Page 133 of Save Her from Me

“I think she torched my car,” I said.

Ariel took a breath and grabbed her phone. Hit the button to place a call, mouthingLochinvarat me. “Hey, sorry to disturb you. Did you get a description of that dog walker your crew member had seen after our scare at Daisy’s house?”

She listened, then thanked the mountain rescue leader, and hung up.

“Middle-aged woman, bobbed hair.”

I rubbed the heel of my hand into my forehead. “She tried to frighten ye, presumably to get to me. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not. I don’t regret a single thing that has happened. How can I when the result is this?”

She kissed me again, and I was half a second from taking this further, heat bubbling under. But there was something I needed first.

“Hold that thought.”

I called my mother back and put her on loudspeaker.

“Jackson? Thank God. At last you’ve seen sense,” she said, her voice fraught.

“Good to know TJ’s parole hearing failed,” I said.

“Good? How can anything about this be good? My husband ordered me to move out. He said he can’t be in a marriage anymore when I’m so clearly not on his side. Because of ye I’m homeless. What am I going to do?”

“How did ye torch my car?” I asked.

Silence filled the line.

I continued, musing. “Was it ye alone? Or did your newly ex-husband provide the tools and method? I assume so because from everything I’ve seen, your default is to follow blindly where he leads. Plus he owns a string of garages, so if anyone knows how to cause an explosion like that, it would be him. How about when ye followed me when I dropped off my girlfriend and then tried to scare her? Was he there, too? Or just your dog?”

My mother didn’t reply, only her breathing audible.

“This is the last time I’m going to tell ye to leave me alone. Try contacting me again, or harass my girlfriend in any way, and I’ll have ye arrested. As for your miserable life, I get that you’re upset, but this is a reality ye created for yourself. Get a lawyer and fight for your share in the divorce. I’d offer my car for ye to sleep in, like I had to when ye kicked me out, but considering ye burned it—”

She hung up on me.

I couldn’t bring myself to care.

My family was here, and it was the one I’d found. The team who’d searched for me, the woman and her brother who’d turned their lives upside down for me, the whole host of people from the estate who’d showed up.

But it was to Ariel that I had something to say to now. For her, I’d create my very own list.

Chapter 40

Ariel

Jackson reached for the side table and collected my notepad and pen. “Write this down, little fox.”

I opened a page and clicked the pen, waiting on him.

“Title: How Jackson Fell for Ariel.”

I stilled, my heart thumping, but at his gesture, wrote the words.

He continued. “When she roundhouse kicked me in the gut, naked. When she was so brave in kissing me the first time, but braver in telling me off after for holding back. When she had the most unhinged birthday party and created a sex list from it. When I got to work through that list with her and worship her body the way it should be. The very first time I came here and saw her and had to look away.”

I jotted down every word but seized up at the last.

“I thought I was beneath your interest.”

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