Page 178 of Entangled

Just for a moment, I wonder if Icouldseduce him.

“Okay. But I’m okay with it being sexual,” I venture, holding my breath. “Just so we’re clear.”

Jasper’s thigh twitches under my cheek, and his voice lowers. “Behave, my girl. You don’t want my brand of pain.”

Sharp and dangerous things lurk in his eyes. Yet they’re such unfairly gorgeous eyes. It’s the characteristic cruelty of nature that he should be so unsafe, like the luring bloom of my water hemlock hiding its poisoned and deadly roots.

I’ve had so much pain the last few weeks—and part of me wonders what it might be like to make that pain pretty.

But now is not the time.

Instead, I give him something I guard even more closely than my body.

I lift the workbook and my notepad. They’re suddenly heavy, but I pass them to him silently. It occurs to me that it’s the first time I’ve given him scribbles ofmysecret thoughts.

It feels like handing over part of my soul.

“Very brave,” he murmurs, and I press my face into his thigh at the instant sting in my eyes.

He hasn’t read a word, yet somehow pierces the heart of it.

My shame. My cowardice. My pathetic, unhelpful weakness.

But I stay, curled at his feet, as Jasper begins working his way through my notes. He refers to the notepad when needed, asking questions on occasion, but mostly he seems to drink it in with deep thought. His hand often drifts back to my hair, petting me softly, until I gradually begin to relax, allowing myself to steal the comfort he offers.

Jasper is calm as he reads, and not a flicker of surprise crosses his face. I wonder then what it would take to shock him. Working with soldiers who have been deployed under extreme conditions, surely he’s heard terrible things. I wonder if my problems seem small to him, or insignificant.

I’m not sure if that would make me feel better or worse.

“There is a lot to unpack here,” he says finally, then he looks down at me softly. “But there are two things that keep coming up. There’s one that I can’t find any specific details about—you call it A and M. There seems to be an enormous amount of shame attached to this event. Can you explain what happened?”

One by one, I feel my muscles turn to stone.

Alastair and Mateo.

I can’t tell Jasper about that. Nothing will change it now anyway, but if Dom finds out how I lied, it will crush him. Bile rises in my throat. I’m too horrifically aware of the news out of Cyanide City. Bentley and the people in Red Zone are in as dreadful a position as we are. Worse, in some ways, because of proximity alone.

The Sinners’ sweeps of the city. Weapons testing. Training regimes for their new recruits.

New women captured.

And worst of all, it’s as Dom suspected. Alastair and Mateo rejoined Sam. They manipulated me. Dom warned me, and I still let it happen.

Theydidmanipulate me, didn’t they? Could they still be working against him in secret? It seems too much to hope for now, when I’m not frightened and facing them in the secret, dark shadows of the woods.

“We don’t have to talk about that one right now,” Jasper says, and I pull in air, realizing I’ve been sitting frozen at his feet for too long.

“Perhaps this one. You say here that there was an incident during your escape, and you were going to abandon Heather? Those are your words, mind.”

Despite how mildly he says it, I flinch, dropping my gaze.

“You’ve listed your associated emotion as guilt.” His long, elegant fingers smooth my hair back from my forehead. “Can you walk me through that?”

As if called, the emotions creep through me.

I press my cheek more firmly against his thigh, like I might be able to take his strength by osmosis.

“It’s not complicated, Jasper,” I tell him bitterly. “I left her. If the others hadn’t arrived, she would have died for me, and I would have let her. I didn’t have her back. I didn’t protect her. I did what I always do. Run. Hide. Skulk in the shadows and only come out of them when there’s no danger.”

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