Page 25 of Break for Me

It was parked just close enough to the light post outside the main office door for its color to be evident. She only shook her head once she’d located the one I was watching. Something about the hesitation in her movement did make me believe her.

“Is there somebody in it?” She whispered.

I laughed.

“You don’t have to whisper, Fancy Face.”

“Are you sure? You acted like you were ready to pull a gun on me again every time I breathed too loudly today.”

“Stop being annoying and we won’t have that problem anymore,” I said dryly.

“Stop being a psycho and I won’t get so much pleasure out of annoying you.”

The girl fucking giggled while she said it. She was even smiling when I looked over at her. Her expression changed in an instant when her hand shot across the console to grab my forearm. She was staring back out the windshield, fingernails digging into my arm. I looked back to see a man exiting the truck across the parking lot. He was tall and wore a baseball cap, but it was difficult to make out any other details about him in the darkness. By the time he made it to the office door, his back was to us.

“Go,” I said, and hit the button on my key fob that would unlock all of Seph’s doors. “We’re in seventeen. Go now.”

I couldn’t have been more shocked when Trista just listened and did exactly what I said. She was out of the car just as quickly as I was and on the way to the door. She was still clearly uncomfortable and wobbly, but when she was nervous she powered through whatever pain she was feeling in that foot. I stopped in the open doorway to turn around and watch the office. I didn’t have any issue with this other man knowing that I was aware of his presence too. He wouldn’t be able to make out any of my features in the darkness either. I just wanted him to know that I knew we were playing the same game. I felt little fingers wrap around my forearm again and she was pressed into my back a second later, trying to just barely peak around my shoulder while keeping the rest of her body hidden behind mine.

“How noble of you. Entirely prepared to use me as a human shield,” I mumbled. I was surprised by the lack of a snarky response. Instead she tightened her hold on my arm and squished herself harder into my back while the man walked out of the office. He paused for just a moment to pull the bill of his cap down further over his eyes before he turned to face our direction. Trista had moved all the way behind me in a heartbeat and now I could even feel her pressing her face into my shoulder blade. I waited motionless until our shadow went into a room of his own and closed the door behind him. This was about to be a terribly long night of watching someone else watch me just to make sure he stayed on his side while I stayed on mine.

twenty

TRISTA

Those blue eyes were burning into me when I managed to raise my face up enough to glance up at Jersey. I stayed plastered right where I was against his body for entirely too long. I closed my eyes for another second to breathe in deeply and calm myself back down before I released my nail-piercing hold on his arm. I stepped away from him quickly and he shifted back into the room with me to close the door. He locked it and added the second little contraption before he turned to look at me again.

“Who is he?” Jersey asked.

“I couldn’t see him any better than you could.”

The way that he smirked at me somehow made my skin crawl and flush with the heat of a thousand fucking suns. He took a single step toward me. So, I promptly backed away another step. He stopped to smile another time.

“That was an incredibly fearful reaction to someone you don’t know,” he said.

“I don’t know you either and I’m still afraid of you,” I said quickly. He looked so fucking pleased with himself over that response that I was ready to smack him to death all over again. He went to the overstuffed chair across the room and pushed the side of it right up against the wall next to the window. He took off his suit jacket and draped it across the back of the chair before he pulled at the knot in his tie to loosen it. And I had to physically prevent myself from salivating while I watched him unbutton his sleeves to roll them up to his elbows, revealing the tattoos that held all my curiosity about the man. He definitely caught me staring, but for some reason he didn’t bother to make it worse by calling me out.

“Bathroom’s yours if you want it,” he said and dropped down into the chair after he’d pulled the curtains back. “Just leave the door open.”

He glanced back in my direction when he realized I hadn’t moved.

“There’s usually a shitty statement about how much time I have before you’ll be joining me in there that follows telling me I’m allowed to be alone somewhere,” I explained. He laughed.

“This is where I’ll be tonight,” he said, looking back out the window. “Enjoy it.”

I stood there and fucking stared at him again while his fingers went through his hair. I forced myself to move toward the bathroom. Why couldn’t he have been a nasty, disgusting pervert? He was already an asshole and I already hated him. He was delivering me back to my literal death. The least that he could do in return for that was not be fucking beautiful. That sounded reasonable to me. But no. He was walking red flag material, and everything about that apparently called out to me. He was painfully attractive. He was older than me, by enough that he somehow had the perfect amount of just barely visible gray hair peeking through the otherwise nearly black hair. He was funny in the most hateful and messed up kind of way. I wondered how much of him was covered in tattoos. I wondered how much of him was covered in muscle. And he was so far off limits that he might as well have been chilling on the fucking moon.

I got into the shower wondering if this fell into the category of Stockholm Syndrome. That sounded like some shit that I would absolutely get swept up in with my track record of piss poor decisions. When everything in your common sense can tell you plainly that you should absolutely not be doing something, but you still just say fuck it and do it anyway.

He hadn’t moved even an inch by the time I was done in the bathroom.

“You’re really just going to sit there all night?” I asked.

“Would you prefer that I be asleep when he breaks in later tonight?”

“Probably wouldn’t change the end result for me in the long run,” I said and shrugged my shoulders while I climbed into the bed closest to him to sit with my legs criss-crossed.

He smirked. “And what’s the end result, Fancy Face?”

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