Twisted(121)

“I know. It’s just…the time’s not right, okay? Maybe in a few years—”

“A few years?” The question burst out of him. “I don’t want to wait any longer. We have no reason to.” He rubbed his thumb along the inside of her arm and she trembled, closing her eyes. “We can have San Francisco. Just you and me.”

“Maybe someday. Take care, okay?” She leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, her lips sliding to the left for a fraction of an instant, ghosting over the corner of his mouth. “I love you,” she said, easing back.

He held on for as long as he could, then dropped his arms.

During the drive back to school, he called the number she’d given him on a hunch. The call wouldn’t go through. The line had been disconnected.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Now



Jazz tapped her short fuchsia nails on the top of the table at Silas’s Tavern and debated whether or not her touchy stomach could deal with iced tea. Apparently she’d stopped getting panic attacks in the face of stress and had moved right on to bouts of nausea.

After the night Gray had been hurt, she’d mostly been okay, not counting her horrifying replays of the way he’d looked when he lurched into the cabin. Then there was what he’d said, though she couldn’t think about that part too much and stay sane. Even considering that Gray had turned to coke because of her hurt so much. But she couldn’t go back and change things, no matter how much she wished she could.

She glanced around the dimly lit restaurant and pushed aside her menu. All she could do was this.

Leaning back against the booth, she stifled a yawn. Exhaustion dogged her constantly, but that made sense since she was barely sleeping. A likely side effect of her injured fiancé being in the hospital, she suspected.

A fiancé she hadn’t spoken to for almost a week.

He’d been sprung last night and Nick—Nick, of all people—had picked him up and brought him back to the apartment. Like a coward, she’d cuddled her new kittens in her bedroom while listening to them laughing through the wall. True, they hadn’t been yukking it up, just sharing the occasional chuckle, but still. When had the earth tilted off its axis?

It wasn’t that she didn’t want them to be friends. She did, absolutely. She wanted all of the crap of the past year to disappear entirely, including the awkwardness between the three of them. She just hadn’t expected the two of them to become buddies while she tried to figure out how to even speak to Gray.

He hadn’t made much effort on that score either. He’d called her from the hospital to thank her for the balloons and for sitting vigil. And he’d apologized for his “harsh words”, of course, because his gentlemanly ways never disappeared for long. But the easy banter and enduring closeness that had always existed between them had disappeared, and she didn’t have the first clue how to get it back.

She hoped this was a good first step.

Bypassing the iced tea she doubted she could swallow, she opened her purse and checked the contents of the bank envelope inside. She was taking a risk doing this, in every sense of the word. Growing up essentially on her own had made her excessively frugal, not counting her dependence on hair dye—usually store bought with coupons—and her thrift shop wardrobe. Today she’d practically emptied her savings account, and she’d also incurred a future debt to the absolute last people she wanted to owe money to.

The Duffys.

Bumping into them at the hospital had been about as difficult as she’d expected. She hadn’t been surprised to see them, considering she’d called them in the first place. Telling them that Gray had a drug problem and had gotten hurt had been tough, mostly because she hated the feeling that she was betraying Gray. But his parents needed to know, and he needed them back in his life.

What he thought about her for making that decision for him didn’t much matter. She’d opened the door for them to walk through again. If Gray chose to back right out, there was nothing more she could do.

In the meantime, she was going to order an iced tea, count her big stack of bills and try to look badass while she waited for her lunch companion to join her.

Ten minutes later, her dining guest finally appeared.

The blonde strutted up to the table, every inch of her from head to toe well-coiffed and perfectly presented. She wore an expensively cut business suit, one that highlighted her many curves and also gave her an air of professionalism. If Jazz hadn’t known better, she might’ve actually believed the woman across from her was a lawyer or doctor or someone else important.

“Jasmine,” she said, slipping into the opposite side of the booth. “I apologize for my tardiness.”