Page 138 of One More Secret

My fingers circle her wrist. “Hey, where’re you going?”

“To check on Bailey. She’s not used to spending the night in her crate. She sleeps with me. Which…which she shouldn’t be doing.” Jess rolls her bottom lip between her teeth, and she looks…apologetic?

I release her wrist. “Why’s that?”

“I’m just her puppy raiser. Eventually she’ll go to her forever home. But it won’t help if she’s been sleeping with me instead of in her crate.” Jess grabs her jeans from the floor and begins to pull them on, her body partially in the deep shadow.

“What if you are her forever home?” My words roll out, and I tread carefully, so not to step on a land mine.

“But I’m not.” She slips her top on over her head without bothering to put on her bra.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed, bracing for what’s bound to come next. “Technically, you are.”

Her eyebrows jerk up and squeeze together, forming a divot between them. “Technically? What are you talking about?”

“This isn’t how things are normally done, but Jenny and I thought you would benefit from having Bailey as your service dog, even though she still has a lot of training ahead of her.”

A yawning silence stretches in the space between us, the crevice growing wider with each passing second.Fuck.I shouldn’t have told her yet, but I didn’t want her thinking she was doing anything wrong by letting Bailey sleep in the room with her. I was right about Bailey making a difference for Jess—even if Bailey isn’t fully trained as a PSD yet. The subtle changes in Jess aren’t due to therapy alone. Bailey is also responsible for them.

“Why?” Jess’s voice is a harsh whisper. “Why would you do that? I don’t need you to give me things. I’m capable of looking after myself.”

Her words slash my chest, but I keep the wince at her reaction from my face. Thank Christ she doesn’t know about the arrangement I made with Robyn. Jess would eviscerate me if she found out. Now that she’s on my payroll, the company’s insurance plan will partially pay for her therapy. But I’m hardly bringing up either point—especially since she believes the State of Oregon is footing the bill.

“I don’t need you to be my caretaker.”

“I know, Jess. But there’s also nothing wrong with letting your friends help you.”

A grunted huff pushes past her lips, and her forehead crinkles into a stubborn frown.

“You don’t believe me?” I ask.

“Maybe if you’d been honest with me…” She huffs once more, the sound no less annoyed than before.

“Would you have accepted her if I had?”

Her lack of reply confirms what I suspected. She wouldn’t have. She’d have put her pride ahead of her need for help. She uses that pride as a shield against anyone who tries to breach her wall. I have no idea how to get her to put it down, but damned if I don’t want to try.

“I know you’ve fallen in love with her, Jess. Now you don’t have to worry about losing her once she’s ready for her forever home. You are her forever home.”

The pin-drop quiet that stretches between us this time isn’t so heavy with tension. My balls might not be in as big of a risk as they were a moment ago.

Jess’s lips twitch into a slight smile. But I don’t kid myself into believing she’ll forgive me if she finds out who’s actually paying for her therapy.

She leaves the room, and I turn on the nightstand lamp. The unopened condom wrapper sits on a nonfiction library book about D-Day spies. I grab the foil square and open the nightstand drawer to stash the condom in it.

Jess’s drawer is pretty much empty like mine is at home. Except, instead of a box of condoms, Jess has several photos. The top photo is of a baby wearing a pink dress and sitting on a blanket.

I remove the picture from the drawer.

The next photo is of a toddler grinning at the camera and showing the photographer her stuffed puppy. Her brown hair is tied up in two little pigtails, but her eyes are the same as Jess’s. Is this Jess as a toddler? Only now she dyes her hair blond?

The same girl is about five years old in the final photo. She’s drawing a picture with crayons and making a goofy face for the camera.

“What are you doing?”

I snap my head up.

Jess stares at the photos in my hand, her face pale, eyes wide with conflicting emotions.

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