Page 89 of Break for Me

I heard Trista sigh while her hand ran down the length of my arm to slide her fingers in between mine. She squeezed my hand and laid her head against my shoulder.

“Let’s go find her,” she whispered and kissed my shoulder.

sixty-one

TRISTA

How was I supposed to just ask him if he planned on handing me over to Nate in exchange for Memphis?

Sure he fucked me every chance he had, but he cared for her. Very, very deeply. He felt responsible for her. He was protective of her. He was entirely prepared to murder someone for honking at him just because he wanted to lash out over her being taken from him.

And I was the mistake he’d made that put her in this position.

I waited uncomfortably in the passenger’s seat while he typed away furiously on the computer. I felt like I was going to vomit by the time he’d pushed the computer back into it’s place against the dash with a map pulled up and a tiny, little blinking black dot that I assumed was Memphis’ tracker.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, while he backed out of the driveway.

“Get her back.”

“How?”

He glanced at me like he was somehow confused by my question.

“Whatever it takes. That’s how.”

I swallowed hard and reminded myself to just breathe. Whoever had her was ahead of us by a couple hours at the very least. If I needed to escape Jersey again in that timeframe, so be it. He was distracted now, more so than he’d probably been since I’d met him. Getting away from him this time probably wouldn’t prove difficult.

And about the very second that that thought had finished in my mind, I felt overwhelming, all-consuming guilt just for thinking it. This shit was giving me the worst emotional whiplash of my life. Memphis was largely to blame for Jersey picking me up in the first place. If they hadn’t held down these awful fucking jobs, none of us would be in these positions. Conversely, if I wasn’t a murderous monster myself, nobody would need to revenge-hunt me. And both of these people had made choices in the last few days to get me right the fuck back out of Nate’s hands after they’d delivered me to his people. Those choices turned their worlds completely upside down. They lost their jobs, they lost each other, they had dangerous people searching for them now.

What a fucking shit show.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jersey asked.

“What?”

“Why are you crying?”

Was I crying? My God.

“I’m just — I don’t know. Are you not upset right now?” I snapped at him.

“I’m under the impression that upset on me looks very different than it does on you, Fancy Face,” he said and chuckled.

“Yeah, I won’t be attempting to kill anyone for honking a horn.”

The glare he shot through me suggested that he wasn’t really in the mood to be fucking around anymore.

“Are you going to give me back to them?” I asked and immediately looked out my window to avoid his face. He was quiet for way too much time. I was going to have to figure out how to get away from him again.

“Is that why you’re pouting?” He asked and laughed. The asshole fucking laughed. If it wouldn’t have killed me too, I would’ve reached for that steering wheel to plant this entire car right in the ditch on the side of the road. But I still couldn’t even look back at him. I had no desire to let him see the kind of hurt that this really was. This was so far beyond pouting that even I was embarrassed about it.

“Are you?” I asked again. He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his mouth to the kiss the back of it.

“I’m keeping you, Triss. And I don’t really care how anyone feels about it. You included.”

He couldn’t have surprised me more if he’d sprouted a second dick right out of his forehead. The look on my face must have made that obvious because he chuckled before he kissed my hand another time. Everything about how calm he was in regard to what he just said freaked me out that much more.

“Did I just gain a boyfriend against my will?” I asked, because humor was the only way I could think to escape the crushing weight of what his words really meant. “Is it weird to call you a boyfriend? Aren’t you a little — I don’t know. Mature? For that?”

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