Page 90 of Break for Me

“Jesus. I am thirty-seven. That’s not old.”

“That’s almost forty,” I reminded him and scrunched my nose up.

“I haven’t heard any complaints about the level of experience that I bring to this relationship.”

I opened my mouth to be a smartass again, but there didn’t seem to be any words readily available in response to that. From him genuinely knowing how to use every tool he’d been given to please a woman to calling whatever this was a relationship in the same sentence, I had no idea what I was supposed to say back to him.

“Submission looks good on you.”

“Ew. Nothing about that word works for me,” I said quickly.

“I’m okay with that. It’s always more fun when you think you’re going to fight me at first anyway.”

“What in the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

“Hm. We probably shouldn’t pull at that thread just yet, baby. Let’s give that one another six months or so. Tackle that disaster once you’re addicted to me and not going anywhere no matter what you learn.”

“Are you trying to scare me?” I asked. “Because it’s working.”

“Nah, pretty girl. You’ll know when I want your fear.”

I should not have been that turned on by whatever the shit was happening in this car just then.

He flowed from sex talk to long-term relationship references like it was the most natural thing in the world, like we were already an old married couple and this was just regular conversation on a Sunday cruise.

“I think I want a divorce,” I said.

The way that he laughed made me feel like I’d just spent the last half hour on the business end of a bong.

“Sorry, baby. There’s no escaping or hiding from somebody who doesn’t even exist.”

“Awesome. A husband that I’d have to exorcise if I wanted him gone. Just my luck.”

Jersey slowed the car noticeably when the computer screen went black.

“Here we go,” he said and pulled the car to the side of the road.

“What? Here we go what?”

His body went rigid at the appearance of two words across the screen.

JERSEY BOY

“They couldn’t hack into it with whatever she did to it,” he sighed. “They’re having her do it.”

“At least that means she’s okay, right?” I tried.

SENDING YOU THE ADDRESS.

BRING THE GIRL.

ME FOR HER.

PLEASE, DON’T DIE.

sixty-two

JERSEY

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