by Jessa Kane
She already was, but now she’s going to know it.
I’ve never been more confident that I can convince Jessie to let me in. Let me be more than a friend to her. Every year on Valentine’s Day, I come so close to telling her I’ve been in love with her since we were teenagers, but she always says something that makes me put my confession off another year.
Not this time.
I’m just starting to formulate plans when Jessie pulls a gun out of her purse and checks the chamber, before sliding back into the leather bag.
What. The hell. Did I just see?
I had a feeling she was keeping something from me, but if she has a reason for owning a gun, that something is way more serious than I could have imagined. Is she in trouble?
Is someone threatening her?
More likely than any other scenario, her mother is back in town. How did I miss this? Goddammit, I’ve been working so hard on the Garvey case, I let one ball drop and now she’s walking around with a gun?
Pissed at myself, I almost put my fist through the wall and blow my cover, but I manage to remain quiet in the bathroom until she leaves the apartment again.
And then I follow. I’ve always followed her and always will.
Call it a hobby. Stalking. Call it what you like, but today it’s my duty.
CHAPTER THREE
Jessie
When I was a child, my mother told me one thing that stuck—and stuck good.
This wisdom probably engraved itself on my brain because we were hiding in a closet at the time, hoping my drunk daddy wouldn’t find us.
She said, “Friendships and romances are like see-saws. They’re lots of fun when two people are participating. But as soon as the other person grows heavier or lighter in love, you’re in the dirt or flinging off into space. Never climb onto a see-saw. Stay out of the dirt and keep your feet on the ground.”
My father was masterful at being a terrible human being. When his abuse wasn’t physical, he liked to stab with verbal knives—and most of the time, he chose my mother’s anxiety to exploit. He liked to create stressful situations, like last-minute dinner plans or springing an unpaid bill on my mother, just to watch her flounder. So he could laugh at her.
I learned early that weaknesses were better hidden.
And this situation I find myself in now counts as a weakness.
If I told Ryan I can’t pay rent this month because my mother needs money for her anti-anxiety medication, he wouldn’t make me pay. But if I allowed him to let me slide, I would owe him. Owing people money gives them a weapon to use against you, right?
I look out the window of my rental car at the convenience store I’ve been casing for the last week or so. The shift change will take place in approximately eight minutes and the cash register will be unlocked and placed briefly on the counter, leaving none of the extra time they’d need to unlock the drawer and possibly call the police or hit a panic button. They’ll drop it into my bag and I’ll be gone in seconds, leaving with the cash take for the last twelve hours.
My pulse is in a frenzy now, my conscience shouting at me to pull the plug on my idea, but I can’t. I’ve exhausted all my options. Worked extra shifts, tried to take out a loan. My mother’s insurance only covers some of the cost, and unemployed as she is, she can’t afford the remaining cost. I do this for her without question, for all the times she hid me away and bore the brunt of my father’s wrath alone. I can’t turn my back on her.
One little robbery and I’ll be back in the clear.
Blowing out a nervous breath, I go over the precautions I’ve taken. I’ve smudged the license place number. My hair is pulled up in a bun and I’ll be stuffing it inside a full ski mask. I’m four miles from my apartment in a neighborhood I don’t frequent…
Ryan’s smile dances through my mind and there’s a fluttering in my belly.
I have to move out. These new feelings are too risky.
I’ve never been aroused like this before, not by anyone and especially my best friend. He’s supposed to be safe, dependable, unobtrusive Ryan. Not the kind of guy who feeds me bites of pancake and speaks to me in shiver-inducing whispers.
Speaking of shivers, a hot one winds up my spine now.
When did Ryan become so…commanding?
When did I become the kind of girl who likes that?
Okay. At this rate, I’ll be robbing a convenience store with wet underwear.
My watch beeps and I press the button to silence it. Go time, sweetheart.
With blood pounding in my ears, I pull the ski mask down over my face, don my coat and place the gun inside one of the deep pockets. The gun is unloaded. I’ve checked it several times to be sure, as if bullets might suddenly appear in the chamber. Normally, I abhor guns and make Ryan lock his police issue weapon in a safe every night, but I want to appear threatening enough to make the shop owners move fast, without being an actual threat.
Making sure there are no passersby or cars coming, I climb out of the car and cross the street, giving myself a mental pep talk as I go. It’ll be over in thirty seconds. Thirty seconds and you’ll be able to pay your half of the rent, leaving Ryan in the dark and your mother’s medications filled for the next year. You can do this.
I push through the glass door and raise the gun, scanning the small store for other customers. One. There’s one. A big man with his back turned, holding a giant bouquet of red Valentine’s Day roses. Shit.
No choice but to keep going.
With one hand, I point the unloaded weapon at the two men behind the register. With the other, I remove the black garbage bag from my pocket and toss it onto the counter beside the cash box. “Put the cash box in the bag and get down on the ground.”
If they notice my voice is shaking, they very politely do as they’re told without mentioning the embarrassing wobble to my pitch. Okay. Okay, this is going well. One man holds the bag open while the other throws in the cash box and hands it over. I wind the loose end of the garbage bag around my left fist, keeping the gun level in my right and I back toward the door. Everything seems to be according to plan, but there are goosebumps climbing the back of my neck. Why are the store employees not even protesting? They seem so calm.
A second later, I find out why.
When I try to back through the glass door, it’s locked.
I bump it again with my hip—hard—but it sticks.
“Automatic lock,” one of the men calls from behind the counter. “There’s a button under the counter.”
“Nice try, though,” says his friend, chuckling—and he raises a gun.
A gun much bigger than mine. Is that a rifle?
Acid floods my mouth and something I never could have expected happens. I whimper Ryan’s name. I want to rewind to this morning and tell him everything so he can give me those quiet words of wisdom, at which I usually roll my eyes. But I wouldn’t now. I might even let him give me a hug and tell me everything is going to be fine.
The two men are coming around the counter now and instinctively, I drop the bag containing the cash box and try to pry open the door. It doesn’t work. Oh God, I’m stuck in here with these men I just robbed—and is that…?
Yes.
Yes, that’s sirens in the distance.
They must have triggered a silent alarm. I anticipated that, but figured I would be long gone before the police arrived. I never considered a remote locking door.
I’m well and truly screwed.
I cock my gun. “Back up,” I order them, trying to sound as authoritative as possible.
One of them tilts his head. “How much fun do you think we can have with her before the cops arrive?”
“She sounds cute under that mask.” He uses the muzzle of the rifle to lift the hem of my coat, inching it higher and higher until my red flannel shirt is revealed. “Let’s take a little peek, shall we?”
The man holding the gun drops to the floor. His gun is confiscated, held in a fist while his owner slumps into a pile o
f bones below.
Whose fist is that?
The man. I forgot about the other man in the store.
It’s… “Ryan?”
“Be with you in a second.” He clocks the second guy between the eyes with the butt of his gun, knocking him out cold, then casually tosses the rifle onto his shoulder, like an action movie star. “Lose the mask, princess. We have to move. I assume that rental car is registered to your name.”
What is even happening right now? “I…y-yes.”
“I already took out their surveillance system,” he says offhandedly, before stepping back and kicking open the door, glass shattering, metal squealing. “Mask, Jessie.”
“Oh, right,” I breathe, whipping off my disguise and shoving it in my pocket. “Wait. What are you doing here?”
“There’s no time to talk now.” Ryan takes my hand and urges me through the door. We run across the street toward my parked rental car and somehow, I have enough mental fortitude to toss him my keys and hop in the passenger side.
“Seatbelt,” he growls.
I don’t argue.
“Cell phone.”
Feeling like a puppet with its strings being pulled, I hand him over my device. He powers it down, along with his own and sticks them in his pocket. “Cell towers,” he says offhandedly. “If we’ve been seen, we don’t want them tracking us.”
Seconds later, we’re peeling out of the space and I’m a fugitive.
And so is my best friend?
“What the hell, Ryan?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” His jawline flexes and just like this morning, there’s an interesting little kick in my belly—apparently my body is all about bad timing. “What were you thinking, Jessie? Robbing a store at gunpoint?”
My face heats. “How did you know I was going to do it?”
“You were acting weird this morning. I followed you. After about the third time you checked the chamber of your gun—in plain view of the street—I put two and two together.”
Yikes. “You followed me? Ryan, that’s an invasion of my privacy.”
For some reason, this makes him laugh. “I’m taking you somewhere to lay low until I know if the police can connect you to an attempted robbery. There could be eye witnesses or cell phone footage. As soon as I know what they’ve got, I’ll take care of it.”
“Like destroy it?” I twist to face him in the driver’s seat and take hold of his forearm—which…wow. Are those muscles underneath his loose-fitting shirtsleeve? I take my hand back like I’ve been burned. “Ryan, you have to drop me off. You can’t be a part of this. You’re a police officer and you’re making yourself an accomplice. What if you lost your job?”
“Then I’d find another way to keep you safe,” he bites off. “Which apparently is going to require even more diligence than I thought. As soon as we get where we’re going, I want to know why you needed that cash.”
Panic climbs my throat. “You can’t force me to confide in you.”
“I can and I will, Jessie.” He takes a hard right at a corner and the smell of burnt rubber fills the car. “You had it your way for the last thirteen years, shutting me out. But you just put your life in danger and I won’t fucking have that, princess. All bets are off now.”
I watch with my jaw in my lap as he whips off his glasses and tosses them out the car window. “What in the Clark Kent is going on here?”
There’s no humor in his laugh. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Jessie
We’ve been driving in tense silence for over an hour when we pull up in front of a cabin. Ryan cuts the car engine and I sit forward. I have no idea where we are, but it’s beautiful.
Sunlight filters in through leafy green trees and through their thick trunks, I can spy water in the distance, shimmering green and blue. Most of all, the gentle wind is alluring and calming, because there’s nothing else. It’s so quiet and unlike anything I’m used to. My childhood was loud and scary. Life in Philadelphia is a rush of sound at all times, whether it’s car motors or horns or voices. This is peaceful—and despite my harrowing morning, I’m immediately lulled by my surroundings.
I’m so enraptured, it takes me a moment to realize Ryan is studying me closely, as if memorizing my reaction. “What is this place?”
“I own it,” he says, after a brief silence. “Bought it after I sold my parents’ house.”
“That was five years ago, Ryan. You own a cabin and never said anything?”
He touches his tongue to the corner of his mouth. “I guess we both have our secrets.”
Stop looking at his tongue. “I’m keeping mine.”
“We’ll see.”
Ryan pushes out of the car before I have a chance to respond and I’m more than a little thrown off as I climb out after him. What happened to my steady, soft-spoken, trusty best friend? This man is Ryan 2.0. He’s irritable, capable, owns random cabins and has muscular forearms. What gives?
I need to stop being so curious about this change in him. So…fascinated. My mother is back in Philadelphia in need of her medication. She runs out in a couple of days. On top of that, she needs groceries and cigarettes. I really shouldn’t want to go exploring—the cabin and the man. What do I know about exploring men, anyway? I touch no one and no one touches me.
That’s how I like it.
Right?
“Let’s get inside. We’ll need to burn these clothes.”
“What?”
Ryan takes out his own set of keys and shoves one into the lock, reaching a hand in through the opening to flip on a light before stepping inside. I glance back at the rental car and have a brief and unrealistic fantasy about hot-wiring it, since Ryan has confiscated my keys, but my curiosity gets the better of me and I follow him inside.
When I step over the threshold, I get my next surprise of the day.
There are deflated balloons, unlit candles and dead flowers…everywhere.
I toe the first dead balloon inside the door, revealing the words Happy Valentine’s Day.
The jealousy lands on me like hot asphalt. I can barely get oxygen into my lungs, it’s so heavy, weighing down my chest cavity. I’ve never experienced the emotion before and it’s awful. It’s sickening. And I’m definitely not supposed to feel this way over my best friend. “D-did…did you bring a girl here on Valentine’s Day last year?”
He turns to me with an eyebrow raised. “What?”
I fan my face vigorously. “I don’t feel good, Ryan. I think I’m going to pass out.”
He’s across the room in three strides, scooping me up in his arms. And I desperately need the support, but I’m angry at him now for some reason? So I push at his shoulders and give him my meanest frown. “Is this what you meant by having secrets?” I whisper shakily. “You have a sex cabin where you romance girls and…and—”
“It’s decorated for you, Jessie. Goddammit,” he rasps. “This is years’ worth of shit.”
My jealousy runs into a brick wall, not unlike my best friend’s chest. Seriously. What is happening underneath his clothes? “This is for me?” I ask, dumbfounded. “But I hate Valentine’s Day.”
“Believe me, I know. That’s why I keep letting it rot.” A beat passes, then he mutters, “I just can’t let the day pass without doing something special for you, Jessie, even if you aren’t aware of it.”
The pulse pumping in my ears is almost deafening. “Ryan…what are you saying?”
He sighs. “This is not how I wanted to do this.”
“Do it anyway.”
“I’ve been in love with you since we were thirteen,” he says in a firm, resonant tone, closing his eyes. “And I’m not talking love between children or something light and fluffy. I’m talking about knowing you’ve got forty-nine freckles on your nose. Knowing you secretly watch Lifetime when I’m at work, hate parties, sand in your shoes and the words paper cut make you shiver. But you love cannoli, peach ice cream, Arrested Developme
nt memes and fancy office supplies. You only have one bra that you actually like and I can tell when you’re not wearing it, because you’re grumpy, but still so fucking cute. You use my razors to shave your legs. You get halfway through self-help books and stop reading, hide them in your closet. You steal my socks in the winter and return them smelling like sugar. I love all of that. I love all of you.”
I’m like a feather being pitched up, down and sideways in the wind.
I hear his words, I hear him telling me things about myself I’ve never even taken the time to acknowledge and I have no doubt, zero doubt, that Ryan does love me. My God, the way he’s looking at me with his ocean blue eyes is glorious and honest. For a good ten seconds, I ache to throw my arms around his neck and beg him to be with me forever. To take that risk. To tell him all the things I know about him that no one else does.
But my fight-or-flight instinct creeps up, preparing to kick in. I’m vulnerable, like a control panel of exposed nerves. “I…I…”
“It’s okay.” He sets me down on my feet and kisses my forehead. “You just let that sink in for now, Jessie. There’s no rush, because I’m not going anywhere.”
I nod dumbly.
“In the meantime, we’re going to burn these clothes to be safe.”
And then Ryan strips off his shirt to reveal the physique of a god.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper.
Ryan
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jessie whispers.
Just like I knew she would, she starts to back away from me so quickly, she almost trips over an ottoman.
“Jessie…”
“You’ve just looked like that this whole time?” She’s behind the couch now, using it like a shield. “But how? But why?”
“How? I train before and after work in the precinct gym.” I let her see it, my obsession. Let it bleed into my expression, to see how she reacts. Or if I have a chance at salvaging my unplanned confession. “And why? I’m your protector, Jessie. I’m prepared for anything at all times. I have the resources through work and this body as a weapon. It’s all for you. Every hour of my day. Every fucking inch of me.”
