Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157175 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157175 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
‘Don’t fucking tempt me.’ I take a wide berth around him, aware of him close behind. I’ll be the one six feet under at this rate. With stress.
I yank the car door open and throw myself into the seat heavily, wincing as I do. I hurt. Everywhere. I turn my face away when he lands in the driver’s side, his force putting mine to shame. ‘I’ve had a million heart attacks in the past hour!’
‘And a seizure. And a stroke, by the look on your face. I had a coffee, for crying out loud. Aren’t I allowed that?’
‘Who with?’ He revs his Aston hard, the car sounding as angry as him. ‘Because I rang Kate looking for you, and you weren’t with her.’
‘I have other friends, too, you know.’
‘Like who?’ He roars off down the road, throwing me back in my seat. Oh, he’s mad all right. Good. So am I. Who does he think he is?
‘A friend from yoga,’ I tell him snootily, not willing to elaborate. Call me pathetic, but I kind of like the idea of having someone all to myself. ‘You’re driving like an idiot.’ I clutch the side of my seat when he zooms through an amber light, cutting someone off when he switches lanes. We get honked at, and Jesse proceeds to flip the finger, not once, but twice, hurling a barrage of abuse out the window. Jesus Christ, the man is a fucking lunatic.
‘Given my accident,’ I say, quietly alarmed by his recklessness, ‘I’m surprised you’re being so careless.’ The brakes screech, and we’re suddenly crawling along the road at a snail’s pace. ‘Now you’re just being stupid.’ I fire him a filthy look, but note very quickly that he’s not being stupid at all. He’s being serious, his brow all crinkled in silent thought. And I know those thoughts are of the day he found my mangled car before he found my mangled body. I can see the flashbacks in his rapidly dulling eyes, his anger morphing into pain. And that pain finds its way into my heart and makes me feel like the worst person in the world.
Damn it. I close my eyes briefly and sigh, reaching for his hand where it’s squeezing the wheel, his knuckles white. He lets me prise his fingers free and bring his hand to my lap, where I cup it with my other, holding it tightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, a million strands of regret woven between the two small words. There’s that instinct again. The one that desperately wants to ease his pain. To make him calmer. To give him what he needs.
He pulls the car over to the side of the road and takes his hands back, scrubbing them down his face slowly and harshly. The evidence of a tear streaks his bristly cheek. Oh God. What have I done? He looks on the verge of breaking down. I unclip my belt and crawl across the centre console, onto his lap, pulling his hands away from his face. Deep green eyes overflowing with dread gaze back at me. ‘You need to chill out, Jesse.’
‘I’ll chill out if you stop trying to kill me dead.’ He’s serious, yet the crack in his voice is clear. His true fear is sobering. And, I realise, I shouldn’t toy with that.
‘Be quiet and kiss me,’ I demand, taking the reins, doing what I’m fast learning he needs me to do. And I don’t have to ask him twice. I’m taken in a kiss that’s full of appreciation as he sighs his thanks into my mouth and settles beneath me. His heart settles too, lowering to a soft thrum in his chest, reverberating against mine.
‘And to be clear,’ he mumbles, and I roll my eyes behind my lids, knowing exactly what’s coming. ‘You’re not getting another job.’ I don’t argue. Not now, though I plan on breaking him down gently over the coming weeks. Even I know I’m not ready to go back to work just yet. His head falls back against the headrest, his face serious. ‘Why didn’t you call me? Text me? Anything.’
I look away, a bit embarrassed. ‘I don’t know how to use that stupid phone.’ I can feel a lump growing in my throat. It’s so stupid.
My jaw is clenched and my face pulled to his. His face is agony. ‘I’m sorry for being unreasonable.’
I feel immediately better. ‘So you’re going to let me work elsewhere?’
‘No,’ he says simply, with no apology. ‘That’ll never happen.’ The confidence in his voice almost makes me believe him myself. We’ll see. It is what it is, and he is what he is. Neurotic.
And I am what I am.
Falling in love with him.
Chapter 26
After my heart attack of yesterday, I kept Ava at home today and gave her an in-depth tutorial on how to use her phone. I only let her leave the house to keep her therapy session, and I drove her, waited, and brought her home. And she didn’t argue. Fucking hell, I’ve never been so panicked. The whole time she was missing, I tried to reason with myself. Tried to keep myself calm. It didn’t work. I was terrified, and then when I found her, that terror turned into anger. I couldn’t hold back. But what was she thinking, disappearing like that? It’s taken a whole twenty-four hours to get my heartbeats back to a safe level.