Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“Hey,” he repeated. “Look at me.”
I opened my eyes again.
“You want Plan B, we’ll get Plan B. I’m going to send you back to the apartment with Geoffrey, and I’ll go get it, all right?”
Geoffrey had to be the stiff-necked chauffeur who’d turned up day after day to fetch me from the studio. “I can get it,” I said. “You probably have business to attend to.”
“No,” Jax replied. “The booth will be cleaned. Don’t worry, it’s reserved specifically for me, so no one will go in there or ever has been in there without my permission.”
“I—I don’t even care about that right now. Just the—the Plan—the—” I was too emotionally screwed up to talk. Too exhausted.
“Come,” Jax said, and walked me back down the hall. “Breathe, Riley. I’ll take care of it. All right? You can trust me.”
Chapter 21
Jax
I carried the brown bag like it was loaded.
No, I didn’t want to give her the Plan B. No, I didn’t for a second regret what’d happened at Club Queen. Why would I? Riley had become mine the minute I’d touched her. Taking it that extra step, filling her completely, had only cemented that for both of us.
But she was panicked, and she needed me on board. Like she’d said, she wasn’t a building I could claim, she was a person, with thoughts and feelings, and plans of her own, curse them.
I’d have to find a way to remove her from them or them from her before the month was up. No way was she leaving.
I opened the front door of my apartment and stepped inside. It was quiet except for the distant hum of chatter from the TV in the living room. I followed the sound down the hall, past the open doors to either of our bedrooms, and turned right under the large archway.
Riley was curled up on the sofa, swathed in a blanket, her head poking out of the top of it like a turtle peeking from the rocks.
“What are you watching?” I asked and stepped into the room.
Riley shrieked and jumped, knocked the remote control off the arm of the sofa. “Oh my god, you have got to stop doing that. You’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.”
I stifled a chuckle.
“There’s this thing on the Discovery Channel about the ethics, or lack of, behind eugenics and I thought I’d check it out while—sorry, I’m sure that’s not in the least bit interesting to you,” she said and eyed the bag in my hand. “Is that what I think it is?”
“As per your order.” I handed it to her. I took a seat on the sofa and watched her tear through the bag and whip out the pill package. She turned it over in her hands and examined it, thoroughly. “You need a glass of water with that?”
“No,” she said. “I’m fine. I’ve got juice.” She nodded to a glass on the coffee table, filled to the brim with OJ.
I’d barely noticed anything but her since I’d entered, but I took stock quickly—juice, a box of tissues, some incredibly boring scientists on the TV sporting a shock of crazy brown hair, and her cell phone on the sofa’s arm.
“Tissues, huh?” I nodded to the box. “You OK?”
Riley shrugged and made short work of taking the Plan B. I took the empty bag and package from her, fisted them both into a ball with one hand, and held them there. Squeezing them into non-existence didn’t do much to alleviate my frustration.
“Talk to me, Riley.”
She sighed. “There’s not much to say. It’s the same shit that’s been bothering me the past two weeks except it’s getting worse now.”
“Worse how?” I took her hand, brushed a kiss over her fingertips. Goose bumps sprang up on the piece of forearm that’d emerged from her blanket-shroud. “Let me help you.”
“I still don’t get why you’d want to, but we’re so past the point of discussing that, I guess,” she said and didn’t tug her hand back from me. “I’m torn. That’s about the shape of it.”
“Torn how?”
“Well, in two is usually how it works,” she replied, drily. “But in this case it’s into five or ten pieces. I’m—this is going to seem harsh and strange, Jax, but I’m torn about living here with you. This was supposed to be an easy roommate agreement. Four weeks and I pay you my dues, and then I’m gone. Instead, we’re—I don’t know what we are, but it’s not just roommates, and that scares me.”
“You don’t need to be afraid.” I didn’t do fear, but her words brought some of it out in me. Two weeks and I’d become infatuated with this woman. What would happen when it fell through? I needed more time with her to work this out.
She was mine. Did I want her to stay that way? I’d learned that ownership was easier than love.