What Matters More

by Liora Blake

  Someone to hold her hand.

  Unfortunately, her first choice for that happened to be across the street with his supermodel of an ex-wife.

  She sighed. Time to do this—all on her own. With just one eye open, she jabbed a finger on the touchscreen and read her fate. Then she read it again.

  By the third time through, tears blurred Anya’s eyes.

  She’d done it.

  Despite the odds, despite Martin’s dismissive cautions, despite her own lack of faith . . . the Fenton committee had chosen her.

  Anya sat with that knowledge for as long as she could, allowing herself a few more exhausted, grateful, excited tears. Then she wiped her eyes on the hem of JT’s t-shirt and went in the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face, emerging just in time to hear a knock on the door. Anya schooled her features as best she could and hollered out that the door was open. She had gone back into the kitchen and taken a seat at the island, recovering enough to fix a sunny smile on her face by the time JT strode into the room, coming to a stop with his hands balled into loose fists at his sides.

  “Hey!” she said brightly, cringing at how loudly it came out. She grabbed another fritter. “I couldn’t wait for you to eat, I’m sorry. I was starving. Full disclosure, this will be my third helping.”

  JT didn’t say anything; he simply closed the distance between them so he could stand in front of her and pressed his mouth to hers in a deep, penetrating kiss. The kiss was different from all of the others they’d shared, so full of heat you would think they had been away from each other for weeks, instead of less than an hour. She resisted the urge to let this kiss convince her things were different, but every slip of his tongue across hers and each nip against her bottom lip made it harder and harder. All her other dreams were coming true, which made it easy to pretend she was getting JT, too.

  When he finally released her, Anya felt breathless.

  “Missed you,” he said. He gave her a lopsided grin. “Under the circumstances, I won’t bitch about you eating without me. I say we brew a fresh pot of coffee and warm up the rest of those fritters in the microwave, so we can have a do-over on this morning. I have fucking spectacular news and I want to tell you about it.”

  He slid around the counter and started to rummage around in the cabinets. As Anya watched him, she realized how badly she wanted to tell him her good news. She didn’t, though. For politeness’ sake, she at least needed to hear his news first.

  “Good news, huh? Does that mean you worked everything out with Nicole?”

  He added fresh grounds to the brewer and filled the carafe with water.

  “She’s finally selling our house,” he said, pressing the start switch on the coffeemaker. “Well, not our house. The house we bought when we were married, which is where she’s been living this whole time. The details have to do with our divorce agreement, but the bottom line is, she was in control of when we sold it and she got an offer she’s willing to accept. Which means I’ll finally—fucking finally—be out from under the mortgage on it.”

  Anya quashed all the questions that suddenly came to mind. She didn’t need the details because he’d said enough to make it sound like this house of theirs was yet another thing that JT had been left holding the bag on, while Nicole sauntered around carefree. Anya pushed those thoughts to the back of her brain and forced another grin.

  “I’m sure that’s a big weight off your shoulders.”

  JT grabbed a plate and two mugs from the cabinet, setting the fritters on the plate. He looked at Anya steadily, relief lighting up his face when he smiled at her.

  “It’s more than that. This changes everything, baby,” he said softly. The endearment made Anya’s heart clench. “Once we close, I can move out, get my own place, and still be able to finish paying off the rest of my debts by the end of the year. And if I get that promotion, then next year I can actually start saving some money.”

  Anya extended her hand and laid it on top of one of his. She could see how much this meant to him—in his eyes, in his smile, in the way he was standing taller. He needed this win, just as she needed hers. And now they both had what they wanted.

  “We should celebrate. Nothing too fancy—you should save that for after the closing. Maybe that pizza place your friend Chris told you about?”

  JT twisted his fingers through hers and gave their intertwined hands a squeeze.

  “That’s what I love about you. Carryout pizza qualifies as a celebration.”

  Anya shrugged. “The people you’re with are what makes a celebration. Doesn’t matter how much you pay for the food—if the wrong person is sitting across from you, it doesn’t feel like a celebration.”

  JT gave her a long look, working over something in his mind he wasn’t saying aloud. Then his phone rang. He scowled, dug the phone out of his pocket, and answered curtly.

  As he listened to the caller, he put the fritters in the microwave and cradled the phone against his shoulder while they heated. Just as the microwave dinged and he opened the door, he froze, abandoning the fritters as he began to launch rapid-fire questions at whoever was on the phone. Each new question became more pointed, urgency growing in his voice as he went on.

  “Are you screwing with me? . . . When did this come in? . . . Well, this better be a legitimate lead, not just some tweaker who thinks he’s going to flip his way out of a drug charge. . . . I’m not going on some wild goose chase based on that. . . . Get this DEA contact to text you an address, and I’ll call Carr to see if he can work the girlfriend angle. . . . Yeah, okay. We’ll talk soon.”

  JT hung up and turned slowly on one heel. Anya lifted a brow.

  “This fucking day just keeps getting better and better,” he murmured. Finally returning to the fritters, he set the plate between them. “Remember that case I mentioned last night when we were talking about my promotion? The drug runner who escaped from prison?”

  Anya nodded.

  “Well, that was Lexie on the phone. She said that a DEA agent down in Texas just arrested a dealer who claims our fugitive is supposedly living in El Paso.”

  JT poured them each a cup of coffee, going through the motions absently. Anya sipped her coffee, studying him.

  “You don’t look convinced,” Anya said.

  “Because I’m relying on the word of a drug dealer,” he snorted. “These guys lie so much they can’t even remember what the truth is. But if this DEA guy gets us an address or anything else solid, we have to jump on it. It’s the first lead of any kind that we’ve had in months.”

  He slurped some coffee, then bit into a fritter and groaned. They sat in silence for a few more minutes, each of them distracted by their own thoughts, until JT’s phone beeped with a text. After reading it, he glanced at Anya.

  “I have to go to Texas. Today.”

  A hundred different feelings hit her at once. Everything from fear and anxiety, to hope and anticipation. But what trumped all those other emotions was sadness—because this was goodbye for them.

  The Greenes would be home soon enough that Anya might be gone before JT made it back. Especially since, knowing JT, he wouldn’t leave Texas until he had his bad guy. His tenacity was definitely one of his sexier qualities—she’d been on the receiving side of that trait in the best ways—but in this case, that meant there was no telling how long he would be away.

  Her heartbeat slowed, until she wondered if the damn thing had given up entirely. All she had to fall back on in this moment was a belief that everything happened for a reason. The Fenton, JT’s house selling, a break in his fugitive case, all of it. There was a reason their lives were changing at a breakneck speed over the course of a single morning—because life was leading them in new directions.

  Anya waited patiently as JT typed a reply to the text he’d received, preparing to say what she needed to once he was done. He hit send and dropped his phone onto the countertop. She took a deep breath.

  “We should talk before you go,” she said. JT gave
her a puzzled look and she sighed. “I may not be here when you get back.”

  “Fuck. You’re right,” he groaned, running a hand through his hair. “Are you going to stay with Tara? Please don’t tell me you’re going back to that hotel. If that’s your plan, it needs to change. Maybe when I get back, we can look at places together and—”

  At that, Anya cut him off. She couldn’t bear hearing him allude to their living together.

  “I need to tell you something, okay?”

  So many confessions sat on the tip of her tongue. From the way saying goodbye to him was killing her, to how her stomach ached from keeping her news about the Fenton to herself. She missed him already and he was still sitting two feet away from her. He was the best man she’d ever known and without him by her side, she worried that whatever she accomplished wouldn’t feel quite as sweet as it would if he were there to hold her hand.

  She opened her eyes, meeting his gaze head-on. If only because it might be the last time she was able to.

  “I can’t thank you enough for these last few weeks. For taking me up on my offer that first night, to begin with. You made me feel so good, and I needed that more than you—”

  His phone chimed again, interrupting her just in time. If she’d kept going, who knew what would have come out of her mouth.

  JT growled, glaring at the phone as he typed out a quick reply.

  “Sorry. Lexie needs me to confirm if I can be ready by noon.”

  Anya glanced at the clock. That left them two hours before he needed to leave. Any heartfelt this is the end speeches she had in mind weren’t going to happen. She was grateful for that in some small way, because letting him go without an overwrought breakup scene was best for the both of them.

  Anya rested her hand on his cheek. JT started at her touch, still typing, and raised his gaze to hers.

  “Promise me that you’ll be careful,” she said. He nodded. Then she kissed him once, gently. “Goodbye, JT.”

  22

  JT

  “Okay, so we know he’s living with the latest girlfriend in a trailer over on the east side of the city. But local informants say he has a side piece down in Horizon City, too,” Chris recapped as he shoved a few papers around on the coffee table to make space for the pizza box JT had in his hand.

  “But the drug trade hasn’t been as good to him around here, because he’s picking up some work as a roofer these days. The job sites change, but we know that when he’s Mr. Regular Job Guy, he checks in at the dispatch office first thing and then goes by there again at the end of the day. That leaves us at least three places we know he’s at consistently, so we just need to decide which one to focus on first.”

  JT answered by way of a grunt. He tossed a slice of pizza onto a paper towel for Chris, dropping it onto the coffee table in front of his partner, and did the same for himself. Chris slumped down into the couch cushions and started in on his share of their dinner, without even complaining about how crappy the pizza was. Hunger and exhaustion had trumped his gourmet taste buds, brought on by a long day. Between a few hours of travel, long briefing meetings with the local Marshals and DEA offices, and hours in the car reading reports as they drove around to get their bearings, JT and Chris were closing in on a fourteen-hour stretch. By the time they checked into the hotel, they were both growing testy from hunger. At this point, even shitty pizza was better than nothing.

  JT tried to find a more comfortable position in the hotel room’s excuse for a side chair. Unfortunately, it seemed designed to fit Pinocchio rather than a real-fucking-boy. He took a large bite of the pizza and caught Chris giving him a glare.

  “What?” JT asked around a mouthful of pizza.

  Chris scowled. “I know we’re both running on fumes here, but this is your strong suit, Maxwell. You’re the one who figures out how we narrow our focus,” he said, using his slice of pizza to gesture at JT. “Once you do that, then it’s my turn to dig in and figure out how we strategize a takedown. That’s how we work, man. But right now, you’re falling down on the job.”

  Christ. Here he thought he was doing at least a passable job of acting like this case was the only thing on his mind, but apparently he was wrong. JT forced himself to focus as he finished the last few bites of his pizza and then crumpled up the paper towel, tossing it aside so he could read the papers scattered on the coffee table—for real this time, instead of just staring at them without comprehending a thing.

  But, even now, when he was trying to concentrate on the case, nothing was coming together. The intel was just a jumble of mismatched puzzle pieces in his mind, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see which ones he should throw out and which ones he should keep.

  Chris let out an exasperated sigh. He grabbed another slice, ripped open one of the little packets of red pepper flakes that came with pizza, and sprinkled them on.

  “At the risk of making this hotel room feel like it’s a therapist’s office and the two of us are in the middle of a couple’s counseling session that’s about to go off the rails, I need to say something.” He took a long drink of his bottled water before pinning JT with a frank look. “You’re distracted, man. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on.” JT kept his eyes fixed on the papers. “I’m good.”

  “Bullshit,” Chris said. “You’re staring at the table like some burnout, and it’s obvious that your head is somewhere else. Just fucking spill it so we can actually get something done here.”

  With a groan, JT sat back in his chair and gave up the fight. Chris was right to press him, and JT couldn’t deny that talking through things with someone—a professional or not—usually helped.

  So he gave Chris a recap of everything that had happened before they’d left for El Paso, or at least the part between when Nicole had shown up and when he’d left the Greenes’ house. He also told Chris how he wasn’t sure if, when he’d left, Anya had been saying goodbye . . . or if she’d said goodbye—a distinction he knew made him sound like a confused teenager instead of a grown-ass man.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “It was fucking weird. I’m standing there thinking that my whole life is lining up for the first time in a long time and I think she’s a part of that. But she’s doing this serious goodbye thing that sounded a lot like this is it for us. Like we’re done. Honest to God, it felt like she’d just sucker punched me, and I couldn’t even figure out what to say, so I just left.”

  Chris worked his way through a third slice of pizza, listening intently while also saving them both from too much direct eye contact as JT rambled. When JT finally shut up, Chris tossed his half-eaten crust into the pizza box and stood up to leave. He rubbed the palms of his hands against his eyes and sighed tiredly.

  “Speaking as a man who’s done a shitty job making sure his wife knows how much she means to him, I’ll just say this,” Chris began, heading for the door between their adjoined rooms. “Never assume you’re both on the same page. If you want more with her, then call her up and tell her that. Maybe you don’t wake her up in the middle of the night, but whatever you do, don’t wait too long. This shit doesn’t take care of itself. Trust me.”

  In the morning, JT rolled out of bed when his phone alarm went off and dropped straight to the floor, knocking out fifty push-ups at a breakneck pace. His heart was racing by the time he was done, which was exactly what he intended. He needed a little blood pumping through his veins before he called Anya. Otherwise, all of his thoughts would scramble the moment he heard her voice.

  After pumping out the last rep, he jumped back up to his feet, casting a look at his phone on the nightstand. There was no time to debate this. When they got in the car, Chris would expect that JT had dealt with his Anya issues, and if he hadn’t, Chris was probably going to send his ass back upstairs to call her.

  He paced the room a few times, then grabbed his phone. When he finally heard the line ringing through, JT’s mind was made up. He knew exactly what he ne
eded to say.

  He loved her. He wanted to start this new phase of his life with her—only her.

  Anya’s voice came on the line, a little sleepy sounding. JT cursed under his breath. So much for not waking her up in the middle of the night. Instead, he’d woken her up at the crack of dawn.

  “JT? Why are you calling so early? Are you okay?”

  His heart seized so much it hurt, hearing the way her voice grew concerned. Hearing that shouldn’t bring on a surge of satisfaction, but it did.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I just needed to talk to you.”

  She didn’t reply. He could hear bedsheets rustling in the background and couldn’t help from closing his eyes and picturing her. All of her blond hair sleep-messed around her face, her hazel eyes a little hooded, the early-morning sunlight highlighting each freckle across the bridge of her nose. That image was enough to ease the tension in his body and gave him a chance to take a steadying breath.

  “I don’t like how we left things yesterday,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about it. About how it felt like you were saying goodbye.”

  She remained quiet for a few beats, long enough that JT had to resist babbling about the difference between goodbye and goodbye, which he knew she didn’t need to hear. No one fucking needed to hear that.

  “That’s because I was,” she said finally. “I wanted to make sure I had a chance to say goodbye properly.”

  Say goodbye properly? He gritted his teeth. In his mind, there was no way to do that—not when it came to Anya. Truly saying goodbye to her would gut him, and there was nothing proper about that.

  She continued on, her tone growing decisive. “We both said that long-term wasn’t in the cards for us. We decided to date while I was here, and now I’m leaving. This was temporary.”

  “It was temporary,” he said slowly. “But things changed. We changed, Anya. I’m in love with you. That changes everything.”