I just wish I didn’t have to learn he had been keeping things from me. In particular, things that call everything I know about him into question. I bite my fingernail and look out the window as we pull up to his house. I know one thing, Lacey is going to get an earful tonight. I’ll find some excuse to sleep separately from Jackson and get Lacey’s opinion on all of this. I have to, or I’m going to burst from holding it in.
Jackson lets us all into the house just before the rain starts outside. The storm comes suddenly and without warning. The sound of rain hammering the rooftop of Jackson’s huge house is almost comforting to me, though. I guess growing up reading books made me have a special affection for the rain. Other kids saw the rain as an inconvenience that stopped them from being able to go outside and play like they wanted. For me, it was a promise that no one would stop me from reading that day. I could curl up in the nook beside the window of my room and dive into a book, reading until I had to turn on the lamp to see and until my eyes were so heavy I thought I could blink and wake up the next morning.
“Either of you drink coffee?” asks Jackson.
“Sure,” I say, realizing distantly that we don’t even know each other well enough to know our preferred drinks, yet I let this man take something I guarded for years. I try to ignore that thought. It’s just the same kind of destructive thinking that led me to push away every guy before Jackson. He’s a good guy. Who cares if he doesn’t know my favorite color? There will be time for that. Maybe. If these people he’s mixed up with don’t come and kill us all in our sleep, that is.
The thought sends a cold chill through me.
“Coffee would be great,” says Lacey.
We plop down on Jackson’s couch. I sigh and look to Lacey, who is narrowing her eyes at me.
“So we’re just going with this?” she asks.
“What do you mean?” I can distantly hear Jackson banging cabinets around in the kitchen and feel relatively sure he can’t hear us.
“I mean, I mostly came because I don’t want to let you get sucked into some shady crap by yourself. Like, Jackson really hasn’t told you what this is about?”
“No,” I say slowly. “But I haven’t exactly been completely open and honest with him, either.”
Lacey makes a face at me in disbelief. “What do you have to hide?”
“Oh I don’t know, the fact that you set this whole thing up pretty much so I could sleep with him and cure my writer’s block.”
About halfway through my sentence, Lacey starts making chopping motions at her neck and moving her eyes past me, but it only registers after I’ve finished.
I turn slightly to see Jackson standing at the doorway with two cups of coffee.
“That was… fast,” I say, clearing my throat.
He steps forward and sets the cups down. A little roughly. “Can you excuse us?” he asks Lacey.
“I think I’ll stay right--”
“Out,” he commands.
She pops up from the couch as if pulled by strings. “I did have to use the bathroom, now that you mention it,” she mutters, before scurrying off with no idea where the bathroom is.
“Is that true?” he asks.
“I was going to tell you,” I say. “That’s what I was trying to say in the car tonight, before we went to the convention center. Remember?”
Jackson’s jaw flexes. He paces in front of me, eyebrows drawn down. “And you didn’t think this was something I might want to know before I agreed to the contract with you?” he asks.
“How could I tell you?” I ask. “Yes, maybe that’s how this started, but that’s all it is. It was a start. I feel different now. I care about you. I’m glad this all happened and I didn’t want to let that dishonesty hang between us.”
He shakes his head, walking away from me and raking a hand through his hair. “You lied to me.”
I set my jaw, standing and stepping toward him. “You lied too. Or did you already forget? I wasn’t exactly agreeing to be hunted by mobsters. But I guess it’s okay for you to hold things back and not for me?”
“I was protecting you,” he growls.
“You said this was about trust. How can I trust you if you can hold something like that from me? How can I trust you if you still won’t even tell me why these people want to hurt you? I mean, how do I know you’re not some mobster, too?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks down, closing his eyes. “I gave them bad financial advice a few months back. Apparently they took my advice and lost millions of dollars, and now they want to show the world what happens to people who piss them off. Okay? It’s a stupid fucking misunderstanding and I’m trying to fix it.”
I can see the frustration and regret in his face. It cools my anger a little bit, but not completely. “So,” I say a little more calmly. “How are you going to get them to stop?”
He shakes his head. “I’m going to make a… financial offer tonight. I expect the offer will be tempting enough to convince them to back off. Otherwise, I’ll find another way.”
“Like what?” I ask, mind flashing back to the scene in the parking garage.
“Another way,” he repeats.
“Was I supposed to stay gone?” asks Lacey, who comes tiptoeing back into the living room. “Or…”
Jackson glares at her and stalks off to another room, leaving us.
“That seemed like it went poorly,” says Lacey.
I purse my lips, nodding. “Yeah. pretty much. We both agreed we’re assholes for lying to each other. I think that was the short version.”
“Right,” she says. “His lie seems a little worse though.”
I let out a long breath. “You’re just taking my side because you have to.”
“Girl. The only thing I have to do is struggle to keep my eyes off of him. I can’t believe you’re tapping that.”
“Oh my God,” I say, covering my face. “Can you please not describe my sex life a horny middle schooler would?”
“Listen to Miss Sophisticated over here with the sex life now,” teases Lacey.
I glare at her.
“He’s already rubbing off on you. I could’ve sworn I just got that exact same glare from him a minute ago.”
“Maybe it’s not that he’s rubbing off on me. Maybe you just make people want to glare.”
“Well, speaking of glares, I didn’t want to mention this earlier, but when I got back to our dorm tonight, I caught Mia in our room. She was on your laptop and she got out of our room real fast when I confronted her. It was highly, highly suspicious. I thought you should know.”
“My laptop?” I ask. I rush to my bag and pull it free, opening the screen and suddenly regretting removing the login password because I was too lazy to keep entering it. When the screen flashes on, it opens to the desktop, but the folder containing my story is open, and the story itself is still highlighted.
“Lacy…” I say quietly. “Did Mia have a USB drive or something?”
She might have. She booked as soon as she saw me though. I can’t say for sure.
“I think she might have just stolen my story. Oh my God. I have to get over there before she has time to do something with it.”