logistics issue. All new personnel in my agency are required to go through extensive training at our headquarters, background checks, etcetera, before working in the field. Therefore, I need to keep Jacob’s involvement in my investigation concealed from my team for now. Can he stay at your house? Pose as your boyfriend?”
Pose as…? I had no idea what was going on with the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing, but I could answer Dane’s first question easily. “Not a chance. There’s no way my mom would go for that.”
“The alternative is to relocate you both to my headquarters and work from there.”
“And where is that?”
“Classified.” Dane’s eyes glinted with satisfaction. “But I can guarantee that you won’t be within commuting distance to your job at the Freezie Shack.”
“It’s called Desert Freeze,” I told him through my clenched teeth. And I needed that job to contribute to household expenses, although Mom had started back to work part-time so we weren’t quite so tight these days. Anyway, I needed to be in Arbolito for her in case something happened, like another fall.
Which is how I found myself dumped out in front of my house—the east end of a duplex—with fake boyfriend Jacob at my side while Dane abandoned us and drove off down my street in his big kidnapper of a rental SUV.
“So howtogetherare we going to play this?” Jacob asked as we lingered at the end of the driveway.
Seemed like he was getting nervous, all his tech bro swagger evaporating in the triple-digit Arizona heat.
I was next-level terrified. Bringing home a boy to meet my mom. I could’ve called ahead to warn her—or even better to ask if she was okay with it—but I figured an ambush might be a better strategy because I absolutely had to get her cooperation.
My mind raced. “She’ll think it’s disrespectful if you’re all over me, so don’t even try.”
“Well, we have to be believable. Can I hold your hand?”
“Not if you want to keep it.”
Now that I was thinking about it,really thinking, I knew deep in my bones that this was not going to work. With how close my mom and I had been these past few months, not only would she doubt that Jacob was my suddenly new serious boyfriend, but she would be hurt that I was lying to her.
When will I ever learn? Icannotlie to my mom.
“I told Dane this wasn’t a good idea,” I muttered.
While we were still standing there, the front door opened—oh god—and my mom came out with a big Welcome Home smile on her face…that rapidly faded as she squinted to see who was standing next to me.
“You’renota boyfriend,” I told Jacob. Because that was the truth. He wasn’t. Not yet. “You’re a friend in town for a job interview,” I said, revising the plan completely. But it felt better. Felt right. Jacobwaskinda on a job interview.
