If I Were You (Inside Out #1)(76)

“I’ll get him press for the gallery.”

“No,” I repeat. “Please, Chris. Do not talk to Mark. I’ve told you. I need to know I can earn this job on my own.”

A muscle in his jaw flexes and I can tell he’s fighting with himself. “I won’t call him.” He cuts me a sideways look. “Your car is at the gallery and I live right nearby. If you won’t go, stay with me tonight. We can stop by your apartment on the way to my place if you like, so you can get some of your things.”

I’d hoped for some alone time to process what is between us but the idea of not seeing Chris for days twists me in knots. How has he become such a part of my life in so short a time?

“Yes. I’d like to stay with you.” I don’t want to go to my apartment, though, and it’s partially because I don’t want Chris to see how humbly I live. No, I correct myself. There’s more to it. My apartment is my old life that I’ve managed to escape for days, and on some level, I fear that I will never escape fully. I glance at Chris’s profile, his masculine beauty, and a deeper fear emerges, a fear that I will never truly belong in this life, his life. But this isn’t suppose to be about me. Rebecca. Remember how this all started. I need the information I pulled from her storage unit to properly investigate her whereabouts.

I have to go by my apartment.





Chapter Twenty-Seven





The sun is setting by the time we pull up to my apartment building and Chris parks his 911 in the midst of much humbler vehicles I imagine he can’t help but notice.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” I say, and quickly exit the 911. Chris is already rounding the trunk when I stand up. So much for my escape strategy. “You don’t have to come in.”

“But I want to.” There is no give to his voice and he slides his fingers between mine and motions me forward. “Lead the way.”

Resigned to a battle I can’t win, I head toward my red brick building with Chris by my side and quickly find my door. I tug the keys from my purse, and hesitate. The journals are laying out on the coffee table. I can’t hide them from Chris. There’s no possible way.

Chris reaches around me, his big body framing mine, and takes the keys. He turns the key and shoves open the door.

Adrenaline pours through me and I rush inside, darting for the coffee table. I start to stack the journals, and the only bright side to their location, and my present state of panic, is I have something to worry about other than my simple brown couch and my $500 dining room set.

The door shuts behind me and the jolt somehow rakes my raw nerves to the point that two of the journals tumble to the ground. Chris is there, as he always is when I drop things, picking them up.

I sink to the couch and set the three in my hands on the coffee table before accepting the ones in his hands. He sits beside me, studying me, ignoring the journals that are all I can think about. “What’s wrong, baby? Why is bringing me in making you this frazzled. I don’t care about your apartment. I care about you.”

My eyes go wide. He cares about me. It’s the closest thing to truly admitting this ‘thing’, for lack of a better term, between us is more than sex. “It’s a lot of things but no, I didn’t want you to see my little bitty apartment.”

He continues to study me with far too much scrutiny. “What else? And don’t say nothing. You already said it was more than the apartment.”

My gaze falls to the journals on the table, and suddenly I desperately want to tell Chris about them. “If I tell you, I’m not sure how you’ll react.” I glance up at him. “Call this reveal my dark secret that might send you running.”

“I won’t run, Sara.” He pulls my legs over his, holding me captive, and I wonder if he knows this. I suspect he does. Chris has a way of controlling things, controlling me. “Talk to me.”

“The journals on the table are Rebecca’s.” The words tumble out of me, and it is a relief to say them. “Her personal journals, with her most intimate thoughts inside.”

“Rebecca’s journals,” he repeats flatly, his expression as unreadable as his tone. “Did you get them from the gallery?”

“My neighbor bought a storage unit at an auction—people buy the ones that aren’t paid for and then sell the items for profit. She planned to do that but her rich doctor fiancé, who she barely knew, whisked her off to Paris. She left the storage unit for me to take care of.”

“You have a storage unit filled with Rebecca’s things?”

“Right. I couldn’t bear getting rid of her things. I wanted to find her and return the items to her. That’s how I started reading her journals and there were so many similarities in our lives that I knew I had to find her.”

“So you went to the gallery.”

His tone isn’t flat anymore. It’s sharp as steel, and his expression stony, his jaw tight, and nerves explode in my stomach in response. He doesn’t like what I’m telling him. I’ve made a mistake sharing this. “I was worried about her,” I say defensively. “I still am and...and my good intentions have snowballed out of control.”

He sets my legs down and straightens, staring at the journals. Seconds tick by, the tension in the room is volatile, stretching tighter, and I have a sense of a rubber band about to pop.